Some might say that Acts 8:37 seems to have some serious stuff in it. Go ahead, read Acts 8:37 in the ESV Oh, wait, there it is in the footnotes Here is a picture of my most-used ESV showing Acts 8:37, but it takes two photos to show you. Go ahead, I’ll wait.Īctually, I’ll do it too. If you read predominantly any Bible besides the above KJV-line Bibles I just mentioned (such as the NIV, the CSB, the NLT, the (N)RSV, the ESV), do me a favor and look up Acts 8:37. To give you a taste of the kind of verses that the TR has, and many Bibles do not. Many of them areĪ) Earlier manuscripts than the TR manuscripts.Ĭ) This makes the brunt of the argument, which manuscripts correctly reflect the Bible as given by God to His people?ġ) What if the additions / inclusions in the TR contain something false?Ģ) What if the additions / inclusions in the TR contain necessary truths?ģ) In today’s Bible-translation world, the KJV and its direct successors (NKJV, and spoiler alert: the MEV) are the only Bibles that have TR-influenced translations.Īll that to say, the HCSB is a Bible outside of the TR tradition, however retained some TR verses. It came from a line of manuscripts called the Textus Receptus (TR) ( Latin for “Received Text).Ģ) In the late 1800s and early 1900s (think dead sea scrolls), manuscripts were discovered. If you are lost, let me see if I can give you a first-grade history lesson in Bible translations.ġ) The KJV is a Bible translated in the 1600s. With that, are they necessary? Any doctrines in TR verses are also present in verses that are not in argued verses. I find them to be helpful, and correct-in-doctrine. What I will say, is that I enjoy, and like the TR verses. I don’t know what to think, nor do I make the time to think about these arguments seriously right now. It wasn’t until fringe-fired up preachers were coming across my path by enraged Christians I met, or conspiracy-theory Facebook posts in late teenage life did I really get introduced to these arguments. And reading the NIV and then NCV growing up, I knew very little about the TR / KJV arguments. Let me state here that I am not a TR-only, or KJV-only guy (if that is not painstakingly obvious already).

Suffice it to say, one of the many things I liked and preferred the HCSB over the CSB was HCSB’s inclusion of some Textus Receptus (Majority text) verses. Again, refer to the above linked-blog post about the HCSB to get all of that info.

I compared the CSB with its predecessor (HCSB) and found that I enjoyed the HCSB better. In 2017 I was given a copy of the CSB (Christian Standard Bible). Anyways, after a few sermons in the NIV’84, you could say Driscoll sold me on the ESV, and the ESV became my primary teaching Bible. I don’t know why I thought that, maybe I heard some KJV-only preaching somewhere. In my sheltered North Idaho life, when I first caught ear of the ESV, I thought it was liberal, and reflective of progressive Christians. However, Driscoll was listening to the ESV. And since I live in North Idaho, the joke goes that NIV really stands for the North Idaho Version. I don’t know how dignified I’d feel as a Pastor preaching from and reading the NCV regularly. So I went back to the NIV, because I felt like it was a little bit more of a… I guess, serious Bible. I was still rather normally reading the NCV. Listening to Driscoll who preached from the ESV (English Standard Version), I was first pushed to graduate my Bible reading. In 2013, two things ( relevant to this blog post, haha) were happening, (a) I started listening to Mark Driscoll in his Mars Hill days, and (b) I was being called to pastor a church – the church I continue to pastor to this day. I don’t say that to pick on anybody who still peruses it (Max Lucado quotes from it a lot), because there I was as a teenager who had read the NIV’84 as a young kid, but eating up the NCV because I actually read it! The NCV, I will say a little mischievously, is a children’s Bible masquerading as an adult’s Bible. It’s successor is the ICB (International Chidlren’s Bible). I have to say though, that the Bible that got me hooked on Bible reading was the NCV (New Century Version), a little known Bible that’s hardly being printed these days.

I grew up, like every good evangelical in the 90s and early 00s, on the NIV. However, for the fun of it, let me just say how my enjoyment of the MEV came about. In one, I covered briefly my history in Bible translations, and the other I gave a rather extensive review on the HCSB. I’ve written at least 2 Blog-posts prior to this on Bible translations.

Ncv bible takenote