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How to Use Bible Translations

Tyler S. Fulcher

If you want to study the Bible well, you need to understand how Bible translations work.

This is a question you may not have considered before, but it's really important.

The Problem and Opportunity of Translations

Walk into any Christian book store, and you will find an entire wall (or two) filled with different Bibles. The number of options can overwhelm you.

Which translation should you choose?
Should you purchase a study Bible?
If so, which one should you buy?

You’ll face the same problem when you download a Bible app like Youversion.

The number Bible versions within your grasp is a beautiful gift.Those apps contain nearly every English translation and many different language translations.

Still, it won’t matter much if you don’t understand how translations work and how they can help you study the Bible better.

Before we get too far, answer two questions for me:

1) What translation do you use?

a) NIV

b) NRSV

c) ESV

d) NKJV

e) CEV

f) Other

2) Why do you use that translation?

a) Someone gave it to me

b) My church uses/recommends it

c) It's easy-to-read

d) I chose it carefully

e) I don’t know

So long as you own a Bible and read it, you can’t really answer those two questions wrong.

As you dig deeper into studying the Bible, though, you need to familiarize yourself with translations and how they can help or hurt you in Bible study.

When you study the Bible, you try to interpret its message.

Ideally, this would start with the physical documents created by the biblical authors. Unfortunately, none of those documents still exist, and they were all written in languages most people can’t read anyway.

Unless you want to learn the biblical languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek), you will need a Bible translation.

While Bible translations are great gifts to the Church, they represent interpretations of the Bible. After all, translation requires interpretation.

Taking the words from one language and conveying their meaning into a different language is a complex task requiring many small decisions.

The infographic will help you see where our English translations stand in the process of biblical translation and interpretation.

Scholars agree about how to translate the vast majority of the Bible, but you can find many differences between the translations.

If you know how to spot the differences and what they mean, you can use them to your advantage when studying the Bible.

3 Tips for Using Translations

Here are three quick tips for finding differences between translations and using those to your advantage in Bible study:

1) Pick a translation or two from each column in this chart:

Picking translations from the different rows will help you see the differences between the versions. If you pick too many from one column, they will have quite a lot of overlap.

2) Note where the translations differ in significant ways.

Ephesians 2:3

Among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (ESV)

All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.(NIV)

Actually all of us were like them and lived according to our natural desires, doing whatever suited the wishes of our own bodies and minds. In our natural condition we, like everyone else, were destined to suffer God's anger. (GNB)

3) Summarize why the differences matter.

The three versions of Ephesians 2:3 listed above differ in a number of ways.

Most of the differences do little to affect how we understand the passage. A few changes, however, help us see important details in the text.

For example, the ESV uses gendered language in this translation.

Greek has masculine and feminine words. When a masculine term clearly refers to all of humanity, many translators prefer to get rid of the exclusively masculine words.

The NIV and GNB help you see that Paul’s includes both men and women in this verse.

When you study the Bible, you should use translations that use more universal pronouns and translations that reflect the masculine and feminine terms.

Translations that remove references to gender often have to make additional grammatical choices to make the translation work in English. This can obscure important details in the text.

Conclusion

Following these steps will help you slow down and recognize details about the Bible you typically miss when you only read one translation.

This recognition will help you ask better questions about the Bible. Also, it will help you understand what about the passage you need to study in greater depth.

That’s it for now—three easy steps to start using translations.

1) Pick multiple translations to compare.

2) Note where they differ significantly.

3) Summarize why the differences matter.

If you want to learn more about how to study the Bible, you should sign up to my email course: 21 Days to Better Bible Study.

Over three weeks, I'll send you short lessons with practical exercises you can use to build a solid foundation for studying the Bible.

You can get access here.

That's all for today!

Talk to you soon,

P.S. My mission is to help Christians (re)explore the Old Testament.

If you want to help me with that mission, you can take one (or all) of the following steps: