[Sam]

I'm old enough to remember some of the furor surrounding the RSV back in the nineteen fifties. Two things I remember seeing in either a newspaper or news magazine were: One minister holding a blowtorch to the RSV and saying, "It's like the devil, it's hard to burn." Another was an account of a minister having a tub of lye on his platform and publicly dropping a RSV Bible into it. I don't remember the denominations of these ministers but I think they were Baptist.

There are still some conservative ministers and churches who are against any type of translation except the King James Version.

I remember a problem at our house one time when my wife bought a Bible for one of our kids. This was back around 1970 or 1971. She brought home a RSV Bible by mistake. The only solution I could see was to throw the Bible away for two reasons: 1) I certainly did not want any child of mine reading a RSV Bible and 2) If she took it back and exchanged it for a KJV, someone else might buy that RSV Bible. Best to destroy it so nobody else would get it.

I also took a strong stand against what became The Living Bible. It was published in phases and some of the epistles came out as "Living Letters." Of course these were wrong because they differed from the KJV. I remember being in a Bible Study group and someone called The Living Bible a translation. I quickly corrected him and said it was not a translation but just a paraphrase. When he disagreed, I asked him to look inside the front of his Living Bible and in front of the group I very self-righteously asked him to read the word "Paraphrased." He was a lot better Christian than I.

I no longer believe that way about the NIV (which I've called the Non Inspired Version) or The New Living Translation or the NRSV and the other newer ones. I believe the originals were inspired or God-breathed and that what we have today are just attempts to give us what the originals said.

I personally prefer the KJV and the NKJV but that is probably an age thing. Also I like it that they use the TR or Textus Receptus as a basis and not Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus which are suspect to some.