There was a movie/miniseries made just recently. The Bible (TV Mini Series 2013) - IMDb
I think most of my copies are NRSV or NAB. I haven’t really cracked them open since 2008 though, so my memory is foggy.
To me, there is nothing that matches the grandeur of the King James Version, especially for reading aloud. I understand that it has been surpassed in textual accuracy by other versions, but no one else has rendered the poetry anywhere near as well. I need get a large print version now that I am in my dotage, but that’s my favourite bible.
(How I wish that someone would (have) commission(ed) Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Samuel Beckett, David Mamet or Michael Ondaatje (among many others) to sit down with a panel of bible scholars to craft a new poetic translation!! Could you imagine?!?)
I also have a New English Bible from the early 1980s, which I quite like.
The publishers of the New English Bible put out the Revised English Bible in 1989. It’s a more scholarly accurate version, but the quality of the literature suffers a bit. There’s also the Jerusalem Bible which is/was a quite poetic English translation from an original French translation. It’s been succeeded by a more scholarly accurate New Jerusalem Bible, but, you guessed it, the quality of the literature suffers.
A group of noted authors did do a retelling of Genesis’s stories. I’ll have to check and find out what the title is and who they were.
Count me as another faithful lolcat-er. Blessinz of teh Ceiling Cat be apwn yu, srsly
(Seriously though, our family Bible is the New American Bible, IRC)
I completely agree, in all respects.
But I’d add: The Message, while I wouldn’t rely on it for accuracy, can nevertheless give an interesting different perspective.
The Vulgate of Saint Jerome!
Just kidding. None.
Sure, in the same sense that asking your neighbor what he thinks the Bible says might give you an interesting different perspective. Unless you’re neighbor has ever actually read the Bible, in which case, his answer will be significantly more accurate (and so less interesting and different?) than The Message. Seriously, it’s not even a paraphrase (which it pretends to be). I don’t know what it is.
“King James Bible! Good enough for the Apostle Paul, good enough for me!”
I, too, grew up with and around the KJV. That’s still all that I own (well, I have a Oxford (RSV) from college) but I use the NIV online and also like the NASB. Oh, I also have one of those Living Bible paraphrase versions giving to me for a birthday when I was growing up.
This how I grew up. I was literally taught that all other versions of the Bible were just flat out wrong.
I do recall that I was allowed a NKJV with lots of annotations and such, and each chapter had a little history on who the (probable) author was and when it was written in relation to the stuff it was about.
I don’t know why I was allowed that NKJV, I think my Dad probably didn’t really look at it that closely. It’s largely responsible for me becoming an atheist (among other things). I would read the little blurbs before each chapter and be like, “wtf, we don’t even know who wrote this, and it was written way WAY after the fact? Hmmm…”
Nowadays, I just look at the Skeptics Annotated Bible whenever I need to look up something. And I think they usually include lots of different versions for each passage.
Looking through the KJVO people, I would say specifically our family belonged to the following:
I remember having discussions about how the KJV was inspired by God and was the only valid translation, and that literally all other translations of the Bible were flawed by men. People who use them might not necessarily be evil, but they certainly are mislead, and we should feel sorry for them and try to get them to use the KJV.
I remember being young and getting into arguments with other Christians that their Bible was wrong and only the KJV could be relied upon.
Wow, this thread really brought back some memories!
BibleGateway defaults to the NIV, and I’ve heard that that’s a reasonably accurate translation, so that’s usually what I use when I’m looking things up. Unfortunately, like most Protestant versions, it doesn’t have the deuterocanonical books like Sirach or Maccabes-- Sometimes I can get BibleGateway to give me those from the Wycliffe version (which would not be my first choice for readability or accuracy), but the site generally gets weird when it comes to those books.
At home on my bookshelf, I have a New American Bible (note: Not the same as the New American Standard Bible), which is a Catholic version. I mostly use that one when I’m looking up something for someone in the same room (and where I already know where I’m looking, and don’t need to use a search feature).
I’m not certain which version is used in the missals for mass at my church, but most of them seem to be from the Douay Rheims version.
And of course, the King James version is the most beautiful poetically, and is also the version I have on my iPod, since it was free and easy to find.
I use the NRSV for these reasons: I think it is the best available balance between literal meaning and literature; my church (Episcopal/Anglican) uses it; it includes the deuterocanonical books which are used in my church’s liturgical readings; and the translators were broadly representative of Christian belief to avoid sectarian interpretations.
I like to read from the Amplified Bible at the top of my lungs.
"FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD…"
just think of Garrett Morris in the corner of your computer screen.
The major modern English Catholic versions are the New American Bible, the New Revised Standard Version (Catholic version), the New Jerusalem Bible and the Revised English Bible. For whatever reason, these are harder to find online (and the REB just isn’t there at all.)
The Geneva Bible was good enough for Oliver Cromwell and it’s good enough for me.
I grew up with the Douay-Rheims, but now I read it online with the New American Bible.
NIV. I’m a fence-sitter, but I see no reason to keep my son from learning some good stuff. KJV would really pretty much require him to learn a new dialect, and after getting rid of his unknowing use of Spanglish, we’ll go with something more useful. Maybe Klingon.
New Jerusalem, which kills two birds with one stone. It’s a Catholic bible, and it was the version used in my art history department.
I go to http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/_INDEX.HTM and am able to get the New American Bible.