HerodionRomulus

"I must admit I'm not sure what three of these versions are. I'm not familiar with the HNV, ASV, or NLT at a glance."

HSV---no idea. Home Shopping Version??

ASV American Standard Version--the 1901 Americanized version of the 1881 Revised Version--by Westcott and Hort.
[i]N.B.[i/] Westcott and Hort are usually soundly reviled by fundies because they allegedly ruined the Bible, which just means they tried to provide a better and up-to-date translation to replace the aging Queer James Version.

NLT New Living Translation. A recent "translation" which is derived from the praphased Living Bible. It is hardly more than a paraphrase itself.

Doctor X

Why does Genesis have to be literal?

I would hope it is not. How can anyone understand:

If you eat right through IT you see everything alive.
IT's inside the spirit with enough will to survive.
If you think that IT's pretentious you've been taken for a ride.

literally?

HA!HA!HA!HA!HA! HA Ha . . . heh?

Right, this it THE question. Frankly, until Magus or anyone else who believes in the Flood Myths answer IT, IT [Stop IT!--Ed.] is hard to proceed further.

--J. "Keep Them Mowing Blades Sharp!" D.

HerodionRomulus

Indeed, some of us are willing to use our brains for thought and reflection and improvement, and not just as a dumping ground for frelling propaganda which is irrelevant to the authentic Christian imperative.

Tod

Thanks for the enlightenment.

I thought the ASV might be the American Standard, but the abbreviation for the New American Standard Bible is NASB, so I assumed that the American Standard would be abbreviated ASB. I'm sure you're right though, I can't imagine what else it would be.

The NLT is derived from the Living Bible? Yikes, that's kinda scary. Why on earth would anybody with a conscience do that!? Just kidding, but it does seem to be up there among the dumbest of ideas.

For some reason when I was a child my mother thought my first Bible should be The Living Bible. I still have it even though I'd never dare to cite it. I'm being a bit disingenious when I say I don't know the reason she bought it. Obviously, she thought it would be easier for me to understand. However, I didn't have another version for many years. I was a devout and curious little guy, and read a fair amount of it over the years to come. I was about 13 or 14 when I got my second translation of the Bible. It was the New Revised Standard Version (one I also still have and think is among the more superior translations).

Around this time I decided I was going to be a pastor, and took it upon myself to study the Bible from cover to cover. I began reading my new translation, and it was like I was reading a different book altogether. At first I thought I must be an idiot to have missed such details, but I quickly figured out the failing wasn't mine. Ideas conveyed and statements made in The Living Bible were completely different from those in this more accurate translation. I decided The Living Bible a bunk endeavor suitable only for kindling at an early age. It is shocking how the authors (I won't give them the prestige of calling them "translators") will take such vast liberties with the translation to provide this paraphrased edition, and it is clear that the authors' main agenda was to push their individual doctrinal interpretations in their effort to allegedly "say as exactly as possible what the writers of the Scriptures meant" (intro to The Living Bible), as well as to try to remove inconsistencies, errors, or other problems in the text.

Thanks for the warning. I often buy translations of the Bible I don't already have when I find them, and I'll save my money and leave the New Living Translation on the shelf if I find it.

Oh yeah, and welcome btw. It's nice to have a Christian around that uses his/her brain "for thought and reflection and improvement, and not just as a dumping ground for frelling propaganda."

Doctor X

Herpes Simplex Virus?

As an FYI, if you "search" you can find a number of sites to look at the various English translations--from the KJV, to the RSV, even the Greek.

A review of them demonstrates the problem of translating--it is not just that the translators are nasty ol' ideologues. They have to interpret in order to translate.

--J.D.

rlogan

Perhaps so, premjam, who offers an answer in the stead of a fundie. I need it to be spelled out a little more explicitly though. The target market would be people who...?

Behind the original post lurks the question that needs to be addressed by a fundie, repeated so often in this thread: Why literally.

Why literally. Why lit er al leeee........? Please?

Thank you, and kind regards. Really.

HerodionRomulus

Thanks for the welcome.

The NASB is the "updating" of the 1901 ASV though I use the term loosly. The NASB is quite partisan and not the most accurate.
I have both, actually I have a couple of dozen or more versions.

I am glad you use the NRSV. That would've been my recommendation.
I use it, actually what I have is an edition by Oxford Press (UK) which is one big volume which includes the NRSV with Deuterocanonicals AND the Book of Common Prayer for the Episcopal church.
The NRSV is usually the choice of serious scholars, you know folks from reputable schools with authentic degrees---not a piece of paper from the Boondock Bible Collage and Rifle Booteek.

Biff the unclean

Because the only books whose meaning you get by not reading them literally are novels.
Christianity is based on the assumption that the Bible is non-fiction and records historic events. To say "Lindberg was the first man to fly from the United States to Europe non-stop, but I don't mean that literally" takes away it's grounding in fact.

Herman Hedning

HSV seems to stand for Holy Scriptures Version. There is some information about it here.

And since you mentioned searching the web, I'm sure you all know about biblegateway.com, but I'll mention it anyways. They have loads of english language versions, and versions in most other languages as well. And you can do parallell searches to compare different versions. The two verses mentioned earlier in this thread comes out like this: Psalms 104:8-9

Secular Pinoy

Or, HNV is the Hebrew Names Version, basically the World English Bible, but changing the names of the people there into more authentic-sounding hebrew. It can be a bit hard at times. For instance, Matt 3:13 says: Then Yeshua came from Galilee to the Jordan to Yochanan, to be immersed by him. Yeshua? Yochanan? WTF?

I thought someone else would write about it so I never bothered. Seems that wasn't the case.