Reddit mentions of The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha

It's typical "thousands of textual differences" stuff. It quotes Ehrman. Thing is it references ALL, or nearly all, the biggest legitimate discrepancies.

You know, the ones any modern bible will bracket off and tell the reader "not in earliest manuscripts". At least it mentions the woman caught in adultery is dubious just like the longer ending of Mark.

The article also dishonestly implies that other textual differences, a placement of a reflexive pronoun, or a change or past perfect verb to past imperfect (minor changes as most of them are) are similarly massive by saying something like "there are thousands of discrepancies like these". Putting a minor word order change next to the 2nd ending of Mark and saying "These are the same thing: massive errors!" is disingenuous.

The media just doesn't "get religion".

Never mind the fact that the way we tell what the original texts may have sad by comparing disparate strands. If strands hundreds of years apart in totally different locations say the same thing, it is UNLIKELY the bible changed so totally as to be totally incomprehensible from the originals--as is often claimed.
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Are there variants? Yes. Are they sometimes serious, yes (see the brackets in your bible). Is it impossible to tell what the Bible writers most likely wrote down? No. The Bible is the most textual analyzed collection of books the world.

Ehrman is good where he's good: I have his NT book. Read that. I don't bother with his sensationalized popular stuff. Other places he just rides his hobby horse into the noonday sun and puts on what's nothing more than a pony show.

If you want to know more about textual criticism, I suggest looking at the textual commentaries that /u/Turretopera recommends in a recent post he made on this forum.
More simply, I've found the "New Interpreter's Study Bible" to be good for some textual/ background discussions as well--even if, as /u/turretopera has told me, it's not quite as thorough as a straight textual commentary.
Look at those I mentioned above, because I'm pretty sure Bruce Metzger is rolling in his grave with this understanding of textual transmission the author of Newsweek puts forward.

The beginning was just normal "stupid fundie cafeteria Christian" tropes. I could have written that in my sleep. The hypocrisy of American Christians is self evident. Tell us something INTERESTING about the Bible!

TL;DR : Just another article assuming Christians are the staunchest sort of biblical literalness, devoid of journalistic integrity or of anything interesting to say about the bible.
It seems a segment of those at Newsweek are surprised to know there are faithful Christians knowledgeable on some biblical criticism, literary interpretations, who recognize different parts of the bible have different purposes (and degrees of historical reliability) and still find Jesus the Christ in a very real, even supernatural, sense. Crazy, right? Some of them are even--gasp--biblical scholars.

NIV is fairly easy to read, if that's what you're after. I recommend NRSV if you like lovely language. More importantly, though, I recommend getting a study bible. There's commentary "below the line" that provide context, alternate translations, and other important info that help clarify and explain difficult passages/verses/words. Also note that Protestant Bibles have fewer books than the Catholic and Orthodox bibles (and a couple others). If you get either a Catholic bible or a Protestant one with the apocrypha, you'll get those extra books.

I'm currently doing a bible study using this one which you can get delivered for $12 and it's by far my favorite. Even if you don't read it, it's hefty enough you could kill a puma with it, so you could justify it as a self-defense expenditure.

It's called the New Interpreter's Study Bible. It's a multi-denominational, highly annotated copy of the bible, full of commentary and historical references. The books it contains are translated into English from various original texts, with oodles of footnotes about the translations and minor variations seen in various transcriptions. It contains all of the aprocrypha and lists which books are "accepted" in the various churches throughout the world. (ie, which books are "apocrypha" to whom)

Frankly, it's an awesome scholarly achievement. Reading Genesis in that bible is an eye-opening experience. I like to think of it as the unabridged version of The God Delusion.

I would start in Mark its a quick read and covers the minsitry of Jesus well.

I would get a good study Bible like

• New Interepters Study Bible
  
• Common English Bible
  

The HarperCollins Study Bible is my go to but the footnotes might be a bit excessive for what you want. You could also try the New Interpreter's Study Bible

That's the commentary selection - I'm talking about this: https://www.amazon.com/New-Interpreters-Study-Bible-Apocrypha/dp/0687278325/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467457724&sr=1-1&keywords=new+interpreter%27s+study+bible

As far as translation accuracy goes, I would put the NRSV and the NJB (New Jerusalem Bible) at the top for both readability and textual faithfulness. The NJB Study Bible is a handy volume, with some very good academic level commentary. The NRSV Interpreter's Study Bible is also really good.

As far as commentaries go, the Anchor Bible series is usually regarded as one of the best by academics (Fundamentalist Christians, obviously, will not touch it). It is a pretty long series (somewhere between twenty and thirty volumes), so you may want to check your local library unless you have a lot of spare cash lying around.

The KJV is a fairly poor translation. It uses an outdated text, contains numerous translation errors (especially in the OT - Hebrew was not as well known as Greek in the 17th century), and has a strong Christian bias in the OT. The NIV is only marginally better. The text has been updated, and most of the translation errors corrected, but the Christian bias in the OT is nearly as bad as the KJV.

I have been an atheist for a little over twenty years now. I still read the Bible regularly. It's a fascinating document, once you strip off the Christian veneer and see the actual mythology underneath.

In my college, we typically read the NRSV in the classroom. A required book for freshmen coming in is the New Interpreter's Study Bible. I love using it when I have a question about a strange cultural passage. Check it out!

So first off, just because someone put a Masons label on that version of the KJV doesn’t reflect on the KJV as a whole. The overwhelming majority of KJV Bibles have zero ties to Freemasonry (in fact it’s going to be a statistically insignificant percentage of KJV Bibles DO have ties to Freemasonry), and are probably the single most commonplace translation in the English speaking world. That being said, KJV would NEVER be my recommendation. We have learned too much about ancient culture and language since 1611 to consider it viable for study. NKJV is significantly better, but there are far better options.

That aside, there is no such thing as the single “true” translation. We are wholly unable to provide such a translation, even if you have complete knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek (which is impossible to obtain) due to the context of the written Word spanning over 6000 years itself.

The most accurate English translation for academic theological study across the spectrum (not only by most individual denominational backgrounds but by secular academia as well) is widely accepted to be the New Revised Standard Edition (NRSV). Second most accurate is the most recent version of the New International Version (NIV). I would recommend a good study Bible in either translation (in other words, not a “specialized” study Bible such as the Wesley one that I really like a lot!) over anything else. If I had to pick a third best, I would probably say ESV for ease of understanding, but I would never use it for serious study, and it’s such a distant third for my own use behind the other two in my opinion that it’s hardly worth mentioning.

My personal approach is to use NRSV for academic and personal in depth study as well as sermon preparation and NIV for personal reading and readings during services

Edit to include a link: this is an outstanding NRSV study Bible on Amazon

The New Interpreter's Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha