- by Carrie Shaw
- on April 21, 2026
They say the best translation is the one you’re reading.
Well, at least some people do. Others insist that every translation except for the KJV (King James Version, for those not in the know) is suspect, accusing versions like the NIV, ESV or CSB of playing fast and loose with God’s Holy Word. These translations, they claim, dilute doctrine, remove key verses, and undermine confidence in Scripture.
And then there’s paraphrases… are they even really Bibles? They take God’s sacred message and put it into everyday, conversational language so that “a ploughboy, mother, tradesman, and yes, even a king” can read for themselves.
(As an aside, I actually quite like The Message paraphrase and think it’s a valuable addition to the translative family, for reasons which I’ll touch on later).
Ok, but. What is the best translation? Are some translations suspect (and should be avoided)? Are there really corrupted (source) texts?? Which Bible should I buy??
These are all great questions. We’ll get to the answers and some other interesting points shortly.
But first, let’s talk about the Bible, as a book, and its Author.
Let’s Talk About The Bible
Actually, it’s not strictly correct to call the Bible a book. It’s really a collection of books, or literary works more specifically, gathered together to form a library – a biblia, from the Greek meaning “the books”).
The Old Testament is made up of ancient Jewish Scriptures, including writings of the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom books. Collectively, these are known as the Tanakh, and were written primarily in Hebrew over a period of roughly one thousand years, from around 1400 BC to 400 BC.
These writings tell a unified story. God creating, calling, rescuing, judging, and promising. They form the foundation for everything the New Testament later reveals in Jesus Christ. The Law points forward, the Prophets proclaim hope and warning, and the Wisdom literature wrestles honestly with life under God.
The New Testament is made up of the four Gospels, that is, one gospel told according to four different witnesses, the early history of the Christian church, pastoral and general letters, and a small amount of apocalyptic literature.
The Gospels present the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The book of Acts records the spread of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit as the church takes shape.
The letters, written to churches and individuals, explain what it means to live faithfully in light of who Jesus is and what he has done. The final book, Revelation, uses rich symbolic language to reveal the ultimate victory of Christ and the renewal of all things.
Together, these Old and New Testaments form what we, today, call the Bible.
The Author Of The Canon
The Old Testament canon – that is, the recognised list of writings that are accepted as Scripture – received as “God-breathed, authoritative, and trustworthy for life and living” – was already established within Judaism around 400BC. By Jesus’ day, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings were recognised as Scripture, with both Jesus and the Apostles treating these books as authoritative and quoting them freely.
The New Testament canon was conclusively established by the mid 4th century, although it’s important to realise that it wasn’t decided upon in a single meeting or moment, or even by a one individual (its often claimed that the Emperor Constantine (227AD – 337AD) decided the biblical canon).
Rather, it was recognised over time, as Christians consistently received certain writings as carrying the weight and authority of Apostolic witness – those who had been commissioned and authorised by Jesus to speak on his behalf. If a book could not be traced back to the apostolic witness to Jesus, it wasn’t accepted.
In AD 367, Athanasius listed the 27 books* we now have in our New Testament, and not long after that, Church councils such as the Council of Hippo and the Council of Carthage formally affirmed this list of recognised books or literature, agreeing that the canon of Scripture was complete and fully revealed at that time.
No New Revelation (Joseph Smith (And Others), We’re Looking At You)
This is very important, particularly in light of modern-day claims of new revelation, additional scriptures, or fresh authority that claim to sit alongside Scripture. After the canon was closed, there was no new revelation. This was agreed on and has been affirmed by the church for over a thousand years.
This agreement is also what gave rise to the Protestant affirmation of Sola Scriptura, meaning that Scripture alone (defined as the combined writings of the Old and New Testaments) is the final and sufficient authority for Christian faith and life. The Protestant Reformation was, amongst other things, a protest against the authority and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, which were claimed as authoritative alongside the Scriptures.
Of course, Sola Scriptura doesn’t deny the value of teachers, tradition, creeds, or church leadership – these are often a vital part of church ecclesiology, but it insists that all of these are subject to the Word of God, not equal to it.
This conviction grew directly out of the recognition of the biblical canon. If the Scriptures are the faithful, apostolic witness to Jesus Christ, then they form the boundary line for doctrine. Not because God has stopped speaking, but because God has already fully spoken, decisively and, finally, in His Son (Romans 1:1-4), a revelation faithfully preserved for us in Scripture.
Anything that claims to be a new revelation, whether by visions, ‘prophets’, modern ‘apostles’, or extra-biblical texts, is posturing itself alongside the authority of Scripture, claiming the same weight and quality of divine revelation as those texts already deemed to be ‘God-breathed’ and fully authoritative for life and faith.
This is why we should rightly be cautious, even downright dismissive, of movements such as the Word of Faith movement or the New Apostolic Reformation. Not because there isn’t a belief in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit – you can read more about that here – but because of the concern that relates to authority. When contemporary ‘prophets’, ‘apostles’, visions, or words are treated as binding, directive, or revelatory in the same way Scripture is, the Bible is no longer functioning as the final authority. That subtly shifts trust away from what God has already spoken with clarity and sufficiency, and places it in the hands of claimed spiritual insight.
But I Digress, Back To Translations
So, we have the Old Testament written in Hebrew with a few small sections in Aramaic, and the New Testament, written in Greek.
As the gospel takes root and begins to spread, first in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria and, eventually, even to the ends of the earth, hearing and receiving it (before the days of Google Translate or the mass printing press) could have been hugely problematic.
The Holy Spirit had the perfect solution in the first few centuries of the church: the gift of languages, called tongues in older English translations. This enabled missionaries who travelled beyond the Greek-speaking world to orally share the gospel in local, intelligible languages.
In this way, the gift of languages clearly served the mission of God during the foundational era of the church, ensuring that the message of Christ could be heard, understood, and believed across language and cultural barriers, and long before that message had been recorded and transmitted in written form.
The Latin Vulgate Appears
By the fourth century, much of the Western world was Latin-speaking rather than Greek. As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, Latin became the dominant language of everyday life, law, and administration in the West.
This linguistic shift created a pastoral and theological challenge. The Scriptures of the early church were largely preserved in Greek, a language increasingly inaccessible to ordinary believers.
In response to this challenge, the Bible began to be translated into Latin, culminating in the translation commonly known as the Vulgate, which would go on to shape Western Christianity for centuries after.
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, better known as Jerome, was the translator of the Vulgate. He worked from the best sources he could access, including translating directly from the Hebrew Scriptures for his Old Testament and from the Greek Scriptures available at the time, along with some earlier Latin translations.
From the Latin Vulgate would came many of the earliest Bible translations used throughout Western Europe, especially during the Middle Ages, such as the Wycliffe Bible, the Douay-Rheims Bible and the Knox Bible.
The famous Gutenberg Bible – the first major book printed using metal moveable type – was a printed edition of the Latin Vulgate.
It’s important to note that these later translations were translations of a translation, and were not taken directly from the original languages.
They were faithful for their time and served an important purpose in making Scripture accessible to ordinary people. However, because they were one step removed from the original languages, they sometimes reflected the limitations or interpretive decisions of the Latin text they were based on, rather than the original source language.
The Work Of William Tyndale
This fact gave rise to the conviction and calling of William Tyndale, a 16th-century English scholar, priest and biblical linguist (whom I loosely quoted at the start of this article).
Having recognised that much of the Bible available in England was a translation of a translation, Tyndale set out to translate the Scriptures directly from the original languages into common English.
He believed that the Scriptures should be read and heard clearly by ordinary men and women, that they shouldn’t be mediated through language or clergy, or restricted to only those with power or privilege. Scripture, he insisted, belonged as much to the plough boy as it did to the King.
It was a radical and subversive thought for the time, challenging the authority of the Church and the long and complicated system of institutionalised religion, which had effectively acted as gatekeepers of the Word. Until this point, Scripture was usually encountered through selected readings read aloud by a priest, in Latin, with interpretation and teaching largely left in the hands of the clergy.
He would end up losing his life for his convictions, being strangled and then burnt at the stake in 1536 on charges of heresy. But not before completing the English New Testament and significant portions of the Old Testament, translated directly from the original Greek and Hebrew.
His final recorded prayer was, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes” and, it seems, that prayer was answered.
Within a few short years after his death, English Bibles were authorised and widely circulated, most notably the Great Bible of 1539, the first royally authorised English Bible appointed for public reading in the churches.
From this flurry of activity finally came the version many are familiar with today, a work of literary genius, the King James Authorised Version. Commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, the King James Bible drew heavily on earlier English translations, especially the work of William Tyndale.
In fact, a significant portion of its wording echoes Tyndale almost verbatim. His linguistic and theological influence lived on, even though he didn’t live to see it.
The King James Version stands as a monumental achievement, not only for its faithfulness to the biblical text available at the time, but for its lasting impact on the English language and the church. Its cadence, clarity, and beauty has shaped centuries of preaching, prayer, and devotion.
So, The King James Version Is The Best Translation?
Not so fast.
Translation is so much more than words, it’s also about context and clarity.
The King James Version is now over four hundred years old. While beautiful in language and cadence for its time, much of its wording is now archaic and in many cases obsolete.
As a result, it’s often difficult for even the average native English speaker to understand on an initial read. Words have shifted in meaning, grammar has changed, and phrases that once felt natural now require explanation or ‘translation on the fly’. This can create the impression that Scripture itself is distant or hard to grasp, or that God’s message is only truthfully communicated in a certain kind of language, such as older forms of English, when in reality it is the language that has aged, not the message. You can read and watch more on this here.
The goal of translation has always been understanding. From the apostles’ preaching in the languages of the people, to Jerome’s translation into Latin, to Tyndale translating into English, the aim has never been to preserve a particular form of words, but to faithfully communicate God’s Word so that Christ may be clearly known.
A good translation is not the one that sounds the oldest or most religious. It’s the one that allows God’s people to hear, understand, and respond to what He has spoken. When language becomes a barrier, the problem is not Scripture.
The best translation, in this context, is the one you can read and understand.
Okay, But Don’t Some Modern Translations Mess Around?
By modern translations, most people mean versions like the New International Version, English Standard Version or Christian Standard Bible.
And when they say “mess around”, they mean that these versions have missing passages or differences in interpretation from the accepted norm, the KJV.
Is there any truth to this claim? The short answer is no.
The modern translations are just as reliable as the older, earlier translations in communicating God’s message of sin, salvation in Jesus and the final redemption of all things. All of Scripture, no matter which translation you pick up, points to Christ.
But it is true that some modern translations don’t print certain words or passages (and you’ll often see them referenced at the bottom of your page) that the KJV (or an older translation) does include. And this is because modern translations are working from a wider and earlier (in terms of dating) range of manuscripts than the KJV had at its disposal.
When the KJV was translated, the Greek New Testament text it relied on (Textus Receptus or received text) ultimately rested on a handful of manuscripts, only about six or seven, and most of them late medieval copies, generally from around the 1100s and later.
By contrast, by the time modern translations like the NIV (and others) were being produced, scholars had access to literally thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts, commonly reported today to be as many as 5,800. These include manuscripts dating to as early as the second century, many of which are often grouped under what is known as the Alexandrian manuscript tradition.
In a small number of places, some of those early and widely shared manuscripts don’t contain the longer readings found in later copies, which is why modern translations sometimes place those passages in footnotes or brackets rather than in the main text.
The fact that these are included as footnotes rather than hidden shows both the authenticity of the original source documents and the integrity of the translators.
Do These Translations Change The Gospel?
Well-known variants in modern translations include:
– Mark 16:9–20 (the longer ending of Mark)
– John 7:53 to 8:11 (the woman caught in adultery)
– 1 John 5:7 (the Comma Johanneum, a Trinitarian expansion in the KJV tradition)
– verses like Acts 8:37 or John 5:4, which appear in older English Bibles but are often placed in footnotes today
What these don’t do is change the major teachings of the faith. The gospel, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, salvation by grace, and the call to repentance and faith are taught repeatedly across Scripture, in every translation.
Modern translations aren’t careless or liberal, they just reflect the earliest and best supported readings And even in this, the important message of the Bible has never been lost or twisted.
And this is truly remarkable. Across the centuries, through countless translations and in countless languages, God’s Word has been carried into the hearts and minds of people across the world, reaching into almost every culture and community.
Time To Sum Up
This is getting super long, there’s plenty more that could be said (and you know I could totally keep saying it), but there isn’t enough time, we must sum up.
The best translation is, firstly, one you can read and understand. If you love old English, grew up reading Shakespeare on repeat and totally dig the King James Authorised Version, then knock yourself out.
For me, personally, I tend to prefer the New Living Translation for daily reading. It’s easy to read, uses clear modern English, and communicates the meaning of the text in a way that flows naturally without feeling overly simplified or unaturally modernised.
The NLT sits a little closer to meaning-based translation (its described as a dynamic equivalent), which makes it especially helpful for extended reading, devotion, and taking in larger sections of Scripture without constantly stopping to untangle sentence structure. I find it invites me to keep reading, and that matters.
In saying that, however, no single translation does everything perfectly. For deeper study, comparison with more formally structured translations (see below) can be helpful. But for daily engagement with Scripture, where the aim is to listen attentively and be shaped by God’s Word, the NLT does its job well.
For a fun little skip through Scripture, I do love the Message paraphrase, which is at the thought-for-thought end of the spectrum, a functional equivalent paraphrase more than a literal translation. It aims to say what the text means, not necessarily what it says and can be helpful for devotional reading or seeing a passage with fresh eyes.
For a primary reading or study Bible, when you want to dig into the Word a little more and really go deeper in your understanding, you’ll want something that is more literal, somewhere between ‘word for word’ and ‘thought for thought’ (in that it endeavours to convey what the original authors actually wrote while preserving meaning, intent and theological accuracy).
Good translations balance accuracy and clarity. They recognise that languages work differently, so they make careful decisions about word choice, grammar, and sentence structure to communicate the same meaning, not just the same sounds.
The reality is that sometimes, if you translate each word, you can end up losing the meaning. A sentence can be technically literal yet communicate something different, or nothing at all, in normal English.
A very literal English Bible produced by a woman, Julia E Smith, in the 1800s, was so rigidly literal that many readers found it almost impossible to understand. Her aim was honesty to the original wording, but the result shows the problem. Literal does not always mean clear, and clarity matters if we want people to actually read and grasp the gospel.
So, the bottom line is that there’s really no bad translation (except the Passion and I’ll talk about that more in my next article), that most translations (literal, word for word, thought for thought, and even paraphrases) are useful, depending on what you are trying to achieve (even if they don’t all necessarily carry the same weight for teaching or doctrine), and that no matter which one you pick up, if you’re willing to listen you will hear God’s voice; calling you home and declaring that Jesus is the Way.
The best translation is the one you pick up and read, the one that points you to Jesus, and the one that changes your heart.
After all, that’s why the Bible even exists at all. So that you may know God, and in knowing Him, make Him known.
