Put two English Bibles side by side and read the same verse in each. Often the wording is close. Sometimes it is quite different, and occasionally one Bible has words, or a whole verse, that the other lacks. A reader can easily conclude that one of them must be wrong, or that translators simply say what they like.

Usually neither is true. Most differences between serious translations come from a small number of causes, each of which can be traced and explained. This article sets them out, using only public-domain translations so that the verses can be quoted in full: the King James Version (1611), the American Standard Version (1901), Young’s Literal Translation (1862), the Douay-Rheims Bible in Bishop Challoner’s revision, the World English Bible and the Berean Standard Bible. Later articles in this series look at the major modern translations one by one.

1. A different text

The first question is not how to translate but what to translate. No original manuscript of any biblical book survives. Translators work from printed editions of the Hebrew and Greek, each built by comparing many manuscripts that do not always agree (see When manuscripts disagree and How textual criticism works).

For the New Testament there are three broad families of printed text. The Received Text (Textus Receptus) of the sixteenth century lies behind the King James Version. The Majority or Byzantine text follows the reading found in most surviving manuscripts, most of them late. Modern critical editions, such as Nestle-Aland and the SBL Greek New Testament, weigh the oldest witnesses more heavily. Most of the time all three agree. Where they do not, translations differ.

The angels’ song in Luke 2:14 is a good example. Most manuscripts end the verse with a Greek word meaning “good will” or “good pleasure.” Some of the oldest add one letter, which turns it into “of good will,” so that the peace is given to particular people. The King James Version follows the first reading:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. (Luke 2:14, KJV)

So does the World English Bible, whose New Testament is based on the Majority Text:

“Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14, WEB)

The American Standard Version and the Berean Standard Bible follow the older manuscripts:

Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased. (Luke 2:14, ASV)

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests!” (Luke 2:14, BSB)

The Douay-Rheims, translated from the Latin Vulgate, which here agrees with the older Greek manuscripts, gives the reading familiar from Catholic liturgy:

Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will. (Luke 2:14, Douay-Rheims)

Four translations, two underlying texts, and no translator taking liberties.

Larger differences have the same cause. In 1 John 5:7 the King James Version and the Douay-Rheims include a sentence about “the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost” bearing witness in heaven; the ASV, WEB and BSB do not, because the sentence is found in only a handful of late Greek manuscripts. Acts 8:37 is in the King James Version but missing from the WEB and BSB. These are not editorial deletions or additions by modern publishers; they reflect a judgement about which words the author wrote. Good modern translations mark such places with brackets or footnotes so that readers can see the question.

The Old Testament has fewer such cases, because almost all translations start from the Masoretic Hebrew text (see The Masoretes). But some passages are corrected from the Greek Septuagint or the Dead Sea Scrolls (see The Septuagint), and translations decide differently how often to do this.

2. A different approach

Given the same text, translators still have to decide how closely to follow its words. That choice, between form and meaning, is the subject of Word for word or meaning for meaning?. Here it is enough to see what it does to a verse.

Young’s Literal Translation, made by the Scottish publisher Robert Young, tried to reproduce the Greek tenses and word order as closely as English allows. Here is John 3:16:

for God did so love the world, that His Son -- the only begotten -- He gave, that every one who is believing in him may not perish, but may have life age-during. (John 3:16, YLT)

“Every one who is believing” mirrors a Greek present participle; “life age-during” is Young’s attempt to render a Greek adjective related to the word for “age.” Compare the Berean Standard Bible:

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16, BSB)

The BSB puts the clauses in natural English order, turns the participle into an ordinary relative clause and uses the familiar “eternal life.” Both translations aim to be accurate. They differ on what accuracy should look like on the page: Young wanted readers to see the Greek through the English, while most modern translators want the English to read as English.

The difference is sharpest with idioms. In Matthew 3:2 John the Baptist announces, in Young’s version, that “come near has the reign of the heavens.” The ASV, like most translations, says “the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and the BSB says “the kingdom of heaven is near.”

3. A different reader

Every translation is made for someone. A Bible for public reading in church, a study Bible for students of the original languages, and a Bible for children or new readers of English will not read alike, even when made by people who agree about everything else.

Vocabulary is the clearest sign. English that was plain in one century can be opaque in another. In 2 Corinthians 6:12 Paul uses a Greek word for the inner organs, which in Greek idiom were the seat of the feelings, as the heart is in English:

Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. (2 Corinthians 6:12, KJV)

You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. (2 Corinthians 6:12, WEB)

It is not our affection, but yours, that is restrained. (2 Corinthians 6:12, BSB)

The King James Version keeps the body part, which in 1611 still carried the sense of deep feeling. The WEB replaces both the old verb and the image. The BSB rebuilds the sentence around the contrast Paul is drawing. The meaning has not changed; the reader the translators had in mind has.

Words also change meaning over time. In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 the King James Version says that “he who now letteth will let,” where “let” meant “hinder,” almost the opposite of its usual modern sense. The ASV and WEB say “one that restraineth” and “one who restrains.” Translations aimed at a wide readership also tend to use shorter sentences, fewer technical terms and more explicit connections between clauses, which makes them easier to read and sometimes less transparent to the structure of the original.

4. A different tradition

Translations are made within churches and communities, and those communities have their own vocabulary, often older than any one translation.

The Douay-Rheims was translated from the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Catholic Church in its day (see Jerome and the Latin Vulgate), and its wording often follows Latin phrases long used in prayer and theology. In the angel’s greeting to Mary:

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (Luke 1:28, Douay-Rheims)

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. (Luke 1:28, KJV)

“Full of grace” renders the Vulgate’s gratia plena, the words of the Hail Mary. “Highly favoured” follows the Protestant translators’ reading of the Greek verb, which is related to the word for grace. Each choice can be defended from the Greek; each also fits its community’s way of speaking about Mary.

The same pattern appears in Matthew 3:2, where the Douay-Rheims has John say “Do penance,” from the Vulgate’s paenitentiam agite, while Protestant translations since Tyndale have “Repent.” In 1 Corinthians 13 the King James Version keeps “charity,” an English word descended from the Latin caritas, while the ASV and later Protestant translations say “love”:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, (1 Corinthians 13:4, KJV)

Love suffereth long, [and] is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, (1 Corinthians 13:4, ASV)

Tradition also shapes how the divine name is handled. The Hebrew of Psalm 23:1 begins with the name YHWH, which Jewish readers traditionally do not pronounce. Four public-domain Bibles give four solutions:

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1, KJV)

Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1, ASV)

Yahweh is my shepherd: I shall lack nothing. (Psalm 23:1, WEB)

The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. (Psalm 22:1, Douay-Rheims)

The King James Version follows the old Jewish and Christian custom of saying “Lord,” and marks the name with capital letters. The ASV used “Jehovah,” a form that combines the consonants of the name with the vowels of the Hebrew word for “Lord.” The WEB uses “Yahweh,” the pronunciation most scholars think likely. The Douay-Rheims follows the Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint, which read the Hebrew verb in a different sense; it also follows their numbering, so the psalm is its Psalm 22.

None of these is simply a mistake. Each translation is answerable both to the original and to a community that will read it aloud, pray it and argue from it.

5. A different house style

Finally, translations differ in conventions that have little to do with meaning but change how a page looks and sounds.

  • Supplied words. The King James Version printed words added for English sense in italics; the ASV and Darby’s translation use square brackets in many electronic editions. Most modern translations do not mark them at all.
  • Capitals for God. The Berean Standard Bible, like several modern American translations, capitalises pronouns referring to God (“He gave His one and only Son”). The KJV, ASV and WEB do not. The Hebrew and Greek have no capitals, so this is an editorial signal, not a translation.
  • Quotation marks. The King James Version has none; modern translations mark speech, and in doing so must decide where a speech ends. In John 3 that decision determines whether verse 16 is spoken by Jesus or is the evangelist’s comment.
  • Old forms of address. “Thee” and “thou” survived in some twentieth-century translations only for prayers addressed to God, and were dropped by most later ones.
  • Consistency. Some committees try to render a given Greek or Hebrew word by the same English word wherever possible; others, like the King James translators in their preface, prefer variety where the sense allows.

House style also includes a translation’s preferred vocabulary for key terms. In Romans 3:25 the KJV and ASV say “propitiation,” the WEB and BSB “atoning sacrifice,” and Young “mercy seat.” Here the difference is more than style: each word reflects a view of what the Greek term means, and that brings us back to the first four causes.

Reading across translations

These causes overlap. A single verse can differ between two Bibles because of their Greek text, their approach and their tradition all at once. But once the causes are known, most differences become easy to read. The question to ask is not “which one is right?” but “what did each translator decide here, and why?”

That is why many readers keep two or three translations open. Where they agree, the meaning is usually clear. Where they diverge, there is usually something in the original worth knowing about: a disputed reading, an idiom, a word with more than one sense.

Open Word Bible is built around that question. Its New Testament is translated from the SBL Greek New Testament and its Old Testament from the Westminster Leningrad Codex, and it says so for every sentence. It gives each sentence at three levels, Literal, Balanced and Readable, which share one set of meaning decisions, so that a difference between the levels is a difference of approach and audience only, never of meaning (see Three levels, one meaning). And each sentence has a reasoning record that names the choices made and the alternatives considered (see Showing the work). Its drafts are AI-assisted and remain unreviewed until named human reviewers approve them, and it consults other translations, including those quoted here, only for comparison.

Sources

  • Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
  • Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.
  • Fee, Gordon D., and Mark L. Strauss. How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.
  • Brunn, Dave. One Bible, Many Versions: Are All Translations Created Equal? Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2013.
  • Scorgie, Glen G., Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M. Voth, eds. The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
  • Young, Robert. “Preface.” The Holy Bible, Consisting of the Old and New Covenants, Translated According to the Letter and Idioms of the Original Languages. Edinburgh, 1862.
  • “Preface.” World English Bible. eBible.org.
  • Bible quotations are from the public-domain King James Version, American Standard Version, Young’s Literal Translation, Douay-Rheims (Challoner revision), World English Bible and Berean Standard Bible, as marked.