So what’s the most accurate English Bible translation today? Even if the language is harder to work through (and I know it will be), accuracy matters most to me. I might even learn a new language to better understand…
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NASB or the ESV. The NASB 2020 is about as literal as English gets while still reading like sentences, and the hard language is mostly Paul, whose Greek sentences run half a page.
If you want to learn a language, start with Koine Greek rather than Hebrew. A year of steady effort gets you reading John’s Gospel on your own (see this thread).
NET Bible, for the translation notes. They explain manuscript differences and why they chose a particular wording, and there’s no single most accurate English Bible anyway.
I’ve been slowly working through a reader’s Greek New Testament and you start to notice the little translator decisions long before you’re anywhere close to fluent. English only has “you” while Hebrew and Greek show whether it’s one person or a group. For an English Bible, the Legacy Standard Bible stays closest to the original wording.
I built a whole devotional life on the wrong pronoun. The singular vs plural ‘you’ thing shifted a few passages for me, I learned it from a friend from Georgia who kept saying ‘y’all’ while we read 1 Corinthians together. ‘You are God’s temple’ in chapter 3 is a plural you. Y’all are God’s temple.
Worth adding for anyone who isn’t going to crawl through a reader’s edition: some English Bibles do flag it. The ESV has a footnote in 1 Corinthians 3 saying the Greek is plural and the NET notes catch a lot of them too.
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The translator notes are what sold me on the NET too. Beats arguing over which version is ‘most accurate’.
I’d always read that chapter as a pep talk about my own personal holiness. The y’all example makes it about the church not tearing itself apart.
Good to know the ESV and NET footnotes leave a trail, I figured I’d have to go straight to the Greek to catch stuff like that. Now I want to go through every ‘you’ in Paul’s letters and see which ones I’ve been making about me.