Welcome to Gaia! ::

Just curious.

Mine is the King James version, its pretty accurate and it's the easiest for me to understand.
I also like the New Living Translation cause it's also fairly easy to understand.

Then I like the older versions of King James cause the old English looks fancy and when I read it I feel proper. I dunno XD It just looks neat.

The hipster Christian in me loves the ESV(I own a daily reading ESV and study bible). I do own a KJV and an NIV study bible.

I want an NRSV (Catholic version) so I can have the apocrypha as well.

I really do not have an 'overall favorite'. Each translation, (and transliteration such as TM and NLV), of scripture all have a purpose for me when I am studying.

My favorite for just a nice read through and less confusion in semantics/linguistics without losing its meaning is the ESV. The ESV helps me understand it as a whole. My writing is similar in style as to how the ESV is written.

My favorite for studying in a choppy format are NIV and KJV side by side. Some meanings are lost in NIV and so I use the KJV to help me understand the deeper meanings and I use NIV to dumb down the old English when I get confused. I am a huge fan of the NKJV but it isn't quite the same as the classic KJV.

I also use the NLV and TM for anything I want to apply to my life for they paraphrase things and give the gist of a scripture. Of course, I always cross reference. Especially for children's Bible studies, I will usually read out of the ESV or NKJV and then explain it through the NLV and TM.

Of course, I love commentaries with pictures, I learn so much more from the culture of their day. It helps you understand phrases as weird as Solomon 'complimenting his bride' "Your teeth are like a herd of sheep!"
And more importantly;
when Jesus says

Matthew 27:46
" My God, my God why have you forsaken me! "

People used to preach (and still do) that God cannot look upon sin. So Jesus was not to be looked upon until he died.

KJV inspired me to research more, there was more to this. God can look upon sin, he is perfect, besides, he has done it in scripture. We can not look upon him due to our sinfulness. We can not until we are saved

.
This (no surprise here) was a reference to Psalm 22:1 which all scribes and pharisees memorized just like little kid songs in church! This phrase Jesus said on the cross was to say "Look! Your own King David prophesied about my day!"

I would never have found this out without cross referencing scriptures and having a passion to find out more than the basic answer which is entirely incorrect.

I find it important to read as many different scriptures as possible and always dig for more truth.

Don't worry people, "protestant" Bibles have what books needs to be in them. The only reason why things were removed was because it was not canon - it was only after the council of Trent (1545 and 1563) that is was decided to be deuterocanonical - meaning 'belonging to the second canon', before that they were not considered inspired. What happened was that it added a lot of conflicting uninspired doctrine into the word of God, though the early Christians knew about these books they were never treated with such reverence as the other 66 books.

I enjoy reading and listening to The King James Bible, because of its poetic language. It is not only the word of God, it is art. It in its language also have a sort of majesty to it.

Hey Nenanah, is it ok for me and edward to take this discussion in here,
or is it diverging from what you had intended the thread to be about?