Choosing a Bible Version (Timeless)

In the last 50 years the typical North American believer has gone from having 3 or 4 translations to pick from to now having over a hundred.  We take a deep dive into what goes into a translation, where they come from, why they're different, and what to consider when buying or gifting a Bible.

Thank you for listening!

To enquire about advertising with Catfish Ministries, LLC send an email to thefish@catfishministires.com

Corrections for the episode - 

@9:30 The original NIV was 1974, not 1984
@10:45 RSV is based on the ASV (1901), not the KJV
@15:48 1 Peter 1:13 states, “Gird up the loins of your mind.”
@24:30  Romans 15:7 (ESV) states, “Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you…”
@104:40  1 John 5:7 states, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”

Transcript

Greg [00:00:02]:
I got a notification on my watch that I had a text, and

Dave [00:00:04]:
I looked at that, and I,

Greg [00:00:06]:
I was I was kind of hurt quite a bit.

Chad [00:00:09]:
Yeah. It it shook you. He was shook. I was shook.

Dave [00:00:11]:
He was Yeah. He was what was the text?

Greg [00:00:14]:
As the kids We just read it to you. Oh, that one? Oh my

Greg [00:00:42]:
Should should I tell Dave about the text I got?

Dave [00:00:45]:
Which one? Oh. I don't know, dude. You don't know? And now you have to share it.

Greg [00:00:50]:
Do I have to?

Greg [00:00:52]:
This this would be what I would call an unforced error, but proceed at your own discretion.

Dave [00:00:57]:
Alright. Then I won't. Well, no. No. Alright. Do you have my please do share.

Greg [00:01:02]:
I got a text from CVS pharmacy. Okay.

Dave [00:01:08]:
Is this something I did on Alexa?

Greg [00:01:10]:
No. No. Wait. Maybe it is. That would explain it. Oh, no. With a clean

Greg [00:01:15]:
It says, hi, Greg. Shingles vaccines may benefit ages 50 and older. Schedule yours today.

Dave [00:01:22]:
Nice. Yeah. There you go. Welcome to the crew.

Greg [00:01:25]:
Yeah. I thought you'd like that.

Dave [00:01:27]:
I am I'm yeah. Like, why why did you I I don't pick on people's age. Yeah.

Greg [00:01:33]:
Chad and I were,

Dave [00:01:35]:
we're doing something young guys.

Greg [00:01:37]:
Yeah. Chad and I were doing something together on Tuesday, and and, I got a notification on my watch that I had a text.

Dave [00:01:43]:
And I looked at that, and

Greg [00:01:44]:
I, I was I was kind of hurt quite a bit.

Chad [00:01:48]:
It it it shook you. He was shook. I was shook.

Dave [00:01:50]:
Yeah. He was what was the text?

Greg [00:01:53]:
As the kids We just read it to you. Oh, that one? Oh my god.

Dave [00:01:58]:
You you

Greg [00:01:58]:
didn't say that text.

Dave [00:01:59]:
You made it sound like it was a

Greg [00:02:00]:
different text. Go back and

Greg [00:02:02]:
Do you see Do you see how the memory? Do you see how the memory?

Greg [00:02:06]:
Oh, don't. Ew. Wow.

Dave [00:02:08]:
Don't blame your grammatical. Quirkiness on

Greg [00:02:13]:
I don't think that was grammatical quirkiness. No.

Dave [00:02:18]:
Alright.

Greg [00:02:18]:
You with all your words together forming sentences, you whippersnappers. Wow. That

Dave [00:02:24]:
was just such a horribly put together sentence. I know. Right? You Wow.

Greg [00:02:30]:
They're all such bad.

Dave [00:02:31]:
Speaking of thee and thou? Yes. Yeah. Translations.

Greg [00:02:34]:
Translations?

Dave [00:02:35]:
Bible translations.

Greg [00:02:36]:
That's right. That's what we're talking about today. Yeah. And Or tonight. Or tonight. Or This morning. Or yeah. Any Whenever you listen

Dave [00:02:42]:
to us.

Greg [00:02:43]:
Whenever we are.

Greg [00:02:44]:
Right now at 1:0:2 AM local time for you. That's what we're talking about. It's translation Saskatchewan.

Dave [00:02:50]:
Yes. Or Uganda.

Greg [00:02:51]:
Oh, yes. Shout out to Uganda.

Dave [00:02:53]:
Shout out to Uganda.

Greg [00:02:54]:
Yeah. And scat Saskatoon. Wait.

Dave [00:02:57]:
I thought it was Saskatchewan.

Greg [00:02:59]:
That that's a city in Saskatchewan. Oh. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Say that five times real fast.

Greg [00:03:05]:
No. He'll end up gonna

Dave [00:03:06]:
be like, I'm the very essence of a modern patriot genre. Something with Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Greg [00:03:12]:
I've seen that you're trying to trick him into swearing. No.

Dave [00:03:16]:
Say it fast enough and you'll you'll get bleeped right now.

Greg [00:03:19]:
I just wanted him to sing that he's queen of the soft hop again.

Dave [00:03:23]:
That's right. That's right, baby.

Greg [00:03:25]:
Oh, man. Hey. We know you're curious. It's Catfish Ministries, and we're gonna be talking about bible translations. So we're gonna be going over some stuff about kind of a little bit about where they come from, what to look for, and what to avoid. Mhmm.

Dave [00:03:41]:
So How to pick one. Right?

Greg [00:03:43]:
That's right. You got to. You got to. Do you guys wanna start with a little discussion on where these things came from? Was there anything before the King James? Because I've heard some people say there wasn't.

Dave [00:03:54]:
Absolutely not. It is the received text. It's good enough for Paul, it's good enough for me. Yeah. Yeah. The King James. We settled that one. The King James can correct the the Greek.

Greg [00:04:06]:
I've I've heard a King James only preacher say that.

Greg [00:04:09]:
Wow. Just Yeah. Wow. And what's our Greek scholar, Dave, say about that?

Dave [00:04:15]:
I'm I'm trying to straighten my spine back up from the just yeah. He seems skeptical. What is that? What is that? There's a line from a movie. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Oh, yeah. Somebody said that. There have been many translations before the King James, even in English, and, in fact, a lot of a lot of King James only types actually don't know this, but King James was actually a Catholic king and his translation or the one he Authorized? Authorized, thank you, basically dictated that that would come about. Right? Was, in fact, designed to replace the the equivalent of the ESV today, the popular Bible among the Protestants, the, Geneva Bible.

Dave [00:05:08]:
Right? And so The Geneva Geneva Bible. Right. Because it was it was, it had even anti Catholic study notes in some of the versions of the printings of it. Wow. And so, yeah, that was that was quite the big deal that he tried to replace. The the current group of protestant preachers, etcetera, who are, you know, anti anything but King James

Greg [00:05:33]:
Mhmm.

Dave [00:05:33]:
Are actually promoting a anti protestant Bible that has some significant translational issues and is just is grammatically and linguistically, like, very very hard for modern people to read. There's all sorts of very good reasons to not read the King James Bible. Nothing wrong with reading it if you want, but Yes. There's lots of issues with it.

Greg [00:05:59]:
Can we So I wanna say the King James is beautiful.

Dave [00:06:03]:
A great

Greg [00:06:04]:
It's beautiful. Word correct. It is a good translation. It's very literal. It's very true to the text that they had at the time. Mhmm. So so it's a good, solid, literal translation.

Dave [00:06:21]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:06:21]:
And I would never disparage anyone from using it. I'd like to put a qualifier out there and say that anybody out there that is a King James only, like die hard King James only, anything else is evil, if you wanna write to us and argue, dude, it's just gonna be file 86. Like, I don't even wanna engage in in-depth in that.

Dave [00:06:44]:
I think DA Carson has a good treatment of that. I can't remember the title. He has a good good treatment. If you if you really are if you have serious questions about the King James only position and wanna have a conversation and wanna read a good book on it, that's fine. But if you're just here to argue, I'm not interested. I did I did have a really one really good conversation with the King James only pastor who was kinda questioning it. Mhmm. Because he was like, well, doesn't it make sense that there would be every generation needs to have a perfect bible that was a perfect reflection of God's word and then I asked him one simple question, then why don't we still use the Latin Vulgate? Right.

Dave [00:07:25]:
Which was for the early European church was the standard Bible which was written in Latin. Right. And he just looked at me and he kinda turned his head and he scratched, literally, I saw him scratch his head and say, oh, that's a really interesting question. And then I've never had a chance to follow-up with him on that conversation, but I think I was able to at least give him something to think about from Yeah. The logic of his position. But I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here, don't you think?

Greg [00:07:52]:
Yeah. Probably.

Dave [00:07:54]:
Perhaps. Can we talk about should you even just have one translation? Good question. So I personally think you should probably have one that you use most of the time, and then you should probably have 1 or 2 that you read occasionally because every single translation is full of interpretation. Yeah. And so when you read a verse in different translations you're getting different interpretations potentially. And it anything that makes you think about the meaning of the text a little to to to really kind of think hard about it and meditate on it, I think that's a good thing.

Greg [00:08:36]:
Yeah.

Dave [00:08:37]:
So and it could give you kind of the range of potential meanings in in any given verse. But I personally that's kind of the way I've always encouraged people to do is have one main one, that way you get used to quoting it or whatever. So for me, that's the NASB. I use the new American Standard 95 version. I don't do the newer new American Standard version. I do the 95 version. Okay.

Greg [00:08:58]:
We're gonna come back to that.

Dave [00:08:59]:
Yep. And then and then I our church is very big on the ESV, so I use ESV if I ever preach at a church. And then I I may I may be controversial in here, but I actually do not for the main translation, but like it for a secondary translation. I like the NIV, and I'll I can I can defend myself as to why later in terms of translational philosophy? It's really

Greg [00:09:26]:
You'll have to.

Dave [00:09:27]:
I figured I would because it's not literal.

Chad [00:09:30]:
Yeah. So Let's talk about that. That.

Greg [00:09:31]:
Is this the NIV or the NIV 84?

Dave [00:09:34]:
Not that well, I would prefer the NIV in 1984.

Greg [00:09:37]:
Okay.

Dave [00:09:38]:
Yeah. The original NIV. But the do not like the t NIV.

Greg [00:09:45]:
What's the t stand for?

Dave [00:09:47]:
Today's. So that was and I don't know if they still done that, but that had the more gender neutral language and Right. Started the politically correct Bible. Yeah. So

Greg [00:10:00]:
So can we back up again? Okay. So so we had, like, before the King James, there was the Geneva Bible. Mhmm. And, well, before that, there was the Latin Vulgate and, you know, the original Greek and the Hebrew and then the Latin and then the Geneva Bible and then the King James, and that dominated for a long time. Yeah. And then 300 years.

Dave [00:10:24]:
And that

Greg [00:10:24]:
I'm reading Chad Shonos because he did such a good job of putting this together. Shout out to Chad. Woo hoo. Yeah.

Dave [00:10:31]:
Woo hoo.

Greg [00:10:32]:
And then, in the the late 1800 and, early 1900, you have the the RSP, the English revised Standard.

Dave [00:10:40]:
Revised Standard Version.

Greg [00:10:41]:
And the American Standard Bibles. Okay? These are the 2 big translations that came out. And the RSV, the Revised Standard, is kinda like it's based on the King James tradition.

Dave [00:10:51]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:10:52]:
And then the American Standard Bible is a is a new translation work. It was a new work. And they're both still very literal. And I think right here is where we need to to start talking about the translation philosophies. Because there's 3 main philosophies. There's 3 categories and there's you there's 2 different ways to describe them. But I would say literal and then thought for thought and then paraphrase. Yeah.

Greg [00:11:22]:
And there's another technical and I

Dave [00:11:25]:
always forget what So, yeah. And I think probably the best way to describe it is unlike gender, translation is on a spectrum.

Greg [00:11:36]:
Oh, okay. There's

Dave [00:11:36]:
2 genders. Yep. But but there's a kind of a spectrum of translation because you you it's impossible to translate without interpreting. That so and it's really impossible to do a straightforward 100% literal translation. Yeah. There there was always Real quick.

Greg [00:11:58]:
Why is it impossible to do a direct translation? I already know the answer because I've experienced it myself, but

Dave [00:12:03]:
Yeah. So let me give a real simple one. So there's a Greek construction, I won't bore you with the details, but it's often most often translated the a word in the quote, the genitive, often is translated of whatever that word is. So of glory. Right? Right? So if I said Father of glory and that that Ephesians 1. Mhmm. I think it's 11. What does father of glory mean? And a lot of people just translate it that way.

Dave [00:12:35]:
Is he literally the father of glory? Is glory the name of the child? That is a genitive that's used to describe the father. So a good translation of that would be glorious father. Mhmm. But the problem is how do you translate that quote literally? Right. Because you either have to add the word of, because the word of is not there. It's not a separate word. It's just a case ending on the noun Mhmm. And you have to interpret what that is.

Dave [00:13:03]:
So that's one simple example. Another example might be how, Greek, and I'm just using Greek here, how Greek uses adjectives. So if I wanna say the running man Mhmm. I I might not say if I were to translate that literally, I would go the man, the running. K. And together, that's the running man.

Greg [00:13:27]:
Okay.

Dave [00:13:28]:
Right? So if I translated that a 100% literally Mhmm. Right, or word order. Right. In Greek, the word order, generally, you have verb, subject, object. Right? So running Dave went to the store or, you know, ran Dave to the store. That would be the literal translation of that if I put that in Greek. And so, anytime you have a desire to to keep as much structure from the Greek back to the English, in in our case, our receptor language. Right? Anytime you have that attempt to keep as the structure as same as possible, that would be a more literal translation.

Greg [00:14:15]:
K.

Dave [00:14:16]:
Right? And so New American Standard, Revised Standard Version, King James Version, ESV, Chad Chad standard Bible Oh. The the Coleman standard Coleman the Christian standard Bible, which is a Holman press.

Greg [00:14:29]:
Yes.

Dave [00:14:29]:
Right? By Holman press. Those are all more on the literal scale. And then then you've got the paraphrase, which is generally poorly done, often really bad interpretations. One example, I think it's the Good News Bible, God loved the world so much that he gave his son and that's not what that verse means. That God so loved the world that he gave is he loved the world in such a way that he gave.

Greg [00:15:00]:
Right.

Dave [00:15:00]:
Would be the proper translation of that, sense wise. So that's the paraphrase. So that's your two ends of your scale.

Greg [00:15:07]:
Mhmm.

Dave [00:15:08]:
And then in the middle, you have, what did you call thought for thought translation?

Greg [00:15:12]:
Thought for thought or the dynamic the dynamic equivalent.

Dave [00:15:16]:
Yeah. The dynamic equivalent. So 2 really quick illustrations, 1 modern and 1 biblical. So the, an example of a dynamic equivalent, Paul

Greg [00:15:27]:
So the lit so it's literal or formal equivalence Yes. And then dynamic equivalence is the thought for thought.

Dave [00:15:35]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, for example, in, let's see. Is it Colossians? Paul says, Gird up your loins and do this. Right? And so, given our culture, you know, when's the last time you and I girded up our loins?

Greg [00:15:53]:
Let me check my watch.

Dave [00:15:55]:
Yes. Right. So and what does that even refer

Greg [00:15:59]:
to? Right.

Dave [00:16:00]:
So in the culture, if you're gonna either do some work or let's say you have to run. So I've gotta share a story, Japan story here. Oh, yes, please. Right? So and you might see this from when I when I was a missionary kid. Oh. To Japan.

Greg [00:16:13]:
I don't know my bell yet.

Dave [00:16:14]:
We need to get a bell. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. Yes. So I used to watch the Japanese, the equivalent of Japanese cowboy would be the samurai stuff. Right? Right. So the samurai shows, and they would wear their robes and they have the belts that hold the robes up. So if they were really in a hurry they would either grab their robe, the men here, would either grab their robe and run or sometimes they would even tuck it up. So they would tuck the bottom of the robe up into their belt.

Dave [00:16:45]:
Mhmm. Right, that's girding up your loins. That was exactly what they did in the ancient Near East. They wanna keep the robes either clean. So the literal translation would be gird up your loins and then explain it Mhmm. To your congregants as a pastor or teacher or whatever. Or the dynamic equivalent would say, okay. What is the cultural equivalent to that for us? And that I think there's no real cultural equivalent for that.

Dave [00:17:12]:
So the the what most modern translations, like, the I think the NAB says something like prepare your mind for action. Right. Right. So that's because it's used figuratively. So that's one example. DA Carson uses this example from French Canadian. So and and this is a modern example. So let's say the Bible had used the word frog in your throat.

Dave [00:17:35]:
In English, when you have a frog in your this would be interesting too in Canadian English. Greg has a frog in his throat right now.

Greg [00:17:41]:
Right.

Dave [00:17:42]:
Right? Would you say that in Ontario, a frog in your throat? Would that Sure. Yeah. You don't have to. I want to know what's really what you would say. I've heard the expression Okay.

Greg [00:17:53]:
Used. Yeah.

Dave [00:17:53]:
So French Canadians don't say that. They say you have a cat in your throat. I've never heard that. That's because you probably didn't spend a lot of time in French Canada. I don't know. But that's what DA Carson says, and he went to school at McGill, which is in Montreal. So anyway, so that's his example. So if you were let's say you came across the phrase in the Bible frog in your throat, which does not occur.

Dave [00:18:16]:
Right. The the the paraphrase or the I'm sorry, not the paraphrase. The dynamic equivalent or thought for thought would be let's find an equivalent thought that communicates the same meaning Mhmm. And so you would translate that to in Quebec Quebec Quebecie French? Quebec. Quebecie French? How do you say that? They're anyway, French. I think

Greg [00:18:38]:
it's Kabuki. Kabuki. No. That's you again. Sorry.

Dave [00:18:41]:
That's my childhood again. Don't do that. I'm sorry. Yeah. You don't want to end the ball that way. Kabuki is strange too, by the way. Alright. Yeah.

Dave [00:18:49]:
So, anyway, so that would be the 3. Right? Just the examples of the 3. So the way the New American Standard used to try to claim that it was, like, the most literal And it's kind of true that it's so literal, it's so structurally equivalent or formally equivalent, that at times it's really choppy English. And to be honest, when I was teaching Greek, I could not tell this is a bad sign about Bible College students, but I couldn't if I was gonna have him translate a passage from first John, I couldn't tell them ahead of time what I was gonna have him translate because all they would have to do is memorize in the new American standard and they would pretty much be able to fool me into thinking they had translated the Greek if I Oh. So that's why I never had them translate Bible verses and

Greg [00:19:37]:
True story. Yeah.

Dave [00:19:38]:
Happened at Moody too, didn't it?

Greg [00:19:40]:
True story. Yeah.

Dave [00:19:41]:
Yeah. Yeah. Those are your future ministers, people.

Greg [00:19:47]:
Cheating on the exams.

Dave [00:19:50]:
I just snorted.

Greg [00:19:51]:
So much. Yeah.

Dave [00:19:52]:
But that was well, that was one of the reasons why I never used Bible verses for translation tests. Anyway, so sorry for the Yeah.

Greg [00:20:00]:
So if you look at the timeline of the translations then, like, if you got saved in the church in the in the eighties or you're a gen x, you know, you either had the King James or the RSV or the the American Standard Bible, or these two new translations came along. Right. One was the NASB, which came out in the mid seventies Mhmm. Or the NIV. And the NASB is very literal, very, some people would call it tight, stodgy, very, you know

Dave [00:20:37]:
It was 12th grade level reading.

Greg [00:20:39]:
Yeah. And it yeah. It's 12th grade level reading. It's it wasn't very easy to read.

Dave [00:20:42]:
Excuse me. I have a cat in my throat.

Greg [00:20:44]:
Oh, sorry. Please.

Greg [00:20:47]:
And and it didn't fit very well in the seeker sensitive church movement, so everybody in the eighties started using the NIV. Yeah, but

Dave [00:21:00]:
to be fair, it was actually written The NIV was translated by some really astute scholars.

Greg [00:21:05]:
Yeah. No, it was. I wasn't Yeah. Given any commentary on that.

Dave [00:21:09]:
Okay. Yeah.

Greg [00:21:09]:
So that that was the choice. That was the breakdown of the choice. And the NIV is more a dynamic equivalent. It's a thought for thought with some really good scholarship, but it's a thought for thought. So you have more of a man or a woman's interpretation in there of what the text says. Or the committees. The committee. The committee.

Greg [00:21:30]:
The committee. Yeah. You have the committee's interpretation there, of what the text should say, influencing you more as you read. When you have a a formal equivalence or or a word for word translation, there is still influence there from that translation committee because they still had to make some decisions. Because if they just gave you the literal words, there are many times when it wouldn't make sense. So they had to make it make sense for you. And then sometimes their bias, sometimes their theological bent will come out, in those decisions. And that's why if you open up the front of your bible, if you have a paper bible if you don't have a paper bible, you go to the website for that translation.

Greg [00:22:16]:
You can go to esv.com, and you can read about the translation philosophy and committee, and you can see who's on the committee, and you can see you can see where they got their, their degrees from. So you can kinda get a picture of what their theological bent may be, and you can see that there may be some people who were more reformed, some people who were less reformed, and, you know, you kinda have that guidance there as you're going going through that. So those were your two choices really in the eighties. If you were leaving the the King James, you really had the NIV or the NASB. And then things really started to explode with translations and and so many different offerings coming out

Dave [00:23:00]:
from there. Yeah. This is this is one of the things that is I don't wanna call it a dirty secret. To be honest, the reason we have so many translations is the Bible is the single best selling book of all time, not even close. No nothing's not even JK Rowling's close. Maybe she's coming close, but publishing companies are like, how do I get in on this? King James Bible, you can print because it's what do you call that? It's past its Public domain. Public domain now. So like all the music we all the music we quote all the time with you.

Dave [00:23:30]:
No. So because it's public domain, but nobody's gonna buy that. And so each publishing company then and to be honest, I think we're at that almost that saturation point where, like, for example, and I'm not picking on the ESV because I like the ESV, but the ESV like, there's certain passages where you can't translate it the same as other translations. So you have to pick different words. Right. So the New American Standard, I think, has probably the best wording of all, and this is not because I love that best, but in in Romans where it talks about accept a brother in chapters 13 and 14 there where it's talking about the differences, some eat, some drink, whatever. Mhmm. Some have special days.

Dave [00:24:14]:
He says accept them as a brother. For some reason, the ESV uses a and it is a potential translation of that word, but they use the word welcome. Welcome the brother. And I to be honest, I think they would have been better off just keeping it as an accept, but I don't think they could because that would then make it sound identical to what another translation made it. And so I think you once you have this saturation point, you're at you're at some point gonna be in danger of having to word it just different enough to keep yourself distinct. So that is that's something that I think is a reality now. I don't think there's gonna be too many more English translations come

Greg [00:24:57]:
out. Yeah. Oh, there there there's gonna be tons. They're always

Dave [00:25:00]:
gonna be Yeah. There's always just more money.

Greg [00:25:02]:
So the ESV is is a rewrite of the RSV. Right.

Dave [00:25:06]:
And the and the ESV went to the new I mean, the RSV went to the new RSV, but because they the RSV had some theological problems with it, particularly in Isaiah 7. Right? The

Greg [00:25:17]:
virgin, they called

Dave [00:25:19]:
the one woman. So the RS the new RSV corrected that. Like, that's kind of like putting pig on a lipstick in a sense.

Greg [00:25:26]:
Pig on a lipstick?

Dave [00:25:27]:
Lipstick on a pig. There we go. There we go. Said it backwards. That was kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. Oh, there we go.

Greg [00:25:34]:
Excellent.

Dave [00:25:35]:
I'm gonna say it backwards again. Because the name RSV had been tainted by their theological issues when it first came out. When they did the new RSV, everybody was, like, oh, they're just trying to sell a bad Bible by putting new on it, and and then when the ESV came out, there was enough of a separation

Greg [00:25:55]:
Right.

Dave [00:25:55]:
And and they had fixed that.

Greg [00:25:57]:
And then there's some other philosophies that go into it too, like, for example, the use of the word man and people. Because one of the things the ESV does compared to when you were saying the the t n I v Mhmm. So when the Bible when the Greek uses a word for man that is definitely masculine, the ESV will always use man. When it's using a word for mankind Yeah. That could that means all the peoples, it will say the peoples. Now some translations are like, no, it has to be man because the King James always says mankind. So it has to be mankind. So they stick with mankind.

Greg [00:26:39]:
And, and so the ESV, and I'm gonna use a dirty word, has become inclusive in a proper way.

Greg [00:26:49]:
Mhmm. Mhmm.

Greg [00:26:50]:
That they're really doing it in the right way. They're not just they're still making the distinctive of gender appropriately.

Dave [00:26:57]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:26:57]:
And then anytime that there's a contrast between God and man, they always use man because that's what the Bible does is contrast God and man. Mhmm. It doesn't contrast god and woman or god and humankind. It's always a contrast between god and man. So the ESV always makes that distinction of god and man.

Dave [00:27:14]:
Yeah. It because it and I I agree with that with that approach a 100%, because it is very clear that the default kind of like in English it used to be, if you were gender neutral, you didn't say she, you said he. In other words, if if it's unclear, right, whether you're talking about a man or a woman, then you would always use the he as the default. We did that in English up until recently and then in papers. When I when I was was finishing up my grad work, I did some grad work at Michigan State. And when you did that I had to say he or she, right, all the time. So in the Greek, that's the exact same thing. The default was masculine.

Dave [00:28:00]:
So but there are contexts when it's absolutely clear that it's not just talking about the masculine half of the or the male half of the of the species. Mhmm. And that's completely appropriate because that's the proper translation of meaning because meaning is what matters, the meaning of the text. So do we do we want to get into the the textual differences between some of the the manuscript families between the King James and the modern translations?

Greg [00:28:31]:
Yeah. I think in a second. I I just wanna say so for me, I got saved in 1987, I think. We'll say 1987. Church I went to used NIV, so that's what I started using. And I started memorizing scripture in the NIV. And then in 1993, I went to Moody Bible Institute. God bless the school that D.

Greg [00:28:55]:
L. Moody founded. And I switched to the New American Standard Bible, and I started memorizing scripture in the NASB. So that was 1993. And then in, about 2,008, 2009, I switched to the ESV, and I started memorizing scripture in the ESV. So now when I preach, if I quote scripture from memory, it's a mess.

Dave [00:29:22]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's just See, I still have a little bit of the King James in my memory, Banks. Yeah. So I'll often miss Nicks, Nasby, and and, and King James.

Greg [00:29:34]:
Yep.

Dave [00:29:35]:
And if it's really a childhood verse, it's King James.

Greg [00:29:38]:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because I'll quote

Dave [00:29:40]:
Lause, cool.

Greg [00:29:40]:
N I v a s b e s v mashup. And there there's one other thing I wanted to say. Some people get really caught up in their Bible translations, and they they have their favorites, and then they have some that they hate, and, and they they really disparage them. I think that sometimes it's unhealthy and it can cause harm. Mhmm. And there's a man, you know and we joke around, and I say the ESV is the English sanctified version. Oh. You know, and we have our the Chad Standard Bible.

Dave [00:30:14]:
You know. Which the official name is what?

Greg [00:30:16]:
The Christian Standard Bible.

Dave [00:30:18]:
Which is Holman. Yes, Holman. The Holman press that came out.

Greg [00:30:21]:
And and so so I had a I knew a man who didn't like the NIV for for some reasons. And one of the reasons is there's a strong lordship bent in the NIV.

Greg [00:30:35]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:30:36]:
And he didn't like that, so he called it the new ignorant version. And any time he talked about it, he would say that. And I had to take him aside and gently, because he was an older man.

Dave [00:30:49]:
Good for you.

Greg [00:30:50]:
But just gently instruct him. There are so many people in our church who read that Bible and study it and learn it, and they're growing, and they're faithful to God's word, and God is God is teaching them and revealing things to him through their word. And they might hear you say that and suddenly start to doubt everything that they've read because you've called God's word ignorant. So I think, like, when we have disagreements, we really need to be careful how we talk about those disagreements, because I I think that some translations are stronger than others, and some have real weaknesses, and some, I think, aren't worth a lot. We need to be really careful how we talk about those differences. Yeah.

Greg [00:31:39]:
True. 100% true.

Dave [00:31:42]:
Mhmm. I was gonna say you're ignorant, Greg.

Greg [00:31:46]:
I didn't

Dave [00:31:46]:
but I I didn't think it was appropriate to joke at that moment. Yeah. So I waited 5 seconds.

Greg [00:31:51]:
I thought you were gonna say, but you forgot. So

Greg [00:31:54]:
I always love when people, like, I was gonna say blah blah blah blah blah, but I didn't. Oh,

Greg [00:32:01]:
let me let me straighten your halo for you.

Greg [00:32:04]:
Yeah.

Dave [00:32:07]:
Or it's like if if you're in the south and the word bless bless his heart or bless her heart comes out, you know there's an insult coming afterwards. Bless his heart. He's the ugliest baby I ever did see. Yeah. Bless his heart.

Greg [00:32:19]:
Yeah. So with the text then or with the translations, you have your formal equivalence, literal, you have your dynamic equivalence, thought for thought, and then you have the paraphrases. Right. And then so then you have the translation committees you can look at.

Dave [00:32:34]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:32:35]:
But then another thing you can look at is what is the text that they're following? Right. What do you mean what text? Aren't they Yeah. Following the Bible?

Dave [00:32:46]:
So this is this is the this is the challenging part because we we live in a photographic, 0 graphic age, and people today, right, can just snap photo. Like, it it's still hard for me as a coach. I wanna print everything out and give it to my athletes, and they're like, coach, why do you waste paper? Just snap a photo of it and send us the photo. They don't wanna have that piece of paper and I you know, the last 5 years I've grown. I don't print out stuff anymore. I just snap photos of it. But their mentality is, like, it's accessible, picture perfect copies, and that's not how the world operated in the time Right. Of the scriptures

Greg [00:33:27]:
writing. Right.

Dave [00:33:28]:
And so you, you know, you have manuscripts that are copied, and then whenever you hand copy, I'm gonna scare some people here, but mistakes are made. Small mistakes, you might the the, you might get a repetition. They call that a dittography error. Right? Diddographic. They copy something twice, or they might skip over it might you know, remember we had that word that said the the man, the running? You might go the man, and they or they might just skip over the word after the first the and miss that. And they might just and some copy might be the running instead of the man the running because they their eye jumped. Right? And so you have all of these little mistakes that happen that get corrected over time when you compare manuscripts. Right.

Dave [00:34:22]:
And there are and there's there's there's also the potential of purposeful changes to the text. Right. For example, there was a tendency in monasteries, and I'm talking about New Testament in particular here. Sure. But there was a tendency in some sometimes even certain monasteries where they would add what we call honorifics. So let's say the original text said Jesus, but you're a very very respectful priest in a monastery, and you're a copyist, and that just doesn't sound as good as saying the Lord Jesus Christ Right. Or our Lord Jesus Christ. Right? And so there are certain manuscripts that have more honorifics in a given verse than others and so basically when, the King James was written it was based on manuscripts that were, it's gonna sound weird they're older.

Dave [00:35:29]:
Right. They're further in other words they're they're younger, excuse me, sorry. They're further away from the originals So we didn't have a lot of early manuscripts when the King James was was translated. And Erasmus who compiled what became known as the the Textus Receptus Mhmm. He didn't call it that. But, when he compiled his manuscripts, they didn't have as many as they had 5 years later as they had found a 100 years later. And so now we have way more manuscripts than they had, so we had more material to compare. And there are some really great Christian scholars, and some of them aren't even Christian, who do textual criticism.

Dave [00:36:13]:
Right? And that's not a bad, like, textual criticism is not bad criticism. It's basically saying, okay, let's look at all the manuscripts and let's figure out which is closest to the original. Yeah. Right? And so and they do a really good job and there are some really strong some of the best people in that work are evangelical scholars at evangelical seminaries who are dedicating their lives. Mhmm. And Daniel Wallace down in Dallas Seminary is doing a phenomenal job among other people. They're did he's digitizing every manuscript he can get his hands on Yeah. So that people have access to it.

Dave [00:36:48]:
That's awesome. And so yeah. So there's but so to to say it to try to simplify this, and don't wanna lose our poor audience here, but, the Textus Receptus or the King James family manuscripts was way way further away from the original texts and there were much fewer of them. Right. Well, there were a lot of them, but there are much fewer than we have today. Right. The newer translations are based on older manuscripts, which by definition, we're gonna have fewer of them, but they're way closer to the original, And so the the approach that they take is let's look at all the manuscripts, compare, and come up with what we think is the closest reading to the text.

Greg [00:37:34]:
So So oh, go ahead. Can I

Greg [00:37:36]:
give you an example of this Yes? Of how this plays out? And I've got

Dave [00:37:39]:
a good one. So do you wanna go first?

Greg [00:37:43]:
Can I? K. Go.

Greg [00:37:44]:
Okay. This is this is a Chad Light episode, and I gotta get in here because there's, like, one thing I know about in this.

Dave [00:37:49]:
Yeah. Go. Awesome.

Greg [00:37:50]:
I just gotta do it.

Greg [00:37:51]:
So, about as of this recording, about 21 years ago, there was an exhibit in a city close to us that I got to go to of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nice. A subset of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Mhmm. And they had in there some books that I bought and I read through frantically because I I've I've always been fascinated by early church history, like, like, the year 30 to, you know, 300, you know, that that that that time is just always fascinating to me. And they talked about how prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest manuscript that was available for Old Testament translations was the Leningrad Codex, which was a copy of the Old Testament, most of the Old Testament, that dated to about 1,006 AD. Mhmm. That and that and that was the earliest copy that they had available when they made the King James.

Greg [00:38:53]:
I don't think the Leningrad Codex was used as a source material for the King James, but it was used for, like, the Tyndale and some other ones and some some other translations. Yeah. But, that was it. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1948, right around the time that Israel became its own nation state. This little boy was wandering around the caves out in the countryside, found these jars, started selling the jars and the pieces of paper he found inside. There was a British archaeologist traveling through. He happened to buy 1, opened it up, and realized immediately that he was looking at old very old Old Testament manuscripts. These things date anywhere from a 100 BC all the way back to 600 BC.

Greg [00:39:45]:
Mhmm.

Dave [00:39:45]:
And

Greg [00:39:46]:
it's the entire Old Testament except the book of Esther. So here it is, the ultimate test. Let's compare the Leningrad Codex, Codex Synodocus, all these other Old Testament sources that were used to translate the Bible. Yeah.

Dave [00:40:00]:
Compare them

Greg [00:40:00]:
to the Dead Sea Scrolls and see where the differences are.

Dave [00:40:02]:
Yeah. That's cool.

Greg [00:40:04]:
Across the board, fewer than a 100 differences. And it was stuff like spelling color with a u, the occasional extra the, or the occasional missing the. Nothing that changed the meaning of anything. And as an apologetic mixed with, you know, how to pick a Bible translation, I found that very encouraging. I thought that was pretty cool. So

Dave [00:40:24]:
Yeah. The Bible is the single most best preserved document in ancient in in the history of the world. Yeah. By far. Without match. Far. Yeah. Not even close.

Dave [00:40:33]:
We can get within basically, if you talk about quotations Mhmm. We can get within about 20 to 30 years of their original documents of the New Testament.

Greg [00:40:41]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And for comparison, the first biography of Socrates, 400 years after he lived.

Greg [00:40:49]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:40:50]:
Yeah. So back then, it wasn't common to just write stuff down right away or even within a few years of something happening.

Dave [00:40:56]:
Yeah.

Greg [00:40:57]:
So pretty extraordinary Yeah. How the Bible's been preserved through the years. Good stuff. Yeah.

Dave [00:41:02]:
Yeah.

Greg [00:41:03]:
Greg. Okay. So first Corinthians 13 verse 3.

Dave [00:41:07]:
Yeah.

Greg [00:41:08]:
Okay. What translation do you want me to read from?

Dave [00:41:11]:
Yeah. Let's go Nazmi.

Greg [00:41:13]:
Okay. Which one?

Dave [00:41:14]:
95.

Greg [00:41:15]:
95. Okay. It says, and if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing. So if I surrender my body to be burned is what it says. Mhmm. That was the 95. So if I go back to the 1975 NASB, it says, if I surrender my body so that I may glory. Mhmm.

Greg [00:41:48]:
Woah. That's a big difference, isn't it? Surrender my body that I may burn, or surrender my body that I may glory. So when you go through different so that's and remember, New American Standard is that literal formal equivalence. They wanna translate word for word. So the King James, here's a literal.

Greg [00:42:09]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:42:09]:
And what verse are we in again? 1st Corinthians 13:3.

Greg [00:42:13]:
Okay.

Greg [00:42:15]:
It says King James says, And though I give my body to be burned, so we've got burned. So we've got one that's saying that I may glory, 2 now that are saying burned. So then if we go to the NET Bible, Oh, dear. Okay. So that's a dynamic

Dave [00:42:35]:
That's a

Greg [00:42:36]:
the Net Bible.

Dave [00:42:36]:
That's a really good translation.

Greg [00:42:38]:
Okay. Good translation.

Dave [00:42:39]:
That's done by scholars.

Greg [00:42:40]:
And it's but it's and it's a I I said but, and but can negate that you said it was good, and I shouldn't have done that. It's a dynamic equivalent. It's a thought for thought translation. And it says, and if I give my body over in order to boast Yep. K, so that I may gain to boast Mhmm. Contrast with burn. So we got 2 very different things, this idea of glory, boast, gain Mhmm. Versus burning.

Greg [00:43:06]:
So did I read the NIV one yet?

Greg [00:43:09]:
I don't think you have.

Greg [00:43:10]:
Okay. If I give over my body to hardship that I may boast k. So there that is again. The New Living Translation. So this would be a paraphrase. If I gave everything to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it. So we come out with a boast idea. The English sanctify I mean, English standard version

Dave [00:43:39]:
Mhmm. Remind I have a good story about that.

Greg [00:43:41]:
Yeah. If I deliver my body up to be burned. So we have 2 different ideas going on here. We got burned or boast or gain. Okay? One of them sounds really negative. One of them sounds really bad. So if you go back and look at the, the Greek, you got 2 different manuscripts that have 2 different words. Mhmm.

Greg [00:44:04]:
The the t r, the textus the textus receptus. Mhmm. My pronunciation skills from the that the King James uses Mhmm. Is to be burned. The manuscripts that most modern translations use, that the original NASB used, uses the one that says to gain or for glory, that there's a different word that gets used there. So then there's this tension like the TR uses burned, but it's a younger manuscript, less reliable.

Greg [00:44:41]:
Mhmm.

Greg [00:44:42]:
The older manuscripts, the quote more reliable, say to gain, and the NASB originally chose to use the gain, but then they they changed. So why did they change? Yeah. And why did the ESV, which uses the newer manuscripts, decided to go with the word that the TR uses and and said to be burned. So anyone got an answer for it?

Dave [00:45:10]:
I don't. That's not what I'm familiar with.

Greg [00:45:12]:
Okay. So and the the reason is is that Paul's referencing back to Daniel. Daniel chapter 3 verse 20.

Dave [00:45:21]:
Assumption is that the the the reference

Greg [00:45:23]:
The the assumption that is that he's referring back to, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego with king Nebuchadnezzar.

Dave [00:45:30]:
Check this out because there's also a possibility that those words are very similar. No. I'm not saying

Greg [00:45:36]:
They're they're not.

Dave [00:45:36]:
They're not. They're not. So I've I've come across some Yeah. Where there's actually a slight spelling difference between two words, and so there's a legitimate question on which word. Now, the truth of the matter, though, either way you go Doesn't change. It doesn't change the meaning of that text because it's all about if you don't do it with love.

Greg [00:46:00]:
Exactly.

Dave [00:46:00]:
Right? But yes. But that's a great example. Yeah.

Greg [00:46:02]:
I appreciate that.

Dave [00:46:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it's in there there, they're taking into not just manuscript tradition and the the the notions of of maybe there's a kind of a copying error, but there's a literary connection point to Daniel that's influencing their decision because possibly that's the case.

Greg [00:46:24]:
So when you hear people criticize the Bible and say, you know, it's so many mistakes in it, so many errors, so many contradictions written by so many different people over so much time. How can we know what it really says when you when you take an honest look at it? Like I and what I just did there was a short, minuscule look at it. But when you take an honest look at the work that's gone into it Mhmm. With an open mind and an open heart, you see that there aren't contradictions. You see that God's word has been faithfully preserved and that what God intended us to know and to understand is clear for us to see in his word. And whether you pick up the, the New American Standard, 1975 or 1995 or the ESV or the Chad Standard Bible Mhmm. Or or or the whichever one, if you're faithfully reading that, you're going to be reading God's word, and he is going to, by his spirit, teach you and instruct you and guide you.

Dave [00:47:36]:
And I I do think, though, that it also at a very practical level, I agree with you a 100%, but I think it also emphasizes the continual need for scholarship.

Greg [00:47:46]:
It does.

Dave [00:47:47]:
Yes. There's a there's a continual need as we get more manuscripts. We wanna keep working on getting the most accurate text we can find. And it's hard for some people to get this, but God used the process of textual criticism to preserve the scriptures. That's part of the process. He used the copious. He didn't there was no zero graphic. Right? Xerox machines weren't ditto machines weren't back then.

Greg [00:48:12]:
Right. I don't

Dave [00:48:12]:
know if you remember those. Oh, yeah. We're doing Sunday school stuff on Ditto. Yep. Anyway, most anybody under 35 doesn't know what we're talking about. That's okay.

Greg [00:48:20]:
So now we have all of these different translations, and we know, like, where they fit. They if they're literal or thought for thought or paraphrase. How do we side decide which one to use, and, like, when do we use each one? Is there is there a good time to use a thought for thought? Is there a good time to use a literal one? Is there a good time to use a paraphrase? Yeah.

Dave [00:48:44]:
Yeah. I this is one of the reasons why I recommend multiple translations for people. Mhmm. And it's it's kinda let me share one. Before we do that, remind me, I I wanna show the ESV story.

Greg [00:48:55]:
Oh, yeah.

Dave [00:48:56]:
So I I have friends in the Southern Baptist Convention. Uh-huh. And about 5 years ago, there was this big controversy because, you know, that every year they get that big convention, and then they they have people politicking for whatever, all all sorts of things. Well, there was this real so the Southern Baptists are, like, there's a whole group of them that are Calvinistic, and there's a whole bunch of them that are not just not Calvinistic. They're anti Calvinistic. So my friend goes down there and they this the the anti calvinistic faction of the southern Baptist convention had sent they had put they had photocopied sheets and without approval had put them on all the seats at the convention center so that the the people attending the convention would pick this up when they sat down, Oh, boy. And we're like, that was the warning sign that you had a reformed or Calvinistic reader.

Greg [00:49:56]:
Wow.

Dave [00:49:57]:
Pastor or convention person.

Greg [00:49:59]:
Yeah.

Dave [00:49:59]:
So So that way they could be It is. Beyond the be beware.

Greg [00:50:03]:
I didn't wanna say it's also the elect standard version. It's the

Dave [00:50:05]:
elect standard.

Greg [00:50:05]:
Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Dave [00:50:07]:
I agree. Well, I chose it, so

Greg [00:50:08]:
Well, it chose me.

Dave [00:50:09]:
It chose you. Yeah. Oh. Perfect. Glad you got that over. Okay. Can I just repeat my chauvinistic joke one more time?

Greg [00:50:16]:
Okay.

Dave [00:50:17]:
I I've only said it once on here. So Alright. So what did what did Calvinist say once he after he fell down the stairs? What's that? Glad I got that over with.

Greg [00:50:27]:
There you go.

Dave [00:50:29]:
That's my favorite. I'm probably the only Calvinistic joke I know. Okay. So but that joke chose me. I didn't I didn't choose it. Of course. So yeah. By the way, do you have a dad joke before we go into

Greg [00:50:41]:
the Well, it it's so this one's for your dad. Okay. Yes. And then we gotta and then we gotta get back to, like, which which Okay.

Dave [00:50:49]:
I have a

Greg [00:50:49]:
dad joke. Alright. And this I actually told this to a social worker today and who is very different from me. She's she's close to my age, a little bit older, and she's a very different lifestyle, very, very hippie ish, very very opposite end of the political spectrum. But she's respectful, and she can still laugh. Like, she's not super offended, soup like, really easily. And I I said, can I tell you a Ronald Reagan joke? Mhmm. And she's like, yeah.

Greg [00:51:20]:
Go ahead. So this is a joke Ronald Reagan told. And he said, once there was this little boy and he was standing outside of the Democrat convention with a box of newborn puppies, and he's trying to sell them. And he says and and he's saying, these are Democrat puppies trying to sell these puppies and no one bought any of them. A few weeks later, the same little boy goes to a Republican convention That's right. And and he's selling the puppies. And he's saying, these are Republican puppies. Who wants to buy a puppy? And a reporter sees him and he runs over to him and he says, I saw you and you were trying to sell these 3 weeks ago and you were saying they're Democrat puppies.

Greg [00:52:05]:
Now you're saying they're Republican puppies. And the boy looks at him and says, well, yeah, their eyes are open now. Nice. Yeah. I love Reagan.

Dave [00:52:15]:
He's my favorite president.

Greg [00:52:17]:
Yeah. It was pretty good. He was right.

Dave [00:52:19]:
I remember listening to him say on the news, of course, not live, mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall. My first That was in high school.

Greg [00:52:27]:
Yeah. My first political memory, I think I would have been, how old would I have been? 6. Yeah. Was my dad watching Jimmy Carter give his concession speech, and then my dad going, good at the end of it.

Dave [00:52:43]:
Nice. Yeah. That was a good one. Now we gotta get back. I forget Yeah. What exactly we were going towards.

Greg [00:52:50]:
So so what translation or what type of translation are you going to choose for what occasion?

Dave [00:52:57]:
Yeah. For me, personally, this is why I I encourage people to have multiple translations. I would say mostly on the literal side because you're gonna get the closest, and it's gonna force you to do some interpreting. But I also like the NIV, especially if you're younger. So the new American standard is probably the highest level of reading skill necessary because it's like college freshman level reading because of the structure. The NIV is actually 6th grade level reading. Now before you use that as an insult, that's the level that papers adult like, when you read the newspaper, that's written at the NIV level. So NIV is written at that level.

Dave [00:53:41]:
Do you know what the anybody can understand.

Greg [00:53:42]:
Do you know what the King James is?

Dave [00:53:44]:
I would imagine, like, you have to be, like, 60 years old.

Greg [00:53:49]:
If you if you were to open up in your computer King James and copy and paste it into Microsoft Word and run it. It's 4th grade. Yeah.

Dave [00:54:00]:
If you if you can get past these.

Greg [00:54:02]:
The antiquated language. Yes. Yeah. That but but structurally, the King James is

Dave [00:54:08]:
So for its day, it was really good. Mhmm. Let me let me can I share some really Sure? Interesting King James verses?

Greg [00:54:15]:
Okay.

Dave [00:54:15]:
I pulled these out. Luke 17:9 says, I trow not. I haven't you know, if I knew if I had the Greek in front of me, I would know what that means, but I have no idea what trow. Here's one

Greg [00:54:30]:
what was that again? Luke 17:9?

Dave [00:54:34]:
179. K j says, I not. Here's 1, 2nd Corinthians 81. We do you to wit of the grace of God. And Mount Sinai, Exodus 1918. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke.

Greg [00:54:53]:
So this is almost sound like Gen Alpha talk. Like, that's GAC. I'm built different, yo.

Dave [00:55:00]:
Okay. And all that and all to break his skull, break with b r a a k e, like not break b r e a k e.

Greg [00:55:09]:
Put on the brakes?

Dave [00:55:10]:
Or For who can eat or who else can hasten here unto more than I? So there's some really interesting challenges to interpreting because the bottom line is we don't speak classical whatnot. King James, Elizabethan, that's the word I was looking. We don't speak Elizabethan English today.

Greg [00:55:30]:
So my oldest son is 24, Yep. And his Bible started falling apart, and he went out and bought a new Bible. And he bought a King James because he

Dave [00:55:40]:
He's used to it.

Greg [00:55:40]:
He's built different.

Dave [00:55:42]:
Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. Well, and I think you had said this earlier, there is a beauty, especially in There is. Yeah. Poetic language. There is a beauty to it, and and there there actually is a grammatical. Like, there's a difference between thee and thou and number.

Greg [00:55:56]:
Mhmm.

Dave [00:55:57]:
The singular, thou is plural. Right? Right. So you plural. In English, we have you you, and you have to figure out from context whether, I mean, you you as in y'all or you singular. So there's some strengths there as well, but for me, I would never personally recommend the King James to a to a a person because it's not using their language. And you're gonna come across versus why why why add

Greg [00:56:25]:
Right.

Dave [00:56:26]:
Challenges to understanding? So I would say more literal. So New American Standard, ESV. But I would encourage the younger they are and and let's say they're educationally challenged or someone who just is not particularly academic in terms of either intelligence or interest, something that's gonna be a little bit more like the NIV, a little more dynamic equivalent because it's going to be something that they can understand. So that's my personal in terms of personal use. Now if if you're talking about preparing a message, then and if you don't have the original languages, then I would say definitely use something like the NASB because as literal as possible I would even say, look, if you really have an interesting verse that that you wanna think hard about, read it in a ton of translations.

Greg [00:57:23]:
Yeah.

Dave [00:57:24]:
Because the translations that are different might make you go, I thought it meant that, but it could mean this as well. Yeah.

Greg [00:57:31]:
Now let me ask you this. Mhmm. Paper or electronic?

Dave [00:57:35]:
I'm not a fan of electronic Bibles, personally. I'll tell you why in a second.

Greg [00:57:39]:
Okay. Greg, you? Paper. And and so and I don't know I don't know if it's just because I'm used to it, though. And so for me, I can open my bible and I know where on a page it's supposed to be that I'm looking.

Dave [00:57:56]:
Right.

Greg [00:57:56]:
And when I'm using electronic, I don't I don't have that. Yeah. So and and then when I change the font size on my electronic bible, then it just messes up the page again because it's all moved again. So

Dave [00:58:11]:
Yeah. I did I do think there are there's something and I I would love to see I know when you write by hand Mhmm. It does something in your brain Yep. That it doesn't when you type. Right. Absolutely. So there's something to be said, I think, for having something that's tactile.

Greg [00:58:29]:
Right. And you know And you can go

Dave [00:58:31]:
You flip the page. And I agree with you, like, if I if I'm gonna try there's that verse. It's it's somewhere around first or second Peter. Up in the right hand corner, I underlined it. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Boom. You know what I mean? You have that kind of an effect.

Greg [00:58:44]:
And you and you can go complete conspiracy theory and and, like, once the government gets rid of print, that they can just turn the Internet off and we won't have access to it at all, so we need to keep our paper ones.

Dave [00:58:58]:
Yeah. Or the EMP polls. Yeah. The EMP.

Greg [00:59:00]:
Well, yeah, there's all that. But, I I would proof Bibles. Yeah. I I gotta say I do spend probably, I'd say, 70, 80% of my time in an electronic Bible on my phone or my I know on my phone or my iPad, but I will never be without a paper Bible. I will never be without a paper Bible. And I will tell you, there is a move by some state governments, small small s, not capital s. There is a move by some governments in the world to slowly adjust the electronic Bible. And every time I'm on my Bible app, every time my Bible app has an update, I'm sitting there looking at it like, what's the update for? So and that may make me a conspiracy theorist, but I think I will always have a paper bible no matter what, and my kids will be the same.

Greg [00:59:57]:
So

Greg [00:59:59]:
So which bible do you use? I'm gonna answer that question for myself now. So for a new for a new believer, it's the one you're gonna read. And and if you pick up a a Bible and the King James is you can't understand the words, then you pick up an NIV and start reading it. And if you pick up an ESV Bible and you can read it, read it and just keep reading it. And you're gonna reach a point where, where you can just read it and keep reading it, and that's great. I like to study a literal Bible, the New American Standard or the ESV. I prefer the ESV. They're both great.

Greg [01:00:42]:
They're both good. They're both good. They're both great.

Dave [01:00:45]:
Yeah. The election standard button.

Greg [01:00:46]:
Yeah. It shows you. It shows me. And but I do like like, sometimes if I'm just gonna sit down and read a whole book of the Bible in one sitting, sometimes it's nice to pick a dynamic equivalence because it does it does tend to flow a little bit better sometimes. It it does feel a little bit easier to read sometimes. But then you do get a little bit of a different perspective, and you might read something and go, wait a minute. What? Mhmm. That just strikes me different.

Greg [01:01:17]:
Let me make a note of that and come back to it. And then read with a patent paper beside you so you can put those like, write those notes down. Hey, I gotta look this up. When you're studying, you can stop and study study and but but if you're just reading, make a quick note and get back to reading so you can get through it. And so I've met more than once, I've met an old man. It's always been an old man, who tells me their story of becoming a Christian, and they couldn't read when they got saved. And their love of God's word is why they learned to read. Cool.

Greg [01:01:58]:
And you hear them talk about learning to read by reading the Bible, and they just couldn't get enough of it. And they learned to read, and someone who dropped out of school when they were in 7th grade and and just worked with their hands, and then they got saved, and they learned to read so that they could read their Bible, it makes me think, like, why does anybody have an excuse for not reading it

Dave [01:02:24]:
Yeah.

Greg [01:02:24]:
For not taking it seriously? Yeah.

Dave [01:02:26]:
Yeah. We

Greg [01:02:27]:
have all of these tools at our fingertips. We have all of these different translations. Why don't we take it seriously? Why do we make so many

Dave [01:02:38]:
excuses? Yeah. That's that's fair.

Greg [01:02:40]:
Yeah. That's

Dave [01:02:40]:
fair. It's it's it's like we're drowning in the abundance.

Greg [01:02:45]:
Mhmm. Yeah.

Dave [01:02:45]:
Well, I would I I almost feel like stopping there, but I I really feel like But you've gotta have the last word. No. I don't wanna

Greg [01:02:52]:
have the

Dave [01:02:52]:
last word, but I I would like to But get this story. And let's check the word count. Go ahead. I hope I hope you've

Greg [01:03:01]:
This one's gonna be tight.

Dave [01:03:03]:
I wow. Go ahead, David. First John, I I think it's worth talking because there's a few if you fuck if you come across a King James only person. Mhmm. Right? There are they have these they have a few canned arguments that they use that they that sound really good at first, but when you stop and think, they don't sound very good. Or there is a good explanation for them anyway. And one of them we already hint hinted at but talked about in this secondary way. They love to take the King James and go look look at all these times in the King James where it says our Lord Jesus Christ, and the New American Standard or ESV says Jesus Christ.

Dave [01:03:44]:
Well, they're destroying the lordship of Jesus Christ. This is a Bible that's trying to destroy your faith. Mhmm. No. That's because of the textual issue where whether it's our Lord Jesus Christ or Jesus Christ, that doesn't destroy the lordship of Christ. And in order to destroy the lordship of Christ in a modern translation, you would have to take every reference out to the deity of Christ. And those translations don't have that. But to be honest, the granddaddy of them all for the for the King James only position is the trinitarian formula in first, John 5.

Dave [01:04:22]:
Mhmm. And this is this is worth knowing because if they come at you, it sounds really bad. Mhmm. So what what happened is, the King James Bible to this day includes the Trinitarian formula, the 3 that bear witness, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Greg [01:04:39]:
Mhmm.

Dave [01:04:40]:
And and almost every other translation has something to the effect of there's 3 that bear witness, the blood, the water, and the spirit or something like that. That didn't appear in the King in the King James until the 3rd edition or I'm sorry. That didn't appear in Erasmus's quote, Texas receptus Mhmm. Until the 3rd edition because the Catholic church had had that. That had appeared randomly in the Catholic church in the Latin translations, and it kinda popped up every once in a while throughout history. But Erasmus didn't have any reliable texts even out of the quote majority text, you know, the text is the stuff that he got to text his receptors from. And so what he did was he had this kind of ongoing, like, compromise, like, argue, like, push the Catholic church a little bit, but bend.

Greg [01:05:36]:
Mhmm. You know,

Dave [01:05:37]:
he had kind of a bend, but don't break kind of approach, although he bent a lot for the Catholic church. So, compromised actually a whole lot for the Catholic church. And but one of the things he had said was, well, I don't have any Greek manuscripts that include that. And then he in order to try to kinda save his skin, he said, but if you can show me any manuscripts Mhmm. That have this, then I will include it in my 3rd edition. Right. And guess what? They came up with some manuscripts and most most biblical scholars today think that those manuscripts were actually created specifically for the purpose of making him put that into the text to match it up with the Latin Vulgate. So so I don't include that as mere trivia, but I wanted to make sure we get that in case some people come across some some misguided and, you know, King James only types who say, well, your Bible doesn't have the trinitarian formula.

Dave [01:06:41]:
There's the trinity doesn't that passage does not prove or disprove the trinity. Right. It's not necessary. You still can come up with the trinity from other passages, but that's just something that just be ready for it because I've seen that shake some peep because

Greg [01:06:59]:
the King James says, there are 3 that testify, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.

Dave [01:07:05]:
Right. When the Word would refer to Jesus Christ.

Greg [01:07:07]:
Jesus Christ. And the Word is capitalized. So in the beginning was the word, the word was with with God, and the word was God Mhmm. Is what, John 1 says. And, but then if you read the other translations, it says there's 3 there are 3 that testify, the spirit and the water and the blood. Mhmm. These 3 that agree. So the spirit, the water, and the blood or the spirit the Father, the Word, and the Spirit.

Greg [01:07:33]:
And, the the King James really forces that so they can try to prove the trinity. So then, on if you if you have a Jehovah's Witness knock on your door Mhmm. They'll say, why do all your other translations take this out? See? The trinity isn't real because all your other translations take this out.

Dave [01:07:53]:
Mhmm. Then You don't need that verse to prove the trinity. Right. You don't. Not even close. No. So the

Greg [01:07:57]:
other thing is watch

Greg [01:07:57]:
out for Chick tracts.

Dave [01:08:03]:
No. Chick tracts are notoriously King James only. Yes. They will they will throw those NIV digs in. Oh, yeah. Or I actually remember coming across this I mean, Chick tracts are so well done from a purely artistic perspective. Yeah. Right? And this was this huge the the purpose of the chick track, it was like a massive full size comic

Greg [01:08:25]:
chick track.

Dave [01:08:26]:
And and it was all about the King James only debate. And, of course, it puts up the straw man, this one guy gets saved in the beginning, and then a preacher comes in and he he says, well, that's not what the real Bible says. The real Bible says this. So this guy who got saved in the beginning stands up and goes, well, if I can't trust my Bible, then I can't trust God. And he goes out and he becomes a hippie. A hippie? Yeah. Hippie.

Greg [01:08:51]:
This is an

Dave [01:08:51]:
older one. Woah. That's the worst.

Greg [01:08:53]:
Well, he fell hard.

Dave [01:08:54]:
Right? Yeah. That's the worst. And he grows up ponytail and there's pictures of him doing drugs drugs and alcohol. And it's like the prodigal son, right, kind of story. But he's got this massive green playing in the background. And he's got this but

Greg [01:09:03]:
he's not like

Dave [01:09:07]:
Keith Green like Afro hair. He's got the ponytail with the headband hair. Did he have a marijuana?

Greg [01:09:12]:
Did he have a marijuana cigarette? Probably probably

Dave [01:09:15]:
had a marijuana cigarette. Right? So and then well, so then he meets a a a, you know, a Chick Tract kinda Christian Alexandrian cult, which is Alexandria is where most of the the oldest manuscripts are found, and the claim is that those were written by cultists. Right? And he was and so by the end, this guy restores his confidence in the King James Bible, and he restores his confidence in God. And so then and this is where this is just shows you where that philosophy ends up going, but he, you know, says faith is restored, and then the guy, the hippie with the long hair goes, I just have one question for you. Where's a barber? And that's how the Chick tract ended on that was where's a barber? Because the most important thing that you can do when you restore your faith in Christ is go get that haircut so you don't look like a hippie anymore. Yeah. Absolutely. Good stuff.

Greg [01:10:12]:
So No doubt. So when you send us an email to, what is the email address?

Greg [01:10:17]:
It's the fish at catfishministries.com. Thefish@catfishministries.com.

Greg [01:10:22]:
If you, if you're, like, really strongly wanting to support the King James only, just make sure you put King James only in the subject header of the email for us, please.

Dave [01:10:33]:
I

Greg [01:10:33]:
I have a rule written for these. Yeah. Just make sure you do that, please. No.

Dave [01:10:37]:
But if you have any sincere questions, we're happy to try to answer them. Absolutely. In fact do we wanna say this now? We do. We've we've we've we want to express we've we've hit some kind of it's like some viewership not viewership, listenership highs.

Greg [01:10:53]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Dave [01:10:53]:
And and we've just stopped with our ears. I'm just kidding. I just we can restart that.

Greg [01:10:57]:
No. No.

Dave [01:10:58]:
No. No.

Greg [01:10:58]:
No. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Dave [01:10:59]:
You're fine. Anyway, so, there's no way we can be comprehensive in our treatments in any of the discussions that we have. And the purpose our purpose is not to do a scholarly delineation of everything. Old by mostly Greg, Dave being said that he doesn't have good eyes and all that kind of stuff and forgetful. Yeah. All those kind

Greg [01:11:26]:
of jobs. Going on and on and on, getting up his word count.

Dave [01:11:29]:
That's my whole goal is word count, apparently. But anyway, so if you have, like, any questions or ideas where you go, hey, I would love to hear you guys follow-up on this. I was listening, recently talking to a friend of mine who listens to the podcast, and and he goes, you know what? The one on the immigration stuff, I wish you would have dealt with this. That would have been really helpful because I know everybody talks about, you know, hospitality in the old testament and etcetera, etcetera. So Yeah. If you have any questions, what's what's the email they can send them to?

Greg [01:12:01]:
The fish at catfishministries.com.

Dave [01:12:04]:
And who's the fish? Am I the fish? Well, I haven't checked.

Greg [01:12:07]:
It's the fish at catfishministries.kit.

Dave [01:12:09]:
The fish

Greg [01:12:10]:
the fish are what go in the bass cannon.

Dave [01:12:13]:
Bass. I knew we had to get a bass cannon reference in here. Absolutely. Bass cannon. Wait for the drop. That's yeah. Anyway. Alright.

Greg [01:12:24]:
So we do we do hope you'll, you'll reach out because we we are, Dave alluded to it, we've we've hit some we've hit some listenership milestones that we're kinda we're not too big to fail yet, but we're getting there. So we're also still accessible. So if you wanna email us an idea or or something else, we have a content I've got a content management system. I've got close to 30 items on it. So we're working our way through them. But I guarantee you, if you're a listener and you wanna hear from us about a particular thing, we will move that to the top. So, for for primary consideration because we want to be accessible, we want to teach, and

Greg [01:13:06]:
we wanna make sure we're relevant. So whether you're listening in Saskatoon or Uganda

Greg [01:13:12]:
Mhmm. Or Caledonia, Michigan. Yeah. Or Alma or wherever.

Dave [01:13:16]:
Or Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Greg [01:13:18]:
Yeah. Wherever you may be. Yes. Drop us

Dave [01:13:22]:
New Cumberland, Pennsylvania.

Greg [01:13:23]:
Drop us a line.

Greg [01:13:25]:
Drop us a line because

Dave [01:13:26]:
we're Oh, nice. Yeah. Catfish reference.

Greg [01:13:29]:
Yep. Yeah. We're the real deal and we know you're curious catfish ministries get catfished Thanks for joining us at Catfish Ministries. We hope you learned something with us and maybe had a laugh or 2 while you're at it. Please subscribe and leave a 5 star review. If you really like what you heard and wanna help us make more of these, look us up on buy me a coffee dot com. We can't wait to talk to you again next time. This is Chad for Greg and Dave signing off and saying remember America, it's always a great day to get catfished.