The Holy Bible: A Buyer’s Guide

Walk through the religion section of any major bookstore, and you’ll see an amazing array of Bibles. The broad selection of translations (also called versions)—and the seemingly endless ways in which they are packaged—is without historical precedent. But for many people, it is also bewildering, if not frustrating. Rather than the “blessing” it could and probably should be, it may be off-putting. When faced with a host of adjectives like “new” and “revised,” thoughtful buyers might well ask, What was wrong with the “old” or “traditional” or, dare I say it, the “original”?