Your first choice is The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

I teach biblical studies at a secular university and I use this version a lot. It’s the standard critical edition for academic study, but many people use it for personal reasons. It uses the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation, which I think is among the best.

Do you mean the most accurate?

‘Accurate’ is a problematic word when talking about biblical translations. We don’t have a single original Hebrew or Greek source for anyof the books of the Bible, let alone the Bible as a whole. There are many different manuscripts. The people who produce these translations work in large committees of language and biblical scholars. Some are Christian, some are Jewish and some aren’t religious at all. They sort through the manuscript evidence and decide which texts to use and translate.

Do you understand Greek and Hebrew?

Yes, I read and translate them.

And are parts of the Bible in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke?

Some of Daniel and Ezra are in Aramaic. Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew and looks the same. There are some differences in vocabulary and grammatical forms. The translation committees also look at the early biblical manuscripts in other languages. For example, the apocryphal texts are in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Syriac and Arabic versions.

Sorry, you were talking about the NRSV translation…

There’s a kind of lineage from the Geneva Bible and the King James Version to the Revised Version Bible of 1885. The Revised Standard Version is a mid-20th century revision of the Revised Version. The New Revised Standard Version was published in 1989 and has a flavour of the familiar King James English.

There are many translations out there, including ‘functional equivalent’ ones. These are where you might take a sentence, or even a whole paragraph, from the Greek and put it into modern English. It becomes extremely hard to know what’s behind it. ‘My cup runneth over’ becomes ‘you blow me away.’

Eek.

The other great thing about The New Oxford Annotated Bible is its essays and critical notes. They provide a lot of information. The notes don’t try to tell readers how to interpret the text. They contain relevant facts so that readers can make their own decisions. A lot of so-called ‘Study Bibles’ are more about steering people’s interpretation in certain directions.

Can you give an example? For instance, how do the notes handle the quotation that always makes me curious: Jesus saying that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?

That’s the story in Luke about the rich young ruler. In many Bibles, you have the translation and then the notes at the bottom trying to explain away the challenges of the text. They might say: ‘There was this place called ‘the eye of the needle’. It was a rock formation with a small hole in it. In order to get through the hole, camels would have to get down on their knees to crawl through it. What Jesus really meant was that, although it was not impossible for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, it was hard and he would have to humble himself.’

That’s a very common ‘explaining away’ of a radical text. It seems to me to have a straightforward literal meaning. There are many examples where notes provide figurative interpretations and say ‘it doesn’t really mean that.’

That phrase endures from my religious-studies classes at high school.

An example is the different accounts of the death of Judas in Matthew and Luke-Acts. In Matthew, he repents when he realises Jesus is condemned, gives the money back and hangs himself out of remorse. In Luke-Acts, it says that he bought a field with the money and, while walking on it, tripped and gored himself on a rock. There is divine retribution in the story but they are two very different versions of how he died. One leads us to sympathise with him; the other does not. Many ‘Study Bibles’ will try and explain away the contradiction.

How?

One is the ‘weak rope’ theory: ‘The rope broke and he stumbled around, fell on a rock and was gored.’ See – they are both true!

How does The New Oxford Annotated Bible approach contradictory stories?

It identifies where the contradictory event appears elsewhere. It doesn’t try to explain away the second story. It leaves you to think and read for yourself. The next Bible on my list is another great example of that. 

Yes, tell me about The Jewish Study Bible.

Do you know about the TANAKH translation?

No - and can you clarify for me: is the Jewish Bible the same as the Old Testament?

I tend to call it the Hebrew Bible, but it’s the same thing. TANAKH is an acronym. It’s what the Jewish Publication Society calls its translation of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible.