Ed Edwards writes:
Invaild versions are easy to figure out. THE FISHERMAN'S BIBLE isn't a vaild Bible.
Here are some that look like Bibles but are not valid Bibles::
a. The Reader's Digest Bible
b. New World Translation of the Bible (Watchtower Society) - JW bias
c. The Message by Peterson - fairly decent commentary, not a valid translation
I'm t'other Ed. And two 'Eds are better than one.
I fully agree with (a.) The
Reader's Digest Bible, IMO, is not a valid version, simply because it took a version that I might well otherwise consider a 'valid version', namely the
RSV, and "chopped out", or "condensed" out, more than half the OT and a quarter of the NT. That and that alone is enough for me not to accept it as a 'valid version,' so I fully agree, here.
I would much prefer (b.), over this one, even considering the Jehovah Witness 'slant' to the NWT. Incidentally, I do not consider the
NWT to be a 'valid version', overall, either, for the incipient bias as Ed Edwards has stated.
(c.) presents us with another option, however.
The Message is not a translation (and I do not think it claims to be a "translation"), to begin with, but a paraphrase. (The 'validity' of
The Message, is another question, however.) Hence, I consider this, along with such versions as
the 'Living' Bible and '
Phillips' as offering another completely differing scenario. I do not consider this so much as "commentary," as I would for, say, the
AMP. As to how 'valid' this one is, I suggest that it, just as every single version that has possibly been mentioned, from the most 'extremely literal' (the
YLT) to the freest paraphrase mentioned here (The
Message), to be 'valid' when any one of them, in fact, renders the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, in a manner consistent with the sense and meaning of the 'original' language. By the same token, I consider any and all versions to be 'invalid' when the rendering does violence to the sense and meaning of the 'original' languages.
I am only speaking of English, here, for the only three languages I really fully comprehend and am conversant in are English, 'Redneck,' and B * _ _ S _ * _, the latter two of which I both fully recognize and hear on an almost daily basis.
How much I may speak any of the above, I will leave for some other to decide.
Incidentally, one can find a "Klingon Bible", an "Hillbilly Bible" and a "redneck" Ten Commandments:
http://klv.mrklingon.org/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615179258/?tag=baptis04-20
http://activerain.com/blogsview/540913/Redneck-Ten-Commandments
Ed