Reddit mentions of The New Testament

I have the Didache Bible. It's RSV-2CE. I've only had it about a month now, but I'm loving it so far.

The Didache Bible is great for study, but for just reading for the New Testament I like The Richmond Lattimore translation. It's very natural and reads more like a book. There are no distracting chapter or verse delineations and no commentary. It reads very naturally.

> I implore people to simply read their Bibles without any aids.

While I think there tends to be a great deal of atheism in this forum, I agree it can be enlightening to simply read the Bible - particularly as it applies to a comparison with what the WTBS presents as biblical truth. And, for those who might want to pursue such a course, I've been working through the following title as an alternative to the standard KJV or NIV:

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Testament-Richmond-Lattimore/dp/0865475245

While Lattimore has significant credibility as a translator, I've found reading the Bible (or at least the New Testament in this case) without the intrusion of chapter and verse to be particularly useful. There is less a tendency to be captured by the writing as clause and sub-clause as you might with a legal document and more an opportunity to follow the writing as it was originally presented; the epistles were just epistles after all.

I've noticed a number of instances where this approach has shifted my understanding of what was intended and, by contrast, how fractured our view of the biblical narrative becomes when we simply verse hop as the favoured study approach of the Witnesses.

This is only the New Testament, but you might be interested in the translation by Richard Lattimore. Lattimore was classics scholar who translated both the Iliad and Odyssey, many plays from Sophocles, et cetera. My understanding is that there is nothing either religious or irreligious about it. I believe the translation is meant to be a-religious: meaning, simply a faithful translation of the Koine Greek in which the New Testament was written.

Both Crossway and Holman publish a "Reader's Bible" that remove verse numbers, headings, and use standard single-column page format. Crossway's Reader's Bible uses the ESV while Holman publishes both KJV and NKJV.

Almost every edition of the New English Bible is single column and features a clean readable page format, where verse numbers are pushed to the side of the margin and not within the text.

Richmond Lattimore's New Testament has no verse numbers/headings and standard page format. It's also a good translation in my opinion.

Definitely go ESV. The ESV has a nice readability while also being very accurate. I've checked the Greek several times (went to school for Theology/Greek), and I've so often been pleased with the results.

My recommendation for something fun/different has to go to Lattimore's translation of the NT.

The New English Bible (1961, 1970) because it flows very well and handles some difficult or awkward phrases well. Plus it keeps index numbers out of the way.

The RSV because it's plain and straightforward.

Richmond Lattimore's NT because it too is plain and straightforward.

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion about Richmond Lattimore's translation

https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Richmond-Lattimore/dp/0865475245

I certainly hope "thine" and "mine" were not changed to "thy" and "my" in a way that is grammatically wrong! Can you imagine reading "this Bible of my"? No, what King James's translators did, and what (I hope) was emended in this edition, was to change "my" to "mine" (and "thy" to "thine") before a word beginning with a vowel, just as we still change "a" to "an" in the same circumstance.

They did so ( a ) for a euphonious sound, which was an obsession of the translators (they were literateurs and were crafting a book "to be read [aloud] in churches"), and ( b ) for an archaic feel, since at one time at least spoken English did in fact interpose the n sound between "thy", "my" and a vowel (this is where the short-name for Anne, Nancy, comes from, by the way). But regarding the latter reason, scholars would object that such interposition was never consistent in English and that thus the translators were guilty of false archaism.

As for me, I prefer King James's men's work in all its idiosyncracies. Leave every "y^e" in place! If someone wants an excellent, literary translation in modern standard English (note: I do not say contemporary), then obtain Richmond Lattimore's and Robert Alter's brilliant translations.