Differences in Bible version texts

[Andrewn]

CEB: sinful cravings. CEB seems pretty good. Good News still gets the body involved. I think "flesh" in this sense likely includes things like pride, which aren't bodily.

I would never understand flesh = sin. Jesus is flesh and never sins. It is much better to exclude that word altogether.

Gal 5:16 I say be guided by the Spirit and you won’t carry out your selfish desires. (CEB)

Gal 5:16 What I am saying is this: Walk by the spirit, and you will not carry out what the sinful flesh desires. (EHV)

NRSV, ESV, MEV and other formal equivalence translations generally have "desires of the flesh" or "lust of the flesh."

The point is that, in the Bible, the word "flesh" is not equivalent to "body." The flesh includes body + life-force. Desires operate through our life-force. Understanding this, I prefer keeping the expression "desires of the flesh."

I consider translations that use the expression "sinful nature" to refer to the life-force in the flesh to be the worst. I see that NIV corrected this in its 2011 edition.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

It seems every time people debate about which Bible version is the closest to God's Word they concentrate more on learning Hebrew than actually comparing and contrasting modern English versions to each other. How should we decide what the best Bible version in our native form of English is? This is the question Christians with no knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek or Jewish heritage need to answer.

To start, I used the Parallel Chapter feature on Bible Hub to compare five Genesis 1 texts: NIV, ESV, NASB, KJV, and HCSB. (No choice on that list of versions, unfortunately.) The KJV uses a singluar heaven; the other four pluralize it: heavens. Otherwise, 1:1 is identical. But verse 2 is totally different in some versions. So are some later verses in Chapter 1. See here:

Genesis 1 Parallel Chapters

The problem is I don't have the same favorite version for each verse. But I am just a human, a limited thinker who can never understand God completely. If I can understand His Word better by learning about the differences in modern English translations, I am all in to do it.

The newer translations are based on better manuscripts and advance grammar studies.