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The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s.
The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a great catalog out there of the most egregious translations in the NIV [1]. One such example:
> Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”.
Are you interested in a readable Bible that flows well to modern English ears? The New Living Translation (NLT) is fantastic and very underrated. I recommend reading the Psalms in the NLT since much of the language of the Psalms being in a higher register in the NIV and other translations doesn't land as well, but reading the Psalms in NLT makes it much more relatable and human. I find the way it reads refreshing, and it's based on more modern scholarship.
Are you interested in latest scholarly understanding of the Bible? The NRSV is the consensus version (as much as there could be one).
Are you interested in understanding the Bible as American Evangelical Christians read it today? That's currently the English Standard Version (ESV), which many churches have switched to as the NIV has lost favor in Reformed circles.
[1]: https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resource...
It's been eye opening to read books from the Old Testament in the word-by-word translation of ancient Hebrew. A lot of the semantic accretion over the millennia comes off and you get a more raw iron age tribal wisdom glowing through.
One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract nouns and these passages can also be read as aphorisms. I haven't looked deep into that but it makes way more sense to me that narrative is punctuated by such reflections on "Wisdom unites with Patience and beget Lasting Wealth than breaking into describing marriages and lineages then going back to the story...
It is still the most popular English-language version according to https://christianbookexpo.com/bestseller/translations.php?id..., so for his goal ("there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible") I think it's the right choice.
I swapped from the NIV to the NLT many years ago. My father’s uncle, J.A. Thompson, was a translator for the NLT and worked on Deuteronomy and Ecclesiastes. I really appreciate the way it flows too and it is my daily reading Bible. My wife and I read through the “Daily Bible” by F Lagard Smith (NIV). Now there is an NLT version in paperback. I would love a bonded version, however. Recommended for daily reading in chronological order so you can feel the arc of the story.
The Skeptic's Annotated Bible by Steve Wells would be better fitting HN :)
I've only ever read KJV and haven't heard of the others. Is the downside that KJV is 1600s English? That particular line:
KJV: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
NRSV: For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
NIV: For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
So KJV and NRSV agree.
> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson]
It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?)
I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically.
A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
I'd like to caution against extending stories with too much of one's interpretation/imagination and insisting the extended version proves author intent of the original.
Having just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb?
But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him.
Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex.
In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
> A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading.
That's a neat summation of Biblical hermeneutics if I've ever seen one and more generally of religious hermeneutics.
What is being defended as a "close and thoughtful read" implicitly is from a more cynical view, a projection of nuance, complexity, and deep structure,
which is predicated and motivated by the axiom that the text must, definitionally, be subtle and its lessons profound. Because it is, you know, divine.
If you don't accept that axiom, the countervailing read is no, the characterizations are clumsy, the plots ridiculous, etc.; and it is precisely the gymnastic efforts one must go to, to find in them inspiration and divinity, that convince those who do of the ineffably mystery of the divine.
Sometimes a crude story succeeds on some merits and fails on others; when it is enshrined and glorified it creates a frankly dangerous social pressure to praise the emperor's clothes.
> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging.
A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
I always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations).
It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique!
As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
The Hebrew is תָּמ֣וֹת נַפְשִׁי֮ עִם־פְּלִשְׁתִּים֒, which literally translates to "You shall die, my soul, with the Philistines."
"Let my soul die with the Philistines" being the literal translation?
Speaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
Pleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long.
As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's.
Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.
This is a solid collection, one that shows real intellectual curiosity. Something that would be interesting to add would be something that falls entirely out of the canon of Western philosophy - you have what is by all measures a diverse sampling of the various permutations of the intellectual procession of western thinking, but nothing reflecting traditions from outside that procession, eg Chinese, Islamic, Indian, or even Mayan or others from the Americas. It’d be interesting to pull from something entirely outside the intellectual tradition you’re well steeped in, to take a play horizontally instead of vertically.
(Note this isn’t a knock on the author for staying within western tradition, which is both deep and interesting and also diverse in a way which provides a wide breadth of ways of thinking about the world; rather, getting outside the tradition entirely would provide yet another perspective on that tradition, eg its bounds and the lines it doesn’t realize its prescribing itself within even as it changes dramatically over different eras.)
I’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different.
I discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word.
Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.
> It [The Bible] is full of great wisdom and great stories, and also cruelty, evil lies, and reminders that the world now is in many ways better than it was because people are better.
Are people better? And if they are what made them better?
Comenius! I'll be damned—this is the first time I've seen anyone actually reading his Orbis Pictus. There's a country whose educational system basically revolves around Comenius (the Czech Republic). And even there I don't personally know anyone who I'd be 100% sure has actually read the whole book!
Slightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
A sequel that diverges from and dwarfs its predecessor -- Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (translated into English)
https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus...
NIV is what I grew up with and I kind of tired of it because of that... I have a soft spot for the KJV/NKJV.
We read some passages from Decameron back in high school. Lovely book really, I should take the time to really read it cover to cover.
was expecting umberto eco after the first few - I'm sure you've either read him or desperately should!
I just need The Wind in the Willows :)
"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness"
Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy.
As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
> The four em-dashes were organically cultivated and sustainably harvested
And I bet you won't guess what any of them are.
Since you liked Orbis Pictus, you'll definitely appreciate The Way Things Work
These are indeed seven of the kinds of books I would expect to see in this kind of post shared on HN.
Second Frege to Gödel. It is a great introduction to a study of the foundations of mathematics.
What an inspiring post! So much surprise and depth in each selection.
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it.
> I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible.
Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already over-exposed to this stuff as is. I'm an atheist and I hate that I've been subjected to Christian propaganda my whole life as someone born and raised in the US. It's been a constant parade of ignorance.
Want to really understand the true nature of the US in the 21st century? Drop the bible and read Settlers instead: https://readsettlers.org/
> For example, Moses is easy to recognize at lower right, because of the glowing horns
I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
and the seven books I keep close: diary of a wimpy kid 1-7
> The Bible (New International Version, large print)
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it.
This is just dogma and factually wrong.
The cornerstone of Western Culture is Greek Philosophies/Texts added-to/modified-with Indian/Chinese/Islamic/etc. philosophies/texts.
Is no one going to comment on the goggly eyes or 8mm data tape? You people disappoint me.
I assume the first one is "High Performance HTTP Servers"
He lost me at Thesaurus
Ah the classic
> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible].
Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
Get the data off those drives now, rather than later. The longer you hope to get the data, the more hopeless it will be.