I may be a bit late for this discussion, and it has gone off topic quite a few times, but I thought I had a few cents to contribute to the original topic.
I'm surprised at how much support the King James Version got. If modern readers of the Bible want to get hold of a Bible that is as accurate as possible, for the purpose of an historical reading, they should steer clear of the KJV. Not only is the KJV (AKA the Authorised Version or AV) written in very old english (which, fyi, it was even when it was written!!!), it is also based largely on the Textus Receptus, which is a very late Latin manuscript.
Most modern Bibles are much more historically accurate because they are based on scientific textual criticism techniques. More and older copies of the Bible have been found since the KJV was translated, and all these manuscripts have been examined and compared. We are now fairly confident that we are closer to the original text than we have been for centuries.
Originally posted by dosdan The discovery of the DSS is not important are regards the question of God hiding His word or not. As I understand it, no important new works were found, as far as Christians are concerned. What is important to us is that up to that time the oldest hebrew scriptures were the Masoretic ones from 9th Century AD. The DSS contains manuscripts from 2nd Century BC. The comparison of the 22 manuscripts found from the book of Isiah, one of the most important books in the OT for Christians, showed there there has been very little difference in the two versions. Comparisons like this showed that holy scripture has survived the process of copying and transmission over time remarkably well.
This is quite true. Thank you.
Now, to get a really good historical reading of the Bible you would have to go back to the original Hebrew / Greek / Aramaic. I'm assuming the average reader will not be willing to put in the time and effort to learn the language and cultural setting of these languages. Therefore we normally settle for a translation. So how to pick a translation?
Anyone who has tried to translate something from one language to another knows that it's usually impossible to make a word-for-word translation, even among very similar and related languages. When we get to not-so-similar languages, things like sentence structure change. Not to mention idioms and figures of speech, which if translated literally would make no sense (like what was mentioned in this thread earlier - a translation of prayer into a South American language as something like, "wagging one's tail in front of a foreign overlord"!!!)
Translations vary from very literal to what we call "dynamic". A literal translation will TRY to follow the sentence structure as closely as possible. This often makes the translation very wooden and hard to read. However, it does mean it's close to the original in WORDING. Some good modern "literal" translations are (in order of my preference): the English Standard Version (ESV), the NET Bible, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB). Most of these versions have been updated from time to time to reflect advances in Textual Criticism, newly found manuscripts, and changes in the English language. In order to get the most historically accurate version, please make sure you get the latest update or revision.
Moving on to dynamic translations. These try to help bridge the gap between the original readers in the original language and context, and us. They are an idea-by-idea translation. This means they try to convey the meaning of the sentence in the way we as English speakers would say it, even if it means changing words or sentence structure a bit in the process. This is all good and well, but in order to do this we must first be able to understand what the author meant in the first place, in the original language! And for various sections of the Bible, this is much debated! So when reading a dynamic translation you are reading the biases and opinions of the translation team. Good examples of dynamic translations in my preferential order are as follows: New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT). Again, please make sure you pick up the latest edition of these, as they have been significantly modified over the years. Note that the latest NIV is just coming out now. It is available online, but is still hard to get in print.
Mark 1 - PassageLookup - New International Version, ©2010 - BibleGateway.com
So here you are between a rock and a hard place. Do you take a literal translation and struggle to understand it? Or do you take a dynamic translation and read more of the translator's opinions and biases? Probably the best thing to do (apart from going back to the original languages) is to read a selection of versions, some of each of the literal and dynamic.
I hope this helps others who may in the future be looking for a Bible to read for historical, cultural or interest's sake.