What Bible Translation Should I Read w/ Tim Wildsmith

Have you ever asked yourself, "What Bible Translation should I read?"... Join us as we chat with Tim Wildsmith, a pastor with a passion for making sense of the more than 400 English Bible translations out there.

You'll gain a whole new perspective on how to choose a translation that resonates with you. Tim breaks down the various translation philosophies and the historical context that has influenced these versions. We'll walk through the enduring legacy of translations like the King James Version and how modern counterparts like the NIV and "The Message" offer fresh perspectives.

Whether you're a seasoned scripture reader or just starting, understanding these nuances can profoundly impact your study habits and spiritual growth. His insights are not just informative—they're transformational, as he guides us through the labyrinth of translation philosophies, textual bases, and the historical milestones that have shaped the way we read scripture today.


Links Mentioned:
Book: Bible Translations for Everyone
NIV Wide Margin Cambridge Bible
Journaling Supplies: Pigma Micron Pens
App/Website: Logos
App/Website: Bible Gateway

Use code POD2025Q1-Q2 to get 3 months free when you download and register for the Glorify app!

If you are a Christian woman seeking to know God deeper, study Scriptures, pray with and for others, strengthen your faith, and support other in doing the same, this is the place for you! 

Chapters

• 0:04 Understanding Bible Translations With Tim Wildsmith
• 11:31 Bible Translation Philosophy and History
• 16:54 Choosing Bible Translations Wisely
• 31:06 Exploring Bible Translation Differences
• 41:30 Bible Translations Impacting Study Habits
• 48:43 Exploring Bible Translations With Tim

Transcript

Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast,. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week, we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. This is Ellen, your host.

Ellen Krause: 0:34

Navigating the world of Bible translations can feel like trying to find your way through a maze With over 400 English versions to choose from. Understanding the differences and finding the one that fits us best can be a huge challenge. Many of us don't even know where to start or what to look for, and it's easy to feel lost. In today's episode, Tim Wildsmith, pastor, professor, and popular YouTuber, joins us with a solution. He has written a guide called Bible Translations for Everyone, designed to make sense of the Bible translation landscape and give us the tools to choose confidently. Tim helps us by breaking down how translations work, sharing the history of early English Bibles and diving into the unique qualities of the popular versions. Without this guidance, we may end up with a Bible version that doesn't speak clearly to us or accurately reflect the original meaning, leaving us feeling disconnected or even frustrated. So understanding these translations matters deeply, as it impacts how we connect with God's word in our daily lives. So let's discover how to find a Bible translation that will bring clarity, understanding and a deeper connection to scripture.

Ellen Krause: 2:00

Tim Wildsmith is a pastor and writer who loves to help people find a Bible that's right for them and apply it to their lives. His Bible-related content on YouTube has been viewed tens of millions of times by people around the globe from a wide array of Christian traditions and denominations. Tim earned a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary, after which he was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford's Wycliffe Hall. He has more than two decades of ministry experience and currently serves as one of the campus ministers at Belmont University, where he teaches a course called Understanding the Bible for Undergraduate Students a course called Understanding the Bible for Undergraduate Students. Tim lives in Nashville with his wife Becca and their 60-pound lap dog named Louie. Please welcome Tim.

Tim Wildsmith: 2:54

Thank you so much, Ellen. I'm excited to be here with you.

Ellen Krause: 2:57

Oh, Tim, I'm so excited to meet you. What kind of a dog do you have?

Tim Wildsmith: 3:02

You know what's funny? My wife found him on one of those uh instagram dog adoption center accounts here in Nashville and he's a big black dog but he kind of looks like a golden retriever but he's black. So we did do the doggy dna test and it came back that he was half black lab, half golden doodle and he's just the best.

Tim Wildsmith: 3:23

Yeah, it's, he's. He's handsome, he's fun, he's very scruffy. People are always asking us what he is and we're and we have to do what I just did and explain this is. This is how we know what he is, but he's a great dog.

Ellen Krause: 3:34

His name's Louis oh my goodness, he sounds great if he's a lap dog, you know that's right you get a lot of love, that's right. You get a lot of love, that's right.

Ellen Krause: 3:43

That's right. Well, tim, I'm so excited to talk to you about this today because I do think the subject of Bible translations eludes people, and I feel like it's something we want to know. We just don't take the time to actually figure it out. And now you've sort of done that for us. You've taken that time to really dig in deep and explain it out. And now you've sort of done that for us. You've taken that time to really dig in deep and explain it all. Why don't we start out with you telling us just a little bit about your background and how you even got interested in Bible translations?

Tim Wildsmith: 4:18

That's a great question. Yeah, so I grew up in the church. I'm really grateful that my parents are people of faith and so we bounced around a lot. My dad was a corporate executive and so we spent a bunch of time in the Midwest, but also the Southeast, kind of all over the place, and every time we landed in a new place my parents' priority was to find a local church where the pastor preached from the word and they had great ministries for my sister and I Emily and I from the word, and they had great ministries for my sister and I, emily and I. So we had a lot of different experiences with Sunday school and Awana and youth groups. So I've always kind of been interested in the Bible and really enjoyed it.

Tim Wildsmith: 4:52

In undergrad I went to Belmont University, where I'm now on staff as one of the campus ministers, and really loved my religion courses. But I got a business degree and then I decided to do music. I was a worship leader for about a decade, working in churches, leading worship, doing a little bit of singer-songwriter stuff, and then about 10 years ago I was leading worship at a local church and my best friend was the youth pastor and they decided to make him the college young adult pastor. And they said to me hey, tim, will you be the interim youth pastor while we do a search? And I was like I'm not really a pastor, but sure I'll hang out with these high school junior high kids. And about the time I decided I really loved doing it. They came to me and said we think you should do this. And I was like I'm not really qualified. So I went to seminary while I was a youth pastor. So I spent about six or seven years in full-time youth ministry. And I was a youth pastor. So I've been about I spent about six or seven years in full-time youth ministry and, um, really, where all of this came from is about four or four and a half years ago I started my YouTube channel.

Tim Wildsmith: 5:54

Um, my mom called me. I was finishing up seminary and she said hey, dad, and I want to buy you a really nice Bible as a graduation gift. And I don't know about you, ellen, but when I shop for myself, I'm the guy who I filter the search results by least expensive to most expensive. I bet your daughters can relate to this. When my mom said I want to buy you a gift, I went and searched Bibles online and I filtered it most expensive to least expensive and I just discovered this world of Bibles. I didn't realize I probably had not purchased myself a new Bible in five or six years and I had several lying around. But it was like all of these different publishers, all of these different styles of Bibles and, yes, translations of Bibles. And so, just because I was geeking out about it oh, by the way, this was the spring of 2020.

Tim Wildsmith: 6:43

So COVID happened and everyone was stuck at home and I just I got obsessed with this. I did a deep dive and so I created a YouTube channel to talk about Bibles and very quickly, people started watching and saying hey, I've got questions about this, I've got questions about that. And one of the repeated questions from my viewers was okay, I want to get a new Bible, which translation should I go with? And I was trying to help them make sense of it, while I was making sense of it myself, and I was looking for a book that put it all in one place, so I could say, well, just order this book and it'll help you figure everything out. And what I found was like a bunch of books that were written by professors and academics that were a little bit too dense or they did way too much. I just wanted something simple and I could not find it.

Tim Wildsmith: 7:29

And about that time an editor from Zondervan reached out to me, Dale, my editor, and he said do you have any book ideas? And I said actually there's a spot here, there's a missing place here where we could do a book about Bible translations. That's really helpful for normal everyday people to just kind of explain the similarities and differences. And that was about two and a half years ago. And here I am putting this book out and it's been a really fun process to learn about it but then to also put it all together so that people can try to make sense of everything.

Ellen Krause: 7:59

That's so interesting to see how God has worked in your life and all the different sort of twists and turns that it's taken, and I love that you're doing something that you're passionate about and that sort of led you to the spot that we're at now. You mentioned that there are over 400 English language translations of the Bible. That is a lot. Why are there so many?

Tim Wildsmith: 8:33

That's a great question. So 400 is what most people would say in terms of like different versions of the Bible in English. Not all of them are complete translations and not all of them are produced by big time publishers and widely known. I would say I probably cover about 20 to 25 translations in my book. There's like the 10 to 15 that are probably the most commonly used and then a few other ones that I wanted people to think about and know about. But part of that is one of the things I did in the book was I went chronologically through the history of the Bible, going all the way back to William Tyndale or even before him to John Wycliffe, like the early stages of the Bible in English, and you can kind of see well, there's a pocket of people over here and they're going to do some translation work. And there's a pocket of people over here.

Tim Wildsmith: 9:18

As you can imagine, 600, 700 years ago they didn't have a way to communicate with one another. So years ago they didn't have a way to communicate with one another. So you have different things popping up and then now, as time has gone on, that still happens. There's a little bit more overlap in the ability to communicate with one another, but it might be. A group of people over here is looking to translate the bring the scriptures into a modern form of English over here. There's another one over here or we're doing it as part of a project for this seminary or this university or for this denomination, and they're all kind of working doing their own projects. Every now and then they do come together and kind of work smarter, not harder, so to speak, but that seems to be. It's just kind of compounded over time. So 400 is the total amount over the last several hundred years that the Bible has been in English, but right now, like I said, probably 20 to 25 that are really the most commonly used ones.

Ellen Krause: 10:05

That's incredible. Recently I had on our podcast a gentleman who works for Wycliffe and we take it so much for granted in the United States all these different translations, and here, the United States, all these different translations, and here they're still working on translations for cultures and subcultures that don't even have the Bible in their own language yet. So I think it's just so fascinating. For those of you that are listening, I will make sure to put a link to that podcast, because it is absolutely incredible the work that they do there. Well, tim, you write in the introduction that there's a whole lot more that goes into Bible translations than people realize. What are the main things that people need to know about it?

Tim Wildsmith: 11:03

So most people know well, not most people, I'm sure some people know this but the Bible was not written in English. So we have the Old Testament was primarily written in ancient Hebrew, but there's also some passages that were written in a language called Aramaic, and the New Testament was written in an ancient form of Greek called Koine Greek, and so you have to go through the process of translating those languages into modern English, and that is a very, very complex process. And so the three main things that I talk about in my book are one, the textual basis, and that is literally the texts that are being used as the basis for the translation. There are thousands and thousands of manuscripts just of the Greek New Testament that are collected and cataloged and researched and studied, and they basically the organizations that do this, the research organizations publish editions of the Greek New Testament where they basically take into account all of the different little fragments that they have here and there, and they compile an edition that's called the critical text. Most commonly, that's just one edition of the Greek New Testament. There's also one called the Textus Receptus and there's one called the majority text, and even within some of those there's some slight differences. So it's which translation or which editions of the text they're translating from. That's the textual basis, and many of them are the same. They use the same textual basis. The foundation of most of them is going to be very similar, and then you get into something called translation philosophy.

Tim Wildsmith: 12:37

So what is the perspective and the philosophy of these teams of translators as they work from ancient Aramaic Hebrew, greek into English? As you can imagine, they said things thousands of years ago in ancient Hebrew that we don't have a direct translation for now. There are words and phrases that don't exist or they might mean something different if we translated them very literally. There are idioms, there is word order, syntax. I talk in the book about how, if we actually translated it one for one, it would be hard for us to read because the word order is different.

Tim Wildsmith: 13:08

One of the best examples is most Christians know that there are multiple different words for love. In the Greek New Testament we talk about the different types of love. We've all heard a sermon where the pastor said now, this is not that type of love, it's this type of love, but in English we just have the word love to translate those, and so you kind of have to understand what you're doing. And so the translation philosophy of the translators guides their work. And you usually see this, and I included a translation spectrum in my book. So on one end is word for word, literal, formal equivalence translations, where their goal is we're going to stay as close to those original languages as possible, which sounds like a pretty good idea. On the other side is translations that say it's called thought for thought, functional equivalence. They're going to say you know what, when we keep it really close, it can be hard to understand. So in those places where it's difficult to understand in modern English, we're going to rephrase some things so that it's easier for people to understand. Those are the two sides of the translation philosophy, or that translation spectrum. So that's.

Tim Wildsmith: 14:09

The second big thing is what is the philosophy?

Tim Wildsmith: 14:11

I think it's really important to know which translation philosophy the Bible you're reading is under, so that you can understand what the goal of the translators was.

Tim Wildsmith: 14:20

And then the third thing is people history. That's why I wrote the book in chronological order, because you can see how one of the things that happened in those early translations was the English Reformation and Henry VIII and the battle between the Protestant church and the Catholic church and all of that stuff is mixing together and it's impacting the world of Bible translations and so all of those things coming together are kind of the big three things that I talk about. So I set that up at the beginning and then each chapter I talk about those different aspects of each translation to help people understand the similarities and the differences and how it all comes together. And then there's all these little fine-toothed comb things that we can talk about in each translation that will make them slightly different. That's what I talk about when I say find a Bible that's right for you. Some of these factors kind of tweak things just a little bit where it might actually help you engage more with the text if you go from one translation to another.

Ellen Krause: 15:17

And I think also vice versa, like if you are reading a thought for thought translation, but you do want to maybe go a little bit deeper into the words. It's great to have another version in the word for word that you can also look at too, which is why there's so many versions can be helpful. I know you mentioned in the text that you're not a huge fan of these Bible translation spectrum charts. Mostly, though, when you get into the nitty gritty right of like separating ones that are very similar, would you say.

Tim Wildsmith: 15:58

Yeah, I've already had a few people reach out to me and say well, you put the ESV to the left of the NKJ, whatever it is, and they're like, and I said in the book, I'm not really concerned about which one is more or less literal or more or less dynamic than the ones around it, I'm more concerned with which general category it falls under.

Tim Wildsmith: 16:19

A lot of times these translation charts that you see are pretty subjective and I did find some people who did some actual data, some comparing of words and phrases from English with the ancient languages, and that's kind of how I based my translation chart.

Tim Wildsmith: 16:33

But if you are reading the ESV every day and you want to get something different, it doesn't make a ton of sense, in my opinion, for you to jump over to the NASB, because those are pretty close to one another on the translation spectrum, they're doing the same thing, whereas if you went to the NIV or the NLT from the ESV, you'd get a more thought for thought translation. And I do think that having translations from different places on the spectrum and reading them side by side and seeing what the translators did to word things differently, will actually help you better understand and see the differences in the text. That's what I do. That's what I do all the time is I just I often will pull up like a Bible gateway or something like that and just compare side by side. Most people, if they ever hear me preach, I always start saying and guess what it says in this translation, because it's just a slight difference in wording can bring new things to mind for you.

Ellen Krause: 17:24

Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, what do you think is the most common thing that people miss when choosing a translation?

Tim Wildsmith: 19:39

Oh, that's a really good question. I think sometimes what I've learned actually, ellen, doing interviews about this book, is that a lot of people. I thought I was going to answer the question why do we have so many translations and what makes them different from one another? And what I realized is there's a first level question before that that many people don't even ask, which is why do I read the translation that I read? And for me the answer was well, this is I grew up with the NIV, I've always had the NIV. I share the translation that I read, and for me the answer was well, this is I grew up with the NIV, I've always had the NIV. I share the story in the book. I got to college and people started reading the ESV and I kind of felt left out, so I started reading the ESV. That's not a great reason to read the Bible. So, because we have all of these options, do this research, read this book and go.

Tim Wildsmith: 20:25

Okay, there's some features of this Bible translation that really work for me. A good example that I've been talking about lately on my channel is capitalized pronouns for God, jesus and the Holy Spirit. So I said to my channel I just put a little Q&A out there, a little poll, and said when you read the Bible or you write about God and you refer to him as he do, you prefer that he is capitalized or not capitalized. And what I saw on my channel was that, like over 85% of people said, I want it to be capitalized. That's actually something called reverential capitalization and there's only a handful of Bible translations that capitalized. That's actually something called reverential capitalization and there's only a handful of Bible translations that do that. There's the NKJV, the NASB. Those are translations that they capitalize God's pronouns in order to A show reverence to God and B to make it clear when the text is talking about God and not someone else, a human person, in that passage. But if you prefer that, if you strongly prefer that and you think that's helpful for you, it's good to know which translations do that, because a lot of the major translations don't and they have their reasons for not doing it as well. So I made a video about that where I talked about that.

Tim Wildsmith: 21:35

Another good one is there are several translations that signify whenever the New Testament is quoting from the Old Testament in the text, so the CSB. If you're reading the Christian Standard Bible and you get to a passage where one of the New Testament writers is quoting the Old Testament, those words will be bolded and that's a signifier to you as you're reading. Oh, the Apostle Paul is quoting something here. I'm going to go do a little bit more digging and jump back there. The NASB uses small capital letters to do the same thing.

Tim Wildsmith: 22:06

So there's some different features within the text and those are literally baked into the translation. Those are decisions that were made by the translators in order to help the readers. But if you need something like that, if you like something like that, you've got to know which translation does it so that you can find it. I think just those two examples capitalized pronouns and New Testament quotes of the Old Testament. If those two things kind of shape your search for a Bible, it'll narrow it down to just a couple, three translations. That might be a really good fit for you.

Ellen Krause: 22:35

I love you know that's so interesting. I love that you mentioned at the beginning. You kind of asked yourself why do I have the Bible? That I do, and I was thinking about that as well and I was thinking, gosh, I started out with King James in grade school. And then I know, like later I got the NIV like you had, but then someone gave me an NLT.

Tim Wildsmith: 23:03

Yep.

Ellen Krause: 23:04

And so I really have spent a lot of time in there as well, but none of them I've actually gone through this process that you're describing to really think it through. I know one of the aspects that was really important to me was the study Bible feature. Like that could really help me. Is that something that you also sort of evaluate, like the study Bible portion?

Tim Wildsmith: 23:34

In the book I don't, but on my YouTube channel I do. I talk about study Bibles. I've got a stack of them back here behind me and I tell people all the time I think you should have, everybody should have at least one good study Bible. In fact, my best study Bibles video is one of the top three or four channels, or top theory of war videos on my channel. Because for most of us maybe all of us if we want to be honest we don't read things about first century culture in Israel and naturally understand the historical context. And so having a great study Bible where biblical scholars who have studied this and have PhDs in these sorts of things have some notes in there to explain to you what's going on. I remember reading one, where it was, I think it was the note where Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself, and in one of the study Bibles I had the note said remember the Jews neighbors in Jerusalem were the Romans who were oppressing them. So love your neighbor meant something really powerful in that moment.

Tim Wildsmith: 24:37

And I was like, oh, like that's something I would have not probably thought about on my own. So, yeah, I love a great study Bible that can help you understand the literary and historical context of what you're reading, because that's so important for us to understand, to understand what the Bible means to us. It's good for us to understand what the Bible meant to the people who were originally given it and to help make sense of that.

Ellen Krause: 25:02

Yes, it's absolutely essential. So do you think that it's okay for Christians to read translations of the Bible that are different from what their church uses? And just saying that reminded me that I actually now have an ESV Bible, because we got a new pastor about four years ago and when he changed the church or sort of took over, he went with ESV, and so I'm like, well, I really want a Bible that when I'm in church, I can follow along with what he's doing. So how do you feel about that?

Tim Wildsmith: 25:41

One of my tips in the book is to tell people talk to your pastor and it sounds like your pastor said hey, this is what I'm going to be preaching from, and I think it's good to have a Bible that's in the same translation that your pastor is going to preach from regularly, so that you can kind of be it's a community thing, right? We're all in this together. We've all been part of those Bible studies and I don't think this is that big of a deal. But where someone's reading from a passage and your Bible doesn't say it the same way theirs does, you can follow along. This is a great and essential difference in translations. You can follow along, you see where they're going, but there might be a word or phrase here or the way it's phrased that's different and I don't think that's a big deal. That actually, I think, helps us.

Tim Wildsmith: 26:22

I've been in multiple small group settings where I'm like it's funny, your Bible said that and my Bible says this. Let's talk about that. You know why would they have done that? But I do think it's a good idea as a basis when you're considering which translations to read from and study from on a regular basis, to put that one that your church is using in regular rotation for yourself. Maybe it's not the one you're going to read every day, but it'll be the one you take with you to small group or Sunday school or to church that sort of thing. Like my pastor, we switched about three years ago and went from a church where it was usually ESV to a church now where the pastor almost always preaches from the NIV. And so I got a nice little portable size NIV Schuyler Bible that I take with me to church every Sunday so that I can follow along and kind of be in the same translation as my pastor.

Ellen Krause: 27:11

Yeah, it's so. It is really helpful, I think, in that setting for sure. Well, in the book you go into detail on several translations. How did you decide which ones of those 400 that you were going to actually really sort of delve into deep to help people understand?

Tim Wildsmith: 27:42

Yeah, that's a great question. So the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association kind of keeps track of Christian books and Bible sales and they put out every year a top 10 list for the best-selling books, bibles, and then they do one that's just the top-selling Bible translations. So I was able to see for the past 10, 15 years on their website the top 10 best selling Bible translations. So those 10, I wanted for sure to be in the book. I think there are 12 or 13 chapters that are dedicated to individual translations and then, like I said, there's a couple of catch-all chapters at the end about other translations that I do like a short overview of some. So those 12 or 13 include those translations in the top 10, and then some other translations that I thought were really important. So, for example, you have the King James Version from 1611, and then that's always in the top five. It's usually in the top two or three and then the next translation that's in the top 10 is the New American Standard Bible, which came out first in the 1950s I'm sorry, the 1970s.

Tim Wildsmith: 28:45

That skipped both the revised version of 1885 and the American Standard Version, its contemporary in 1901, as well as the revised Standard Version from the 1950s, and I thought it was important in the book because, as I was doing my research about the top 10, those other translations kept getting mentioned so much.

Tim Wildsmith: 29:06

I even say this in the chapter about the revised version and the American Standard Version I didn't think I was going to put this chapter in the book. Oh, I need this to be in there, not because people are going to go out and buy a copy of this translation tomorrow, because there's very few of them in print I don't think there's anybody actively printing the American Standard Version or the Revised Version but because they played such an important role in the development of the Bible in English, I thought it was important to include those chapters, and so you're getting the ones that are the most successful. You're getting the ones that really helped create the world of Bible translations that we're in, and then you're getting about 10 others that I really think are important for people to know about, that are not bestsellers but are solid translations that are worthy of some consideration that are worthy of some consideration.

Ellen Krause: 30:05

Okay, awesome. So there's definitely a lot of meat there to look at for every translation that you go over deeply. You know, one thing that really caught my eye when I was reading through your material was the King James Version and how it's just deemed as. In a lot of people's minds it's the it version from time past, and I love one of the things that you said in there, that there are times when you do want to look back at the King James Version and when you read it you feel like you're reading with the saints of the past. I loved that quote in there. Why don't you tell our listeners just a little bit more? Because there are people out there with the King James Version that are, like you called it only King James, only people. Help us understand a little bit more background on that.

Tim Wildsmith: 31:04

Sure, the King James Version. I do a chapter before the KJV where I talk about all these translations that predated it Again, so you can kind of get the history that led to the KJV. Here we are 413 years after it was first published and the KJV is still the one of the top two or three bestselling translations, year after year in English. It is one of the most legendary texts of all time. The best, one of the best selling. The book is the. The Bible is the best selling book of all time, but the King James Version it has sold more copies than any other version of the Bible, and so it's just so legendary. And yet a lot of people like me did not grow up with it because we had all of these other more modern options, and there are some fans of it that are really, really deep-seated, and I really respect and love the KJV. I have several editions of it. I think there's certain times where it just feels right to be translated, because they don't mean the same thing now that they did when it was first translated 400 years ago. He calls them false friends, and that's really fascinating to me. So it can be difficult for some people to understand the KJV, for the origins of the NIV was a businessman up in the Pacific Northwest who was trying to share the gospel with his co-workers and one of them started laughing at him and he said what are you? That sounds like something ancient because he was reading the King James Bible and that was like the seeds that started moving towards the NIV, which was one of the first kind of thought for thought functional equivalence translations of the Bible. But yes, there are people who there is a movement I would call it called the King James Only movement, and that is. There's a lot of different perspectives within that, but the overarching idea is that the King James is the only legitimate, inspired version of the Bible in English and I know a lot of people who hold that thought and they're very thoughtful about it and it kind of goes back to those things I was talking about.

Tim Wildsmith: 33:30

The textual basis of the KJV is slightly different than some of our modern translations the philosophy, things like that. But then there's also an extreme side of it. I talk about Bible translations on my YouTube channel and I see the extreme comments where people will. If I review an NIV Bible, I'll get a comment from someone that says that version of the Bible is satanic because it's not the King James Version. And so there's like this extreme version of KJV only-ism that I think is very divisive and unhealthy, that a lot of people ascribe to, and there's some preachers and pastors and there's a kind of a movement out there of people who get pretty fired up about it. And so I recently did a video on my channel where I talked about kind of the dangers of that extreme KJV only position.

Tim Wildsmith: 34:18

I'm not anti-KJV, I just don't ascribe to that thought that it is the only inspired word of God in English. There are some who believe that the King James Version is more accurate than the Greek and Hebrew texts that it was translated from and that they can use the KJV to correct the Greek New Testament, which again that's part of that kind of extreme side of things. And so you do deal with that and I talk about the King James only position in my book and explain how it developed and where it comes from. And again, there's probably people who are listening to this who've only ever read the KJV and they love it. And I'm not saying that those people are wrong to read the KJV. It's that extreme side that I think gets a little bit confusing for people.

Ellen Krause: 35:07

Yes, okay, yes, thank you for clarifying that for us. You know I found the history and, and you know if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh, bible history, that sounds kind of boring. Actually, I was so fascinated by learning and I feel like it's really grounded me in giving me a greater depth of respect for the translators, a greater understanding of what I'm reading. I thought it was so fascinating because I had heard so much about the King James. I was just really so surprised to learn that the first Bible translation that you know started to include the numbering and references and maps and things was actually the Geneva Bible. So there's so so many interesting things that you have included that I think, if you're listening to this, you'll be very intrigued by it. I think it will advance your knowledge, your appreciation of God's word.

Tim Wildsmith: 36:19

Absolutely.

Ellen Krause: 36:20

Well, Tim, if you had to pick three translations, what translations are considered the most different in a side-by-side comparison? Let's say you're doing a study and you kind of want the range.

Tim Wildsmith: 36:35

Yeah. So if you think about that translation spectrum, this is one of those places where it's pretty helpful. I hesitate to throw the message in there, but the message is a translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson and I'm actually a fan of. But a lot of people call it a paraphrase and so they would put it either not on the translation spectrum or all the way to one side. So Eugene Peterson, a beloved American pastor and writer who at the time he was pastoring a church in Maryland, leading a Sunday school class, and people were struggling with Galatians and I think he was using the NASB or one of those translations, and so he started translating it himself and taking it to the class and he was putting in the vernacular of the people that went to his church. That got picked up by a publisher and eventually he ended up publishing the entire Bible where he actually did. Most people don't know this. He went back and translated from Hebrew and Greek. He was trained in those things. So by definition it is a translation, but it's a very. It feels more like a paraphrase. It's very, very, very modern. One of the things I like about that is that it just it feels different sometimes than the way. I'm used to the Bible and so if I pick up the message and read a passage there, it'll just spark some new ideas. So that's, you've got one side like way modern English. Some people don't even consider it a true translation. On the other side, I think you have something like the King James Version, which is the KJV was very formal equivalents. Their goal was to stay as close to those original languages as possible and it's in a version of English that is 400 years old and many of the words and phrases and the you know they have the TH ending on a lot of the verbs and the these and the thousand stuff like that. Those are two extremes. If you come in from those two extremes, I'm going to give you five. You asked for three, I'm going to give you five. Those are the two extremes. If you come in from those extremes, you're going to move to the New Living Translation, which we've talked about already. The New Living Translation is a truly functional equivalence dynamic translation. It sounds like you and I are talking right now, but it's a little bit more close to the original languages than something like the message that's a very easy to read translation Coming in from the New King James Version would be something like sorry.

Tim Wildsmith: 38:57

The King James Version would be something like the New King James Version Still formal equivalents, but they updated the language. They took out the these and the thous and the antiquarian Elizabethan words and they kind of modernized it. It was produced in like the 1980s, right, and then something in the middle. Actually, the translation that I would deem the very center of the spectrum is the Christian Standard Bible, the CSB. I think they coined the phrase optimal equivalence when they were translating it.

Tim Wildsmith: 39:24

They really wanted to split the difference between both sides and put something in the middle and I do think it reads kind of in between those two things.

Tim Wildsmith: 39:32

And so if you grab one from either side and one from the middle and you do your daily reading let's say you pick the NLT to do your daily reading because it's really easy to read from and it's going to be I tell people the NLT is a great translation to read when you wake up in the morning and you're having your coffee because you don't have to fight with the words, it's just going to flow really nicely. But then when you're ready to do a little bit of a deep dive and study, grab that formal equivalence and compare and contrast. Grab the CSB and see what the kind of middle ground position would be, and that will help you, I think, get a balanced understanding. That's not even bringing in, like we talked about earlier, a study Bible or a devotional or some research tools, things like that. This is just using the translations themselves. You can compare and contrast and I think it will illuminate the text for you in a really meaningful way.

Ellen Krause: 40:20

Absolutely. I love that when you're doing a Bible study and the teacher will recommend okay, now look this up in these other translations and see how they lend maybe a slightly different you know understanding of what a particular word means. So those are great suggestions. Thank you for that. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, tim, what would you say is sort of you know, say is sort of you know? How do I want to say this? What is something that you really learned that surprised you as you were going through this, and how would you encourage just the average listener to engage with their Bible?

Tim Wildsmith: 41:12

I mean, we've talked about history a little bit, and I think that that really is the thing that surprised me the most is how these translations that I honestly never heard of before I started working on this book impacted the ones that I have heard of. I mentioned the RSV earlier. So the RSV came out in the 1950s. It's called the Revised Standard Version. I read an entire book that's four times as long as my book about the RSV just to do my research for mine. So it's about five or six pages in my book, but I read this entire book about it and I was fascinated to see the process behind its development and how it happened.

Tim Wildsmith: 41:53

But then the RSV was used as a foundation for both the NRSV and the ESV, which are two very successful translations to this day, and so I think that's what one of the things that surprised me the most was just how much our translations today are in conversation with the translations that came before them and also with one another the ESV, the CSB, these Bible translations that are really, really popular today.

Tim Wildsmith: 42:22

Part of the reason they were even developed in the first place was as a response to the things that were happening with the NLT and the NIV, and so how all of that works together. I found that really fascinating. So my hope is that people will pick up the book because they want to know more about Bible translations and they'll be able to explain the differences between one and the other to their friends and family, but also that they'll get that history behind everything, so it helps them kind of piece together the timeline of how everything works. I found that really really intriguing, and it's one of my favorite threads in the book is the way that they're all connected to one another.

Ellen Krause: 43:00

Oh, how have you seen? You know, once somebody finally does get this translation, that really speaks to them? How have you seen it impact people's study habits and rhythms of reading? Impact people's study habits and rhythms of reading.

Tim Wildsmith: 43:13

One of my favorite things is getting a message from one of my viewers on YouTube saying hey, I watched a bunch of your videos and I ordered this Bible and now I'm reading my Bible every day and totally loving it, and part of that is translation.

Tim Wildsmith: 43:28

Part of that is the reason I started reviewing Bibles. Again, going back to what we said earlier, I realized there was all these different kinds out there Study Bibles, devotional Bibles, single column Bibles, you know, bibles with verses, Bibles without verses, like verse numbers. There's all these different things and I'm convinced that if you find a Bible, a translation and an addition of the Bible that you really love and enjoy reading it, that you're going to want to spend more time with it. And if you can, if you can get over that hump of I, just want to spend time with my Bible. Now you are spending time with your Bible and I believe that God's word will do the rest, that the Holy spirit and God will transform your life If you just keep yourself rooted in the word. And so, yeah, I get messages from people all the time who are like I found this incredible Bible and I love it and I'm spending more time reading the Bible than I have in years and I'm like yes, we did it, it's the most apropos to this interview that.

Ellen Krause: 44:36

I've ever had. So here it is for you, Tim. What Bible is your go-to Bible, would you say, and I'm sure you have a lot. But if you're just going to pick one up and do your morning quiet time, which translation do you use?

Tim Wildsmith: 44:52

I recently was ordained by my church and my wife surprised me with a really beautiful copy of the NIV wide margin from Cambridge Bible. She sent it to my friend, daniel in North Carolina. He's a Bible rebinder which is a whole nother world of stuff, but he took the cover off of it and put this beautiful leather cover on it and the church and my wife gave it to me as a gift. And because my church uses the NIV because my day job at Belmont University we usually use the NIV for chapel and things like that I've been spending a lot more time.

Tim Wildsmith: 45:23

I grew up with it and then I kind of went away from it, but I've been spending a lot more time with the NIV in the last couple of years and have really, really enjoyed it. What's cool about it for me is that a lot of the verses that I memorized as a child are in the NIV. And because I spent a lot of time with the ESV and the NRSV, coming back to it now, there's this deep familiarity with a lot of these scriptures that is, I don't know. Sometimes I read something I'm like, oh yeah, that's the way that I learned it and it's really special. So the NIV has definitely been at the top of my list for the last couple of years.

Ellen Krause: 45:54

Awesome, awesome. Do you have any favorite journaling supplies or anything that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience?

Tim Wildsmith: 46:04

I documented a couple of years ago a read through of the Bible, and a lot of people were asking me what I was using because I had this really nice Bible and I just got a bunch of Sharpie highlighters and stuff like that and people were coming in the comments going you're ruining your Bible, what's going on? But I did find these very, very thin pens. They're called Pigma Microns and I found one that was literally called Blue Black, and so the ink color is, oddly enough, somewhere between blue and black and it's like perfect for underlining and writing notes in the margins, and so the Pigma Micron pens are my favorite Bible writing pens, for sure.

Ellen Krause: 46:46

Okay, all right, we'll make sure we put a link to that in the show notes if you guys are interested. Okay, lastly, what's your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

Tim Wildsmith: 46:57

You know what's interesting? Because I'm so into translations. I'm in the affiliate program for Logos, the Bible study software, and it is over the top incredible. So that has to be on my list because if I really want to prepare a sermon or things like that, it's really great.

Tim Wildsmith: 47:14

But honestly, the website BibleGatewaycom has this cool feature where if you type in a verse, it'll bring it up. You have all of these different translations that are right there online and you can get the app as well. But then there's a little it looks like two little books side by side and if you click that, you can then pull up the translation in. You can pull up the verse in a different translation and so you can compare side by side right there on the screen. I do that all the time on my channel. When I'm wanting to show a verse or talk about translations, I'll pull up Bible Gateway and show the side by side so people can see it. I think that's a really great tip, a really great tool, and Bible Gateway has a bunch of blogs and things like that that are really helpful for Bible study. So I'm on that website probably every single day. I think I open up Bible Gateway and use it.

Ellen Krause: 48:01

Oh, awesome, that's the parallel Bible right, where you can kind of pick two, put them side by side.

Tim Wildsmith: 48:06

Yeah, I used to have a copy of that. When I was a kid it was like the NIV and the NASB and that's probably like that might be like the NIV and the NASB and that's probably like that might be like the foundation of me understanding the differences between Bible translations was having something like that and not really understanding why someone bought that for me, but that's such a great, great, great tool.

Ellen Krause: 48:22

Yes, oh, my goodness, tim, thank you so much for explaining all of this, really guiding us through this essential conversation that we need to have to have a better understanding about scripture. So thank you so much for being here today.

Tim Wildsmith: 48:40

Thank you, Ellen. This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the time.

Ellen Krause: 48:44

You're welcome and for our listeners, I would like to encourage you to take some time this week and explore a few translations side by side. You can easily do that online, just as Tim mentioned, and I just have to encourage you to grab a copy of Tim's book Bible Translations for Everyone. I feel like this is like one of those essential books that you need to have in your library, like it's something that you could always refer back to, so I highly encourage that we will have a link in the show notes for you as well. Tim also mentioned Logos, and we also here love Logos, and they have changed their whole new access into there. You don't have to buy an expensive package anymore. You can actually get a monthly subscription, so we'll make sure we include a link to that as well, because it is just a phenomenal tool. So thank you everyone so much for listening. We appreciate you all so much. Have a blessed day.