there must be thousands of threads on this subject in this website. And, everybody has a different opinion.
I think the moderators should ban the topic from its redundancy.
I have about a dozen different bibles, Jewish, Protestant, Catholic. If you really do a comparison on them, you will see that every verse is phrased a little bit different, to avoid copyright infringment.
So, looking for “the best” is really tough, because it is so subjective. The copyright laws make it so tough to blend all these together into the best of the best, for example.
I have stated my requirements for the perfect bible once or twice, but it has been a while so here goes.
It should be a good translation, have lots of helpful footnotes and cross-references, meditations and pictures. It should be sold as a book with an electronic copy on a CD, so you can do word searches on your computer.
It should have an accompanying concordance and features much like or better than Strong’s concordance.
It should have notes which illustrate the four senses of scripture that are defined in the catechism of the Catholic Church.
The thrust of this thread is to explore which of the English translations might be the best to use, but, put first things first. There must be something like 7 or 8 Hebrew and/or Greek versions of the Bible, so you should decide (which you will never do, of course) which of the original manuscripts you prefer as well.
Anyone’s selection of any particular bible translation will obviously have many biases and assumptions built into it, so I’m saying, lower your expectations about ths question. There is no Bible which meets my critieria, so I will refrain from any further recommendations.
