There are so many different translations and they all purport to be "the Word of God."
How can that be?
One church I attended long ago used the King James Version but in the pew racks next to the hymnals was "Good News For Modern Man," a translation of the New Testament in modern English. The two books contradict one another in numerous ways. I never did a get a clear explanation for that.
The New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, the English Revised Version, the American Standard Version, and the New American Standard Version(!) are also used by many churches and each has different forms of English (or other languages) including conflicting versions and translations of the same stories.
Words change over time. Their meanings can morph from one thing to its opposite. For example, if I were to quickly glance over a document, in modern parlance I would be scanning it. This is backwards. Scanning, like the computer device, looks at something in great detail. If you read a document quickly, it's called skimming, like skimming the cream off the top of the milk. And yet, people say scanning when they mean its opposite.
How can one have confidence, then, in all of these translations upon translations over two thousand years? Biblical believers have said to me that God inspired the translators to maintain the integrity of his words. How does that work? Do the translators hear voices? It's very confusing to me.
Another issue, slightly off-topic, is the manner in which the books were chosen and assembled. In the mid-1500s, the Council of Trent codified the Christian Bible and assembled the texts pretty much in their current form in Latin. But there were many other texts from the early days of Christianity that were tossed aside. In my collection of religious writings, I have a book called the Gnostic Bible which contains many of the texts that were rejected at Trent. It's fascinating reading and there's a partial Gospel According to Mary Magdalen; curiously, half of it is missing, if I recall correctly.
The Bible has lots of fascinating stuff and has inspired all kinds of creations.
Personally, I prefer science.
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