Do any of you have problems w/different Translations ....NIV vs KJV vs NLT etc?
Some people seem to only accept the KJV.
That tends to be a Baptist thing...."If it ain't King James, it ain't the Bible!!"
In fact, I remember when I considered enrolling my kids in a Baptist school. As if the books weren't expensive enough, the school's policy for Bibles was that the kids could only have KJV ones. They already had Bibles (one NIV, one NLT). The school won't even look at the NKJV.
My personal preference is the NASB, with the NIV a close second. To me, the NLT is too wordy and often tries to convert ancient terms into modern ones in the text itself.
The NASB uses the ancient terms (but puts footnotes in there and gives the modern-day equivalent into the margin.
For instance, when talking about the burial of Jesus, the KJV says that the spices were 100 lbs weight. The NLT says 75 lbs.
Well, the Greek word for "pound" is
litra. A litra is 11.5 to 12 U.S. ounces. So, 100 litras would be 75 lbs (U.S.)
Same for the length, "cubit", a measurement of a man's forearms from elbow to tip of middle finger. That varies from nation to nation. The Babylonian cubit one length (21 inches, I think); the Egyptian cubit was a bit smaller (19 inches) and the Hebrew cubit was closer to 17 inches.
For ease of calculation, most scholars use an average size of 18 inches (1.5 ft) as a cubit. That would, for example, make Nebuchadnezzar's 60-cubit statue 90 feet high in U.S units.
Regardless of translation, I like Bible with such footnotes as well as concordances, maps, and Biblical dictionaries.
