How to choose a translation
Every English Bible is a translation from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and every translation team makes choices. This page explains the main differences between the four translations on BibleTide, so you can pick one for what you want to do. You can switch translation at any time.
Word-for-word or thought-for-thought
A word-for-word translation keeps close to the wording and sentence order of the original languages. A thought-for-thought translation puts the meaning into natural English, even when that needs different words. Most translations sit somewhere between the two. Each approach helps with different tasks.
| Translation | Approach | English |
|---|---|---|
| ASV (1901) | Word-for-word | Older (thee, thou) |
| KJV (1611) | Word-for-word | Older (thee, thou) |
| WEB (2020) | Close to word-for-word | Modern, informal |
| BSB (2016) | Near the middle | Modern |
Some well-known translations are not on this site. Their publishers describe them like this: the NKJV is a modern-English translation in the KJV tradition; the ESV is "essentially literal"; the NIV balances closeness to the original with clarity; the NLT is "meaning-for-meaning". So the NKJV and ESV usually sit near the word-for-word end, the NIV near the middle, and the NLT toward thought-for-thought.
Old and modern English
The KJV and ASV use older English. You will see thee, thou and ye for "you", and verb endings such as -eth and -est ("God, that giveth to all men", "thou knowest"). Some words have changed meaning: in the KJV, "conversation" can mean way of life (Philippians 1:27) and "prevent" can mean go before (1 Thessalonians 4:15). The BSB and WEB use current English.
The older forms also carry information: thou and thee are singular, ye and you are plural.
God's name in the Old Testament is also printed differently: LORD in the BSB and KJV, Yahweh in the WEB, and Jehovah in the ASV.
Why some verses look "missing"
The New Testament was copied by hand for more than a thousand years, and the surviving manuscripts differ in places. The KJV New Testament follows printed Greek editions from the 1500s, known as the Textus Receptus. Many older manuscripts have been found or published since then. Translations that give them more weight, such as the BSB and the ASV, move verses that those manuscripts lack into a footnote and keep the traditional numbering, so a printed BSB goes from Matthew 17:20 to 17:22.
In the texts on this site, the BSB and the ASV each have 16 such verses. The WEB has 4, and it places Romans 16:25–27 at the end of Romans 14. The KJV has none. Two longer passages, Mark 16:9–20 and John 7:53–8:11, are in all four, sometimes with a note or brackets. The list of verses that differ shows each case and what the footnotes say.
Some suggestions
- For a first read: choose modern English, such as the BSB (the default here) or the WEB.
- For close study: read a passage in a word-for-word translation (ASV, KJV or WEB) and in the BSB, and check the footnotes. Places where they differ are worth a closer look.
- For reading aloud: use the version your listeners know, or the one your church or group uses. The WEB's editors designed it to sound natural when read aloud.
- For memorizing: stay with one translation, so the wording stays the same.
If you are new to the Bible, Start here has more help.
Why the NIV, ESV, NLT and NKJV are not here
These translations are under copyright. Their publishers allow quoting up to 500 verses without permission, under conditions. Showing the full text on a website needs a licence from each publisher, and licences can involve fees. BibleTide uses only public-domain texts, so the whole Bible can be shown without one. You can read these translations legally on their publishers' own sites:
- NIV: Biblica, the copyright holder
- ESV: esv.org, from Crossway
- NLT: nlt.to, from Tyndale House
- NKJV: Bible Gateway, run by HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which handles NKJV permissions for Thomas Nelson
- CSB: read.csbible.com, from Holman Bible Publishers
- NASB: bible.lockman.org, from The Lockman Foundation