About Bible Translations

Choosing a Bible Translation
When the documents that make up the Bible were first written, they captured exactly what God wanted to say in the languages thatordinary people spoke. There was no friction between perceiving the form or structure of the text and perceiving the meaning of the text. The original audience experienced a unique combination of both ingredients—represented by the red dot in the top right corner of thediagram.



But Bible readers today can’t experience this combination any more. The Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts still show us the form and structure of the original but most of us can’t understand what they mean. As English speakers, we need translations, and we’re privileged to have access to a wide variety of options that fall into three broad groups.

Tending to the upper left corner of the diagram, the first group—represented by the green oval and known to scholars as formal equivalence translations—places a particularly high priority on reproducing the form and structure of the original. This approach allows modern Bible readers to perceive many of the important details and subtleties in the text. Ease of understanding varies from verse to verse and from bookto book, but all verses and all books achieve a high standard of transparency to the original languages.

Tending to the lower right corner of the diagram, the second group—represented by the brown oval and known to scholars as functionalor ‘dynamic’ equivalence translations—place a particularly high priority on reproducing the meaning of the original. This approach helps modern Bible readers understand the impact and implications of God’s message in words that they can relate to and grasp quickly. Transparency to the form and structure of the original documents varies from verse to verse and from book to book, but all verses and all books achieve ease of understanding.

Tending to the upper right corner of the diagram, a third group of translations—represented by the white circle—seeks to recover the priorities of the original documents themselves, allowing readers to perceive the form of the original and the meaning of the original at the same time. Striving for the optimum blend of authenticity and accessibility in every verse, these translations allow modern-day readers toexperience—as far as possible—what it would have felt like to be part of the Bible’s original audience.

View Bible Translation Chart