What Bible should I use?

What Bible should I use? Good question! There is more than one Bible to choose from, but there is also more than one Bible to avoid.

Many warnings have been given about changing the Scriptures, but it still happens. It happened even 2 000 years ago, sometimes with good intentions. Sometimes people such as Jews applying their customs or translators interpreting through culture try to adjust Scripture. But well intentioned or not, truth remains truth across time and beyond whatever we think should be added.

If your church is not using a Bible with the qualities I will mention, let God guide you on the next steps. Do not rely on your own wisdom to condemn or suddenly leave. Let it be whatever God guides you to do, and yes He can and will.

I overheard someone just last month say that God revealed to him that his church was not preaching the truth. He eventually left. But the community building skills he learned from that old church helped him at his new church as a pastor. And he realized, “Wow, God had me there for a reason.”

Still, it is important to be aware. Ignorance is not bliss. It is what makes you miss the bliss. Hey, I like that. I promise it just came to me.

Now class in session. I have an English question for you. Tell me which one of these has a different meaning.

Peter is a king
Peter is the reigning monarch
Peter was the king

The answer is Peter was the king, because even though all three are described with different words, only this phrase tells you that Peter is no longer the king. He was king at a previous time.

It is natural for translations to vary. Someone from England translating Greek might say Peter is the reigning monarch, but in America monarch is not commonly used, so they might simply say Peter is king. Translations differ because of cultural nuances, training, and personal experience.

Additionally, native speakers of other languages often encounter words that do not translate neatly into English. In such cases, a single English word is used to capture the meaning as best as possible.

For example, Greek has at least three distinct words for love, each with a unique meaning. In English, all three are usually translated simply as love. If a Bible expands this meaning or uses a descriptive phrase, it is not necessarily wrong. Those Bibles openly admit they are paraphrasing in order to capture as much meaning as possible, and they should be used in addition to your regular Bible.

Back to Peter. Wait, where did Peter go? Peter are you king? Were you king? What is happening here? A single word, is versus was, just two letters, changes the entire meaning. And if such a fundamental meaning changes, that translation can be seriously misleading.

But wait, who decided to remove Peter? Who decided to remove Jesus? Some people may have genuine gifts of discernment. Others may make changes for selfish reasons. Some may have dreams and believe they came from God. And some simply distort Scripture. As Second Peter three verse sixteen says, “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”

Regardless of the reason, you are not to change the Scriptures.
The Bible should have sixty six books. Thirty nine in the Old Testament and twenty seven in the New Testament. The reason behind these two sections will become clear as you study.

You do not have to take my word for it. I have been alive for only a tiny moment compared to the centuries of scholarship behind the Bible. To this day, people study the books deeply, the writing styles, the authors, the surrounding history, to understand why each book is included.

It might be difficult to notice a one word change, but it is much easier to notice when someone adds or removes entire books from the Bible.

For the sake of this, I decided to try reading one of these additional books. I pondered how to describe the experience. The Bible has many writers and many styles, yet the more you read it, the more the pieces fit together, like a puzzle. At first, you are unsure where the pieces go, but as you continue, it becomes clearer. The Bible reveals fallen humanity and destruction, justice and hope, sin and mercy, love and salvation, God and who we can be in Him. The books are so different, yet they fit.

But with this extra book, it felt like holding a puzzle piece that simply did not belong. It was not just hard to place. It was clearly from a completely different puzzle, if it belonged to any puzzle at all. I could not fit it with anything I had learned from Scripture.

That said, I hope you can understand why I say choose wisely.

As for me, I use several Bibles. NKJV and ESV are my main ones. But there are others. NIV, New Living Translation, and the KJV which is old English but still solid. The Passion Translation openly admits it paraphrases, so it should be used alongside a more literal Bible. The Easy Read Version is also helpful for understanding, but it tends to oversimplify, and you do not want to water down Scripture.

These are the ones within my sphere, though I am probably missing a few others.