Why Are There Differences In Bible Translations?

**Warning: this post will most certainly contain things you will initially disagree with, but please read until the end (under 1500 words) before making any judgement or comment.** 

To start off with, everyone knows that the NIV was corrupted by people seeking to erase the uniqueness and divinity of Jesus Christ in order to facility the merging of all religions into one which will be promulgated by the coming new world order. The NIV ‘translators’ (so-called) knowingly, and intentionally “removed 64,576 words as compared to the King James Bible!” as is stated on this website. http://www.jesusisprecious.org/bible/satanic_bible_versions.htm. 

Also, we begin by accepting the reality that the KJV is the perfection of God’s word, furthermore that it is the only truly Authorized version, and that the Holy Spirit was at work in history to preserve God’s inerrant word through the work of these faithful translators to provide God’s own exact words in English once and for all in 1611. This is all in spite of the claims of unbelievers that over 100,000 changes have been made to the KJV over time. Those deceivers know full well that the vast majority of those so-called ‘changes’ were just an updating of the spelling of words from things like ‘shewn' to ‘shown’ and so do not really contain any substantive changes at all! 

If you have not been exposed to any of these preceding arguments before, you may have had any number of reactions ranging from shock and disbelief, to frustration, or even to your head actually exploding. If you have cherished and grown up with the KJV all your life, I would be very surprised if you have not heard at least some of those arguments, and probably many more like them. 

The problem is that practically all of those arguments about the KJV alone being God’s word in English are based on mixture of logical errors, misinformation, and ignorance. As a result the conclusions of these arguments about both the KJV and the NIV (along with other modern versions) are totally false. 

Those of you reading this sentence should know that many of those who support ‘KJV onlyism’ have already stopped reading after that last sentence. If, you, however are willing to critically examine the question of Bible translations, read on. 

I’m going to try and list a few of the most pertinent facts concerning Bible translations. I say a few because this topic is vast enough for a several hundred page book, which if you are interested in one, let me suggest a few: How we Got the Bible by Neil R. Lightfoot, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations? by scholar James White. 

So, at the risk of oversimplifying the topic, here is a first round of Bible translation facts. 

1. No part of the Bible was originally written in English. No one in Bible times spoke English. The Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Greek, and a small amount in Aramaic. 
2. Therefore all versions that now exist, or ever will exist in English must involve translation. 
3. While it is a good rule of thumb is that the higher number of qualified scholars to translate a text, the more reliable the final outcome will be, it is not guaranteed to be true always. The ASV & NIV each had teams of over 100 scholars working on the translation, but that does not mean what many people imagine. 100 scholars did not collaborate together every verse in the Bible. Rather, they worked in teams dividing up the text into smaller subsets with each group translating certain sections of scripture which would then be reviewed by a committee later. In contrast, “The Message” is not really a translation attempt, but rather a paraphrase written by one man. 
4. Bible translation is about choosing where to walk the line between two ‘poles’ if you will. On one pole you have the literal word-for-word translation and on the other is equivalence of meaning. 
5. The preface in all major Bible translations KJV, ASV, RSV, NASB, NIV, NKJV, ESV, HCSB, explains the path that the translators took between these two poles for this particular version. 

Now, you need to understand that 100% word for word translation is impossible between two languages as any bilingual person can tell you. The English “I am” requires 2 words while it is simply 1 “estoy” in Spanish or 1 “estou” in Portuguese. This is certainly true with Biblical languages as well. This is why I said translators must walk between the two poles, because you can’t ever actually be on either extreme. Regarding the pole of equivalence of meaning, you should know that the end goal of any good translator is actually to accomplish this. One way to translate the English phrase “he kicked the bucket” into another language would be to simply say “he died,” but if I went 1 step farther and used an expression in another language of equivalent meaning and similar style to the original I would be making a dynamic equivalent. So on the flip side of this spectrum you have a message which retains very little of the actual wording of the original text and instead aims for 100% comprehension of ideas by the reader. It should be noted that this pole is also impossible to achieve 100% because the exact meaning of some phrases in the original language is ambiguous. Now, there are also times where the wording of certain phrases in the original languages makes a range of meanings possible. In such cases, translator (being imperfect people) must make a decision and often do so based on theological reasons rather than logical or textual ones. This explains the wording difference in some cases, and unfortunately is used by some to justify doctrines which are not necessarily taught in the original languages. 

Now some facts concerning the Greek manuscripts from which we translate the New Testament.

1. We do not have the original New Testament documents, but the discovery of more ancient manuscripts brings us closer to the text of the originals all the time. 
2. The older a copy, the closer it is to the originals, and thus the more trustworthy it is. 
3. The proximity to the original source is more important than the number of copies available. For example, you may have 1,000 copies of a manuscript that are 400 years removed from the original, and only 5 copies that are only 200 years removed. The fact that there are 995 more copies 400 years removed in no way makes those copies the more reliable ones! In fact, the 5 would be superior in this case as they are 200 years closer to the writing of the originals! 
4. Since the KJV was translated, archeological discoveries have revealed more ancient and far more numerous Greek Bible texts than the ones from which the KJV was translated. 
5. The KJV suffers from the inferior Greek ‘Stephanus’ text upon which it relied for translation. 
6. In 1551, Robert Estienne, a French printer and Greek scholar, wanted to make portions of the Greek text he was using easier to locate and so he created a system of chapter and verse numbers. His text became known was the Stephanus text. 
7. The problem for the Stephanus text was that he was using a slightly modified Erasmus text which had several serious corruption problems. 
8. Modern Bible translators have far more ancient Greek New Testament manuscript evidence to work with than the translators of the KJV Bible did. 
9. This means that modern translations are simply based upon more ancient and more reliable Greek texts. 
10. Consider what this means. Any modern version which differs from Stephanus Greek text (made in 1551!!) may appear to be removing verses, but in reality they could just as easily be purifying the Bible back to the recently discovered Greek texts older by a millennium than chapter and verse numbers of Stephanus. 
11. This difference in the available manuscript evidence for the translators of the KJV and those of modern translations is the only reason that words and verses which once appeared in the KJV no longer appear in more recent translations. 
12. So, when the NASB, ESV or NIV remove a verse the KJV included (such as 1 John 5:7 for example) it is because these versions are committed to sharing what the word of God actually said before the additions to the Greek texts the KJV unwittingly including in 1611. 

In point of fact, many modern translations are restoring the word of God to its original before it was corrupted. So, in short, there is no conspiracy in modern translations to remove verses, but rather a strong commitment to return to the unadulterated, original text of the New Testament.