Quote:
Originally Posted by Burninator
Textcritic is there a certain translation (English) of the bible you recommend people read?
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It is an "oldie" but a "goodie": my present favourite is the Revised Standard Version, for its fairly impressive non-confessional approach to the text. I prefer it because despite some of the archaic uses of English, the translation does fairly strictly maintain the inherent sexism within the text in its refusal to render properly masculine constructions with all-inclusive ones. This was a regrettable repercussion in the NRSV revision that resulted from the effort to be more gender inclusive. I have nothing against gender inclusion, but let's stop pretending that the authors of the Bible were anything like us in this regard: let them speak for themselves.
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is otherwise very good, and is presently the "industry standard" in main-stream biblical scholarship. It provides some value in exchange for its attempt at gender inclusion in that it includes the most readings of any modern English translations from the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). The DSS remain the singular best resource for the Old Testament, as they are the oldest mss. on the entire planet. Regrettably, they have not made—in my opinion—a sizable enough of an impact on modern Bible translation, mostly due to the persistent prevailing (and wrong) notion that the Masoretic Text (the standard Hebrew text for the Old Testament) was ALWAYS the standard text in Judaism, and this effectively disqualifies numerous other alternative editions that appear to have been in circulation at least as late as the time of Jesus.
Another good one that I have come to appreciate recently is the New Jersualem Bible (NJS): This is a Catholic Church sanctioned edition that has a very nice dynamic style and is very readable, only, some caution should be exercised in recognizing that as a dynamic edition, it will stray some from some of the more "literal" constructions of the Greek and the Hebrew in favour of more flexible, idiomatic expressions that make some better sense in English.
The English Standard Version is also quite good, only I am mad at them for their quite literal rendering in 2 Tim 3:16 "God-breathed", which—while technically correct—utterly fails in that it is marshaled in support by inerrentists of their doctrine of something akin to dictation theory.