This is the place:
This is the place:
THE BIBLE - WHICH IS LEAST HOMOPHOBIC / BEST TRANSLATION?
"Many readers of my web site have asked me what Bible is the least homophobic and translates the original languages most correctly. That is a difficult question. All current translations contain glaring mistakes in many places as well as in the anti-gay "clobber passages".
The most recent attempt in translation accuracy which is in wide use is the New Revised Standard Version (1989). It retained many translation mistakes and created some new ones. The NRSV use of "sodomite" in I Corinthians 6:9 caused many outstanding New Testament scholars to ridicule the translation and point out that there is no such word as "sodomite" in the original languages. There is no totally accurate translation of even some of the Bible. The original Revised Standard Version (New Testament first appeared in 1946) was the first translation ever to use the word "homosexual", which does not exist as a word in Hebrew or Greek. The New Revised Standard Version translates I Corinthians 6:9 with "male prostitutes" for Greek malakoi (which literally means "soft") and "sodomites" for Greek arsenokoitai (which literally is "male bed"). See my material on this in "SIX BIBLE PASSAGES USED TO CONDEMN HOMOSEXUALS".
The translation that I use now and have used from the time I finished my doctorate at the seminary is THE NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE (1963). I found by experience that with the NASB I had to explain less often to my students that the original language was different from what they read in their Bible. The NASB (like all available versions), however, incorrectly translates the "clobber passages" used against gays. Students in my college courses used The New American Standard Bible, Holman Study Bible Edition, which includes good objective scholarly biblical study articles on history of the Bible, manuscripts, archaeology, etc. If you can find this edition, get it and treasure it. I cannot find it any more. Broadman Press, owned by Southern Baptist Convention, has bought Holman and does not now publish the edition that I used, as far as I know. If you find it, please let me know.
You can get a good easy to read text of the NASB with wide reference margins from a number of publishers. I greatly prefer Bibles with no elaborate notes and explanations. These notes usually are from a very biased point of view and can confuse a lot more than they help. When was memorizing great portions of the New Testament, I found that the NASB was the easiest translation to memorize. One purpose of the translators as stated in the "Preface" was to make the material easier to memorize.
When you get a copy of the NASB be sure to read the "Preface to the New American Standard Bible" at the front. This brief preface gives helpful and important information about the translation. The NASB is a translation built upon the most accurate modern version, the American Standard Version (1901), which was the first translation to use the discoveries of the papyri that revealed that the Greek of the New Testament was a special form of Greek: koine Greek (or common, everyday Greek) spoken in the time of Jesus. The ASV, however, is very difficult to read and was so exactly translated that a lot of the material is kept in the original word order and in syntax that are very hard to follow and is not clearly understandable to the average English reader.
The Good News Bible (NT 1966; OT 1976) by the American Bible Society) is easy to read but contains strongly anti-gay translations. The Living Bible is incredibly inaccurate. It is a paraphrase that was begun by a book editor who did not know Hebrew and Greek and who simply put the New Testament in his own words to make it say more clearly what he believed! Many other popular translations that are strongly anti-gay are The New International Version (1973 by The International Bible Society), the original Revised Standard Version of 1946, and The Amplified Bible, which is full of errors and speculation.
This does not mean that the Bible is useless or that you cannot find spiritual instruction and inspiration in any Bible translation, including The King James Version (1611), which is still the most popular version of all! You simply must be objective in your use of the Bible and realize that the Bible is not God and not to be worshipped as if it were."