Heaven and earth will disappear, but my words will remain forever.
Matthew 24.35
Take a look around your church or a Christian bookstore and you’ll see Bibles in all sizes and colours. Flip those Bibles open and you’ll find that many have notes to help you study God’s Word. Start to read and you’ll discover the biggest difference of all, various Bibles use different words to say the same verse. Even so, the message stays the same. It was written thousands of years ago, mostly in the Hebrew and Greek languages.
Today the whole Bible has been written in almost 400 different languages so that people all over the world can understand it. In English there are dozens of versions that start with the original Hebrew and Greek words of the Bible (but probably just a few versions are used at your church). Each of them tries to say the original words in ways that are clear. That’s why different versions of the Bible can sound so different.
Take this for example. Psalm 70.4 says “God is great”. Write that at the top of a piece of paper, then fill the rest with other ways to say great, like super, neat, awesome and cool. Go with whatever you feel as long as it means great. Now what do these other words tell you about God? Why do you think we would pick one over the others? That is a bit like what a translator has to do with every part of the Bible.
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