The Bible

>>9940339
it's the bible, you can get a free kjv i'm sure
you don't want to waste your time reading anything else

>>9940339
don't bother, man.
what you should really do if you want the religious experience, is to go train to become a catholic priest.

>>9940339
NAB is fine, but ideally you'd want the revised edition of it.

NAB is very good. You're not really going to "get" anything more out of the KJV than you would from the NAB/NRSV/RSV; the only reason to read the KJV is for 17th century prose and poetry. Newer translations take most of the good parts of the KJV and refresh everything else.

I wouldn't stress too much about the translation for just normal reading. If there's a particular passage you're interested in knowing more about it can be beneficial to see alternate translations but you can just look that up online.

>>9940339
If you're actually trying to learn something you should go for something like the new oxford annotated bible. If it's only for literary purposes then kjv is beautiful.

>>9940339
Navarre Bible.

If you know any other language besides English, reading a bilingvo or what's the term is a blast. Since they really care to translate it in the most perfect way, it's a great source to help you with learning that language too in the first place.

I've been reading KJV for the last few months and have looked at comparisons online. In my opinion the other versions are diluted for the sake of spoonfeeding those who can't appreciate the literary merit and even beauty of KJV. Pic related. You can do it, I bought mine on Amazon for ten dollars.

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>>9942355
Sorry don't know why it didn't attach.

>>9942355
>In my opinion the other versions are diluted for the sake of spoonfeeding
I don't think you understand what a translation is.

>>9942355
Yeah, if anything, being so wrapped in 17th century writing makes it more difficult to appreciate the Bible as it really is, since the Bible (or at least the NT) was originally intended to be read widely and eternally. Even the OT was translated to easily readable Koine for the people in Jesus's era and place.

Ultimately, my beef with the KJV is that -- due to printing companies deleting every useful addition in the KJV -- it's this butchered mess that, nonetheless, cons people into thinking it's the version straight from God himself.

For instance, the original KJV comes with a "note from the translators", just as one would expect from modern translators:
https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/1611-King-James-Bible-Introduction.php
And you can see that the KJV translators were just as nervous about their choice for certain words as modern translator groups are: every chapter comes with at least a couple variable translations that, time and time again, get removed from KJV printings.
(see, for example: https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-Chapter-1_Original-1611-KJV/, specifically 1:23)

People get this idea that the Bible should be this haughty, lofty thing that the reader should force themselves to read, even though translations are meant to be readable to the people of their time. If and when readers understand that the KJV was translated by a group very aware of their own fallibility (as other translation teams are their own fallibility, too), it becomes easier to move away from the KJV and get something that makes more sense to the reader.

And of course, even ignoring what I've been saying, one can simply argue
>translations
KJV arguably *adds* prettiness to the Bible that wasn't originally there in the Biblical Hebrew (OT) and Koine Greek (NT), especially since these languages are terse and difficult to translate.

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>tfw bought KJV bold text edition

how fucked am I? is it literally unreadable?

>>9944114
Sounds like it's just really flowery and difficult to understand unless you're familiar with archaic English.

>>9944114
As long as the translation is even fairly high on the formal equivalence scale, you're fine. KJV is one of those. And getting into 17th century writing isn't too terrible, especially given that -- being a Bible -- it was intended for fairly wide readership, and so it's not nearly as complex as Shakespeare.

However, unless your version comes with additional notes, you might run into some words that have drastically different meanings now compared to back then:

https://www.lds.org/new-era/1977/04/a-short-glossary-of-obsolete-words-in-the-king-james-new-testament?lang=eng
(excuse this being an LDS site; for whatever reason, its "obsolete words" list is more comprehensive and prominent than others...)

If you want to go into the KJV for the effect that it's had on the English language, then that's fine -- I personally think reading the Bible is valuable because of the literary value of the stories, the concepts, the arrangement of things, etc., since those would be preserved across cultures and eras. You can still do those things with KJV, but there'd be less hair-pulling and head-scratching with a modern translation.

>>9944151
>>9944154
Lol thanks but I wasn't worried about it being KJV, in fact I wanted a KJV. It's just that my mildly undiagnosed autistic self cannot allow myself to read a bold text edition when a normal edition exists.