What Bible Translation Do People Read Most?

During the Men’s Wednesday Night Bible class at Leavenworth Church of Christ last week, we considered what Bible translations have had the most influence since the beginning of the church. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew with a few verses in Aramaic; The New Testament was written in Greek, mostly the conversational dialect used in the marketplace. As Jewish communities spread around the Mediterranean Sea and to the east of Palestine, fluency in Hebrew decreased. So a couple of centuries before Jesus was born, approximately seventy translators produced a Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. This Greek translation often is quoted in the New Testament; the Septuagint would have a powerful influence through both its being used it self and those New Testament quotations. In the late 300’s, a scholar named Jerome was commissioned to translate the Bible into Latin, which had become the dominant language of the western Roman Empire. His translation, called the Vulgate because he tried to make it readable for the common reader, would become the most used (by far) translation of the Bible through the mid-1500’s, and perhaps even longer, for it would be used in churches that conducted their services in Latin through the 1960’s. In 1536, Martin Luther published a translation of the Bible in German that would profoundly influence German language, literature, and culture. In 1611, the Church of England published a translation that would exert that same kind of influence on English language, literature, and culture for 350 years – the King James Version. In recent years, translations like the New International Version, New Revised Standard Version, and English Standard Version have become widely used. However, although the four translations first cited have exerted enormous influence on civilization, they were not and are not the most widely read Bible translations. You and I are. That’s right. Many more people learn about Jesus and his teachings by watching Christians shop, work, and play than learn by reading the Bible. That raises an important, and perhaps troubling question. How accurately do our lives translate the message of Christ? What do our choices say about what it means to be a Christian? Bible translators must know three languages well to translate the Bible. We must understand the Bible and our culture if we are to communicate Christ well to our neighbors. How good a translation of the Bible are you?