ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Choosing a translation of the Bible to use in an LDS-evangelical interfaith household is one of those things that could have been difficult. Some Mormons are outright paranoid about other translations of the Bible. When I first began studying the church, one of my LDS friends was quick to point out to me that all new translations of the Bible are merely English transliterations of the King James Version and only the KJV took its translation from the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. I was quick to point out to him that he’d obviously never read the introduction to a new translation in his life, most of which contain messages from the translators stating that their translation has been made directly from what they believe are the best Hebrew and Greek MSS available. On the other hand, some Latter-day Saints have no problem with modern translations of the Bible and even prefer them for personal reading and study. I suppose that the LDS church’s stubborn devotion to the KJV for official use is a rather inevitable byproduct of its attempts at church-wide solidarity.

Likewise, some evangelicals are King James Onlyists, though my experience has been that these are usually more fundamentalists than evangelicals. Most evangelicals use whatever translations they please, and we can be all over the map on this. Some evangelicals don’t like the KJV thanks to conflicts with the KJO crowd and will spend considerable time attacking it. My own feelings towards the King James Version are mixed. I don’t have anything bad to say about it; I think it was monumental for its time and served its purpose, and I think it was as accurate as it could be for the era in which it was produced. I also think Pong was a monumentally entertaining video game back in 1972 when it was released, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to bust out my vintage Atari 2600 and play it when I have Saints Row 2 at my fingertips.

I was, for the longest time, a devotee of the NIV, both for personal study and to be read in church. In recent years I’ve taken to using the ESV for personal study though. Since I read Greek and Hebrew anyways, the rigid idioms so many people complain about in literal translations of the Bible like the ESV don’t bother me anymore, and the ESV actually is not so far removed from the KJV in that they both adhere to a philosophy of literal translation, while the NIV is more colloquialized (but not so much as versions like the NLT). Some evangelicals who are interested in interacting with Mormons will get used to using the KJV so that different Bible translations don’t become a barrier to dialogue, but I’ve refused to budge on this. It may be odd that I’ve studied seven different languages and dialects but still refuse to adapt to King James English, but it is what it is.

I’m fortunate, then, that my husband is one of those Latter-day Saints who does not have a problem with other translations of the Bible. He prefers the KJV for his own personal study, but does not mind that I use the ESV and NIV all the time or that I read to our daughter from one of those versions. Back when we first got married, one of our LDS friends even gave us a custom-made NIV Bible / Book of Mormon combination for our home study, which I thought was one of the most awesome wedding presents we got.

I figure that when our daughter gets older, I’ll give her both a children’s NIV Bible and one of those shiny little LDS quads.

UPDATE: I now use the TNIV for reading to my daughter and the NRSV for personal study. I decided that the ESV was the abusive boyfriend of Bible translations, so I broke up with it.