One thing has become increasingly clear as I’ve grown up: no one is telling the full truth. In fact, there’s rarely a complete, agreed-upon truth in any situation. Everyone is biased by the things that they’ve experienced, their own motivations, or what they think their audience wants to hear. This is what Bible translations have turned into in my head. Everyone has different experiences or research that would cause them to translate the Bible a certain way, and they often feel strongly enough to spark another denomination. As someone who always went to “nondenominational” church (it was likely watered-down Baptist), this is really my first experience with any Bible that isn’t ESV or NIV. Who knew that slight word changes could alter how we view an entire book?
I am enjoying reading my academic NRSV bible and my NIV side by side, using whatever context clues I can to make sense of the giant book in front of me. Commentary has been extremely helpful for me, both in an academic and personal sense. So many people have tried to make sense of this work, finding value in it from all kinds of directions. To me, this adds to the overall meaning of the book in my life and in a literature sense.