The Ideal Bible Translation

The ideal translation is a multitude of Bibles - because there is no one exact way to express the original. STEPBible has so many good translations that it is difficult to know which to use. Here a couple of my favourite powerful and interesting versions that you may not have tried.  



The Holman Christian Study Bible is a useful mix of conservative theology with modern translation. It is, like the ESV, a revision of the RSV, which is a revision of the RV, which revised the KJV. This means the easiest way to see the distinctiveness of this translation is to compare it with the ESV at STEPBible. This comparison view turns everything to lower case in order to highlight differences in the translation. These viewpoint quickly found some interesting examples of distinctive translation:
·        Psa.1.1         How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked or take the path of sinners or join a group of mockers!
·        Ps 8:5          You made him little less than God  
(“God” in ESV: “the heavenly beings”; in KJV: “angels”)
·         Psa.8.9        Yahweh, our Lord, how magnificent is Your name throughout the earth!
(“Yahweh” is only used when the ‘name’ is important in context)
·        Ps 23:4        Even when I go through the darkest valley…
(ESV/KJV: “… valley of the shadow of death” – italic words come from LXX)
·        Ps 23:6        Only goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord as long as I live.
(“as long as I live” in ESV: “… forever”. Word-by-word: “to-length-of days”)
·        Matt 6:9-13  Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy.  …but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.] ^{Other mss omit bracketed text}
·        Rom 2:11     There is no favoritism with God.         
(ESV:  “shows no partiality”)
·        1Cor 5:6      … a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough 
(ESV:  “a little leaven leavens the whole lump”)

You are no-doubt interested in the contentious issue of gendered text. The HCSB generally follows the ESV model of translating “brothers” then adding the note: “The Greek word adelphoi can be used as a reference to males only or to groups that include males and females. It is the context of each usage that determines the proper meaning.” There are occasional departures from this e.g.:
·        1Cor.6.6 Instead, believer ^{Lit brothers} goes to court against believer, and that before unbelievers! … 8…– and you do this to believers!
(each underlined word translates adelphos, ‘brother’)
One striking characteristic of HCSB is the everyday feel of modern English, which is particularly evident in reported speech, and when there is sexual content, e.g.:
·        Gen 19:5      “… send them out to us so we can have sex with them!”
·        Gen 19:8      “Look , I’ve got two daughters who haven’t had sexual relations with a man.”
·        Gen 34:2-3   Shechem …. took her and raped her…he became infatuated with Dinah
But it doesn’t go too far, e.g.:
·        Matt 1:25     but did not know her intimately until she gave birth to a son. And he named him Jesus.

I find the HCSB to be a good, accurate translation which has done its best to use plain modern English which often makes the meaning much clearer, e.g. Psa.2.12:
ESV:  Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.  Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
HCSB:  Pay homage to the Son or He will be angry, and you will perish in your rebellion, for His anger may ignite at any moment. All those who take refuge in Him are happy.

HCSB on STEPBible is fully tagged – so you can see it interlinear with Hebrew/Greek or with other tagged translations. 

The Berean Study Bible is so new that it isn’t fully proof-read yet, but it is so valuable that STEPBible wanted to have it as soon as possible. It seeks to express the text in the most literal way possible, while using normal English. This has, of course, been claimed by many translation teams, but this attempt has gone one step further: it has been tagged to the Greek and Hebrew from the ground up.

The result is that the translation attempts to follow the word order of the original, though not to the point of making an un-English translation. The electronic marking with each Hebrew and Greek word isn’t new – the same is done for all of STEP’s interlinear Bibles – but I think this is the first time the marking has been added while translating rather than afterwards. This means the translators are always aware that each Hebrew and Greek word should be represented in the English if possible, and it discourages them from adding English words that are additional to the original.

I was very surprised by the fluency of the translation that this produced. I was expecting something strange like the Young’s Literal Translation, or something hopelessly wooden. Instead, I found real English – and yet it follows the Hebrew and Greek like a well-trained dog keeping to heel. This makes it perfect as an interlinear Bible.

Like most Bibles it uses the Leningrad Codex for the OT and Nestle Aland edition of the NT, but it is up-front about times when it departs from them. Like the NIV, it makes a rule of always noting any departure. It puts the extra words in square brackets, for example the words that Cain speaks to Abel which aren’t in the Hebrew but are found in Samaritan, Greek, Latin and Syriac:
·        Gen.4:8  Then Cain said to his brother Abel, [“Let us go out to the field.”]  And while they were in the field….  Note: SP, LXX, Syriac, Vulgate; Hebrew does not include "Let us go out to the field"

The BSB comes from BibleHub.com which is a great site for studying the Bible. One useful feature that they have (which STEPBible doesn’t) is looking at a single verse in a large number of Bibles – see e.g. Gen.1:1 and Matt.1:1.


Another Bible I’m loving at the moment is the Cambodian Khmer Christian Bible. You may not want to use this, but it is noteworthy – partly because the font it is so pretty, but mostly because these translators have tagged the text to Greek. This is very unusual for a non-English translation, and it is a great example to follow. It gives users that extra level of confidence in their translation. And it means that anyone can see what the words words mean. It also helps to separate the words, because Khmer is written like ancient Greek manuscripts - without spaces between the words! See it here.

David Instone-Brewer, 

Tyndale House, Cambridge