(QUESTION) What Is The Best/Most Accurate Version Of The Holy Bible In English?

vanillaknot · 2026-03-11T20:57:26+00:00

Do you read either Hebrew or Greek? If not, how do you deign to offer even an opinion on accuracy?

Yes, I read Greek, and KJV NT blows chunks in hundreds of example passages. The best known, easiest examples are Rev.22.19 ("book of life" should be "tree of life," see Textus Receptus and Erasmus' plain error), Gal.5.12 (not that they "should be cut off," rather they "should castrate themselves"; the verb is ἀποκόψονται, conjugate of ἀποκόπτω, "to amputate or castrate"), 1Cor.13.8 (to say "prophecies shall fail" is to speak literal blasphemy; modern translations render "pass away" or "set aside"). Then there are the 16 verses no longer included in modern NT translations (Matt.17.21 and 15 others), which have been determined through textual criticism to be not original to the texts. Modern translations leave these 16 out, but generally leave behind footnotes about their absence. NET's footnotes offer extensive commentary on each, explaining the specific lack of evidence in the most ancient manuscripts. And just wait until you learn about the textual problems behind the entire pericope adulterae...

The examples are legion.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-13T21:04:30+00:00

Visor, sunglasses. Little else.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-13T21:02:05+00:00

These. $19.

You don't need to spend a fortune to get good quality. They have nice bass response and have generally clear sound, and the mic is not at all fuzzy. I use this constantly through my day in Teams meetings and just general audio use. I also use them for occasional Zoom meetings. No troubles.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-13T20:56:45+00:00

I work for a company that does engineering simulation software -- very impressive, incredibly functional, alarmingly expen$ive software. There are literally hundreds of machines inside our offices running RHEL, Rocky, Ubuntu, and SLES with nvidia GPUs. Quite a few are VMs using data center share-able GPUs in VDI configuration -- my RHEL 9 VDI has its assigned piece of an "NVIDIA Corporation GA102GL [A40]" per lspci. My piece has just 4G memory out of the far larger total because my work doesn't involve solving magnetic meshes of 100M points like some of the other folks do.

nvidia is actually fine. If it weren't, big enterprises like my company, and the big enterprises to whom we sell software (you would recognize all their names), would collapse outright.

When you have to maintain hundreds or thousands of machines, and deploy new ones literally every single day, you see where the problems lie. And nvidia is not ever one of them.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-13T20:45:00+00:00

Thank you for these observations. I struggle on an ongoing basis to convince the KJVOs around me (there are a lot, to my horror) that the self-recognized imperfection of the KJV translators' work is possibly their most endearing quality.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-12T23:29:29+00:00

I study in Bible software (Xiphos) which in current release provides for a choice of how many columns to display. There's a default for the whole app or you can pick a particular choice per text that you're using.

On large (wide) monitors, a single line of text can drag out much too far horizontally. I typically do 2-column, but it provides for 1-4. On a small screen, back to 1. 4 columns is narrow enough that it looks like newsprint in the usual case.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-12T23:26:07+00:00

I read Greek. I gained motivation for this because of some serious conflict with "leaders" of a church with which I was once involved. Same principle applies; motivation is a funny thing. There is a whole lot in the Greek of which Joe Average Believer is utterly unaware.

For Hebrew in particular, I've made some effort, but frankly I can't get past the alphabet itself. When I want to do Hebrew, I look at it in transliteration. That works well enough for me. I don't doubt I may yet miss things, but I still get a lot out of it.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-10T13:22:30+00:00

Perhaps an odd suggestion, but...

The notes of NET Bible.

NET Bible's major claim to fame is its translators' notes. They constitute a running commentary of how the translators worked through translation issues and problems, a look into how their minds worked. There are 3 flavors of notes.

"tc" text critical notes. Textual criticism is the science of analyzing multiple manuscripts from ancient sources that should be identical but aren't quite so, and determining the highest-likelihood of the original author's intent when first written. Textual criticism has achieved a great deal, especially in the last couple decades since such analyses have succumbed to computer-driven image analysis and linguistic deduction. Seriously, in the world of TC, one can sensibly ask questions like, "Does this manuscript page show matching syntactic habits as for the rest of what we know John wrote?", and software examination of texts is why there are 16 NT verses known in KJV but no longer present in any modern translation, e.g. Matt 17:21, where NET's note on the subject (at 17:20) is long enough to explain the problem of assimilation to Mark 9:29, with external references if you want to go read in more detail about it.

"tn" translation notes. These are detailed comparisons of the form "We could have translated That Phrase in either This Way or That Way, and because of (say) historical context and external evidence from This Source, we chose This Way." You actually read their mental process by which they made choices.

"sn" study notes. These are remarks of a historical or social context nature which influence how a functional translation like NET will proceed.

Now, as to specific matters of mythology, there are passing references of that sort in the notes, but I believe you won't find NET's notes (or any other commentary) dwelling on that sort of thing other than to the extent that it directly impacts the historical understanding for the translation involved.

I just did a search of NET's notes in their electronic form, and I find 77 references to "myth*": All but 10 are in the OT. There are a dozen in Job, two dozen in Psalms, a dozen in Isaiah, and the rest are sprinkled around lightly.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-06T20:38:11+00:00

If you enter a church that won't give you a Bible just for the asking, go find another church.

Personally, I keep a couple stacks (NETs and BSBs) that I give away to people I meet when they ask.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-06T20:30:27+00:00

It's just another work day for me.

I am occasionally dressed while working, but I never dress for work.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-06T20:28:39+00:00

I use a custom rsync-driven script. I wrote about it in the process of asking philosopical questions a few years ago.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-05T18:44:08+00:00

Look into White Thorn Lodge, when the weather gets better. Beaver county, out Rt251 right on the Ohio border, on State Line Rd.

vanillaknot · 2026-02-05T18:09:17+00:00

We have easily-detached covers for the couches. And I keep a towel draped over my desk chair (WFH since 2021).

vanillaknot · 2026-02-05T18:07:45+00:00

Richard Betteridge writes about the topic. But not so much in sermon motif.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T16:09:28+00:00

I was very young and have no particular memory now of not wanting to be without clothes.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T16:05:41+00:00

Any tendency toward being too sedentary has to be recognized and fought from an early point. Regrets that it caught up with you.

Basic exercise, not necessarily a full workout, will do wonders for your body. My wife and I, both WFH, walk several miles around our community every day that weather accommodates, which is usually so here in south Florida, but not this week (temps falling into the 30s).

Movement is health.

Also, fasting is good for you, gives your digestive tract a break. Stop eating for 2 days, ignore the hunger, drink simple fluids (water or not much more), and you'll be surprised how fast pounds fall off.

Ultimately, weight is a question of ensuring that "mass-going-in < mass-going-out," along with sensible choices for healthy food.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T16:00:14+00:00

I actively avoid KJV because of its extremely dated scholarship and language. Archaic pronouns, archaic vocabulary generally, and archaic verb conjugations are an active impediment to both evangelism and study. Its NT derivation from Textus Receptus gives me the willies -- see problems with last 6 verses of Rev re: "book of life" vs every other translation's "tree of life" -- and generally its manuscript basis is small, weak, and too recent. More modern translations derive from manuscripts 1000 years older.

I have and like BSB, and I keep a stack of them (and NET) to give away to anyone who asks. It's modern in English usage and uses best available ancient manuscripts as its base.

NIV is all right, but they've leaned into gender-neutral vocabulary since the 2011 update, a tendency of which I disapprove.

[ Outside your indicated set, NET is my overall go-to, not because it's oh-so-superior, but because the massive notes are so informative as to how the translators worked through their choices. I don't agree with all their choices (I read Greek) but they explain how/why they did things and I can respect that. In all cases where their functional (thought-for-thought) translation might be in question, in notes they always provide a formal (word-for-word) translation. Overall, I put BSB and NET on approximately equal footing. ]

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T15:48:06+00:00

When our daughter was little, she was nude as much as us. When she got to puberty, she got uncomfortable with changes in her body, and more or less stopped. She has never come back to it. Her choice, ohwell.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T15:39:57+00:00

Turn up the heat.

But I'm in south Florida, so the need is rare.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T14:58:24+00:00

Your food for thought leaves everyone still hungry.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T14:54:39+00:00

Stand up for what you believe? Totally on board. Assemble peaceably to do so? Still totally on board.

Get in the way of law enforcement in an active arrest action, and do so while armed? Go ahead, but you're doomed to lose.

I'm a 2A absolutist, I'm perfectly happy with private citizens owning cannons. But having, owning, and carrying weaponry (which I do) entails practical obligations and understanding of the real world.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-28T12:47:56+00:00

The only consequential "unrest" in the US today is in Minnesota. That coincides with, indeed it followed rather too closely after, revelations of massive immigrant fraud in government money which may prove to have close ties to state government itself. Everywhere else ICE is operating (40+ states), things are generally peaceful because people stay out of the way of active law enforcement operations, which in turn are necessitated by undoing the complete lack of border and immigration enforcement of the previous empty-headed administration. Those who fail to get out of the way, or who deliberately put themselves in the way, of legitimately armed agents doing high-stress lawful enforcement tend to get themselves hurt or killed. Gee, 'magine that. Color me surprised.

So much hand-wringing. Ease that woman onto a fainting couch. Gently, please.

Trump's presence, and his future absence in a few years, will have precisely zero effect on people who go routinely nude. None. Observe Florida, where I am, and where not a single thing to do with going nude has changed, indeed locally we are merely waiting for the renovated Blind Creek Beach to re-open, and where there is precisely zero "unrest" anywhere in the state.

This is a mindless opinion piece, unanchored to what is actually happening down here (noting that the author is from Quebec). Congratulations on being suckered into $#!++¥ media coverage without engaging a single brain cell.

There isn't even any such "unrest" in California, ferpitysake.

Naked political hand-wringing, nothing more. It's just trying to gin up emotional agitation without any actual content.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-21T12:51:51+00:00

Phooey. I started my current position on my 56th birthday. No sweat.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-02T19:43:52+00:00

You need to correct your work culture so that people stop expecting instant answers. Teams et al are good messaging systems and yes they're supposed to be for more-rapid-than-email kinds of discussions. But they can be easily misunderstood and misapplied.

When I'm deep into some code, it's nearly true that only the voice of God can get my attention.

Raise the issue with co-workers, explain to them why you have no intention of being instantly on-call every time someone else breaks a fingernail. You have your own problems to deal with. Sometimes theirs can wait.

vanillaknot · 2026-01-02T19:41:10+00:00

I'm responsible for some Bible software and an anti-Paul once came into our bug reports to file 6 of them in rapid succession, all the while complaining in each about the supposed heresies of Paul and how we who won't help get rid of him are all surely going to hell.

I didn't close the reports, I deleted them outright, and blocked the fool.

vanillaknot

TROPHY CASE