#<- the amount of times i've mistyped that as “nannies”...

[peridotglimmer]

This might be a dumb question but: why would you need more than one bible?

Hi Nonny! No genuine questions are dumb questions. And this certainly isn't one.

Putting this under a read more because I seem to have rambled a bit.

I'm assuming this is in response to this post where I mentioned I bought 2 Bibles at the thrift shop today.

For me, this is just a place where my love for languages and my faith intersect.

Quick note: I'm not a historian or a theologist. I just like languages. And Bibles.

Those 2 Bibles that I bought today are different Dutch translations of the Bible. You see, the original Bible texts were in Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic (the Old Testament) and in Koine Greek (the New Testament).

(The original language of the deuterocanonical books is debated, but seems to be a mixture of Koine Green, Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic, and Latin, but I digress).

This is my current collection of Bibles. (Had to censor the bottom left one because my full legal name is engraved in the cover of that one.) From left to right, top to bottom, they are (with years of first print, and abbreviations):

De Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling 2004 - NBV

De Bijbel in Gewone Taal 2014 -BGT

De Bijbel in Gewone Taal - De Eerste Teksten 2013 - BGT

The New Revised Standard Version Bible 1989 - NRSV

De Bijbel in de Nieuwe Vertaling 1951 - NBG51

De Statenvertaling 1637 - SV

All of these are different translations of the original texts, and I like comparing the versions. I grew up reading the first one, the NBV, and the church I currently attend uses both the NBV, NBV-21 and the BGT concurrently.

Even if you don't speak Dutch, you'll be able to tell that these 4 versions of Genesis 1, the first chapter of the first book of the Old Testament, are very different (left to right, top to bottom - NBG51, SV, NBV, BGT):

Whenever I'm reading the Bible for religious reasons, I'll usually stick to one version. But I do occasionally look up the passage I'm reading in the other versions, just to compare the translations.

Are there any translations I'd like to add to my collection? In Dutch, I'd like to add the Herziene Statenvertaling, the Willibrordvertaling, the Groot Nieuws Bijbel, Het Boek, the Naardense Bijbel, and the BasisBijbel. Along with that, there's a translation of the Torah by Huub Oosterhuis and Alex van Heusden that I'd love to own, because they've made an attempt to stick to the style and imagery of the Hebrew as much as possible.

As for English Bibles, well, I think I'll focus on the Dutch ones first. I was gifted the one English one I own when I lived in the US, when I was 7.

...this was probably a more extensive reply than you intended to get with this question but uh...yeah. Languages, woo!