Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona.
I believe that the King James Bible is the Word of God without error.
But one of the questions that I'm constantly being asked by people is,
you know, what is the best Bible in some other language?
So I just wanted to make a quick video where I talk about
what are the best Bible translations in other languages, to my knowledge,
and also just to give you some resources on where to get these Bibles.
Now, first of all, the one that I get asked about the most is Spanish.
Now, what I think is the best Spanish Bible is the Reina Valera Gomez 2010 edition.
Now, there are other old Bibles out there in Spanish.
For example, there's the Reina Valera 1602, the 1909.
And I think those are great, but the 1960 version is the one that you want to stay away from.
The Reina Valera 1960 version kind of falls somewhere between
a New King James and an NIV.
It's definitely a corrupted version.
The old versions are okay, the 1602, the 1909.
But honestly, I think that this Reina Valera Gomez 2010 is the best one.
This is one that is going to be closer to the King James.
It's not perfect. It has a few issues.
But honestly, it is a very good translation, and this is what I would recommend in Spanish.
Now, the problem is that this particular Bible that I'm holding in my hand costs like 50 bucks.
And there are a lot of them online for 50, 60 bucks.
Some of them are 30 bucks.
And then they do sell one economy-type just paperback version
that's kind of similar to this English Bible right here, just a paperback.
And they sell that for like 12 bucks online.
You can just Google Reina Valera Gomez 2010 and get those.
I think the $12 one is sold by Chick Publications.
But honestly, FramingTheWorld.com in just a few weeks is going to be offering
like a small pocket New Testament of the Reina Valera Gomez 2010 that's going to be like five bucks.
So that's going to be great for soul winning, et cetera.
Okay, so let's get into some of the other languages here.
Right here I've got a Portuguese New Testament.
This was purchased from the Trinitarian Bible Society, and it is only five bucks.
And it's a great little paperback New Testament, great for soul winning.
You could stick it in your pocket.
You could win somebody to Christ and give this to them.
Now, the version on this is the Almeida Corrigida y Fiel 2009.
And I believe that this is the version that is the closest to the King James Bible in Portuguese.
Portuguese is a really important language.
Actually, it's in the top ten languages for how many people speak it.
And the biggest country where Portuguese is spoken is Brazil,
which has the fifth largest population of any country in the world.
So this is a major language, five bucks, little paperback New Testament from the Trinitarian Bible Society.
They also sell this, which is really cool, which is like a paperback parallel version
between the King James and the Portuguese.
So they sell these also at the Trinitarian Bible Society, and these are like 11 bucks.
So that's a pretty neat thing.
Now, this right here, also from the Trinitarian Bible Society,
and in fact, the next whole bunch of books I'm going to show you are sold by the Trinitarian Bible Society.
If you go to their website, they sell a lot of great Bibles in foreign languages.
This is the Dutch full Bible in a hardback for 30 bucks,
a little small size, the old 1637 Reformation Dutch Bible.
This right here is the Polish New Testament, nice little pocket size, paperback, $4.50.
And this is great for soul winning, great to give out to people.
And it's the old historic Gdansk version from the early 1600s.
So that's a great Polish New Testament.
Also, right here, we've got the Arabic New Testament, the Van Dyck version on this one.
And so this is a nice, affordable, easy to carry around paperback New Testament.
This right here from the Trinitarian Bible Society for just $1 is the Gospel of John in Turkish in the right version.
This right here is a Maltese New Testament, Armenian New Testament.
These aren't really as common, but these are five bucks each at the Trinitarian Bible Society.
A New Testament is really all you need to give somebody that just got saved.
You know, if you win somebody the Lord and just set them up with a New Testament, they can grow a lot with that.
This is in Catalan, also Trinitarian, Gospel of John in Telugu, one buck.
And Phoenix, Arizona has a lot of people who are from India,
and the three languages that they speak are Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil.
This right here is a Nepali New Testament and a Nepali Full Bible, also from the Trinitarian Bible Society.
This is for some Zimbabwe language. This is Russian.
Now, let's talk about German.
Now, unfortunately, I've never been able to find a really good translation in German.
I get asked about it all the time. It's such a major language.
I've never really been able to find a great German Bible.
There are two German Bibles that I have in my house.
First of all, I have the Martin Luther translation that goes back 400 and some years.
But the problem with the Martin Luther translation is that Martin Luther did not really believe in translating the Bible in a literal way.
The King James Bible is a very literal translation.
But although Martin Luther was translating from the Texas Receptus, he translated it in a more of a looser fashion.
And he even famously was quoted as saying, you know, I'm going to make Moses sound so German.
You know, no one will suspect that he was ever even a Jew.
So that just goes to show you he was not for a literal translation.
So his translation is not that great. It definitely has problems.
This one is a little bit better. This is the one that the Trinitarian Bible Society sells.
And it has been gone over in 1998 where they improved the New Testament.
But still, this one has issues.
Also, there's the Schlockter version, the Schlockter 2000, the 2000 Schlockter Genfer Study Bible that's out of a group in Switzerland.
That's the other one. And I honestly think that the Schlockter 2000 is probably a little bit better than the Martin Luther.
But honestly, both of them have issues.
They both use the word Totenreich, like realm of the dead, place of the dead instead of hell.
And there are a lot of other things that they do.
So unfortunately, I don't really have a great resource to point you toward for German.
But for all these other languages, these seem to be the good translations in those languages.
Now, when it comes to French, we had talked about in our Bible Version Restoration Project
about bringing back the David Martin 1744 French Bible.
But it turns out that actually you can get a hard copy of this on lulu.com.
This is the one that I bought from Lulu.
And it's kind of big, unfortunately.
I prefer a smaller New Testament that can be carried with you for soul winning.
This one's a little bit bigger. But it is very nice.
And I believe it was about 12 bucks on lulu.com.
And then they have the full Bible, which is this giant full Bible.
It's really nice, though. And it was like 30-some dollars.
So if you do want a David Martin French Bible, which is from the Texas Receptus,
it's going to be like the King James, not perfect,
but most of the time it's going to be like the King James.
It's going to be a pretty accurate translation.
Then you can get these from lulu.com.
There's also another French version that dates back to before all the Bibles were being corrupted
with all this modern Westcott and Hort garbage.
And that is called the Osterwald New Testament.
And there are some places where you can buy that.
So, of course, at the Trinitarian Bible Society website,
you can also get a Greek New Testament.
And this is the Greek Texas Receptus.
And this represents the exact text underlying the King James Bible.
Now, a lot of people have criticized this book
and claimed that it's not really the Greek underlying the King James.
But actually it is, with the exception of two typos that are in this book.
And people have scoured this book and tried to find mistakes in it
and issues in it for over a century.
And some people have lied and claimed that it has 50-some errors.
You know, Gail Riplinger, which, by the way,
even though Gail Riplinger is King James only,
some of the information in her books is not true.
She will attack this book and claim it has 50-some discrepancies.
Well, I looked up all 54 of the discrepancies or so
that she claims that this book has,
and I had this book side by side with the King James Bible,
side by side with her book,
and pretty much 50 of them were complete fabrications and lies.
There were really only two of them that were legitimate
because this book has two typos in it.
Here's what the typos are.
They accidentally left out the Amen at the end of Ephesians.
So that was a pretty quick fix because I just took a pen
and just wrote Amen at the end of Ephesians and then it was fixed.
And then another place, instead of saying, you know,
Word of God, it says Word of the Lord.
So, you know, not really a big deal there, just a couple typos.
I've never had a Bible that didn't have a typo in it.
So to throw out this book because of two minor typos
that really don't affect any meaning, well, that's just ridiculous.
So if you want to get a Greek New Testament that is accurate,
that is, you know, the right one,
then Trinitarian Bible Society, they sell these hardback.
And then right here, you know, they sell, of course,
the Hebrew Old Testament, same thing.
Now, I listed off what I know.
I'm not saying that this is all that's out there,
but I'm just trying to help you to find stuff to know where to buy stuff.
You know, if you're looking for the Spanish,
Reina Valera Gomez 2010, Google it.
There are places to buy it.
If you are, you know, looking for all these other great Bibles,
Trinitarian Bible Society.
If you're looking for the French, they've got it on Lulu.com.
Okay, but I don't have an answer for every language
just because some of these just are not available.
And so that's why we're working on a project right now
to resurrect some old Bible translations that have gone totally out of print.
For example, Japanese, you know, I don't have an answer for you.
But there are some great Japanese versions
from the early 20th century that are not Westcott & Hort,
that would line up with the King James, but they're totally out of print.
Not only that, the Scandinavian Bibles, the Swedish, the Finnish, the Danish,
the right versions are out there, but they're out of print.
Or at least I can't figure out where to buy them.
If you know where to buy them, then let me know.
I know there's a great Norwegian Bible out there.
I don't know where to buy it online.
So if you have that information, let us know.
But we want to start printing some of these Bibles ourselves
and selling them at framingtheworld.com
so that people can get their hands on these Bibles.
Not only that, but there are even some Bibles that are good Bible versions,
but they're not even in electronic format.
You just have to buy rare physical copies.
Now, for example, we're working on restoring the Samoan New Testament right now.
This is a Samoan Bible from 1887, totally out of print.
You can buy an old copy for really expensive because it's not being printed.
And it's not in electronic format whatsoever.
And in 2015, we need the Bible to be in electronic format
where we can search it, where we can print it,
where we can use it for audio, video, and sermon preparation,
different things on computer.
So what we're doing is we're taking this old 1887 Bible
and we're electronically scanning it
and then using optical character recognition technology
to turn it into text and upload it to the Internet in electronic format
so that we can eventually print physical New Testaments
of the Samoan New Testament that would just be a cheap, easy-to-buy
New Testament for soul winning to give to people that you win to the Lord in Samoa
or just amongst the Samoan populations of Hawaii, Australia, the West Coast, et cetera.
Now, we have a couple of computer programmers at Faithful Word Baptist Church
who are helping out with this.
Actually, our church is filled with computer programmers
and it's great because they're writing special software
that is just designed just to recognize the Samoan language.
And we're starting with Samoan just because it's pretty easy
since it uses the same letters that English uses
with the exception of the little lines above the vowels.
But we're basically scanning this thing into electronic format
and then using OCR, optical character recognition technology,
to then turn it into searchable text.
And these computer programmers at our church,
basically they're writing specific software for Samoan
that will recognize the characters on this page
with the highest possible degree of accuracy.
Then I'm going in myself and just manually putting in all the verse divisions
and also correcting whatever errors I can
using a custom electronic Samoan dictionary, et cetera, et cetera.
So if you want to see the work in progress on the Samoan New Testament,
go to samoannewtestament.blogspot.com.
And if you go there, you'll see that we've already uploaded
a bunch of chapters from Matthew
and we're still fine-tuning the computer programming side of it.
But if you speak the Samoan language and you're watching this video,
please consider helping us out with this
by proofreading the chapters as we upload them.
Because before we print a thousand Samoan New Testaments
to be used for soul winning
and to give to people that you win to Christ in Samoa,
in Hawaii, or wherever you're doing it,
then we want to make sure that the thing's accurate.
So we're getting at 99% with the OCR technology,
but obviously we need a Samoan-speaking human being
just to proofread our work
and just make sure that there aren't any errors
before it actually goes to print.
That's the Samoan.
That's the warm up.
Because it uses Latin characters,
it's easier than some of the other languages.
But the language that really needs a Bible
that I cannot find a decent New Testament in
is the Hindi language.
And this is so important
because we're talking about a language
that, as opposed to being spoken by 400 and some thousand people
like Samoan is,
Hindi is spoken by 400 and some million people.
I mean, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds
and millions of people that need to be won to Christ,
that need to be set up with a New Testament
that is like the King James.
I don't know what to give them.
I don't know what to use
because the only thing I can find online
are these modernistic versions,
the Hindu easy to read version.
You know, we need an accurate Hindi New Testament
that is Textus Receptus based
that is from the King James.
And the great news is
I was able to find an 1874 Hindi New Testament.
And we've got the computer programmers in our church right now
working on optical character recognition
to pull the Hindi script from these pages of this ancient book
and make it possible for us to reprint the 1874 Hindi New Testament.
Because if you go back to the 1800s,
everybody pretty much had the right Bible.
That's the thing that people don't realize with these modern Bibles.
Everybody practically had the right Bible
if you go back 100 years.
It's only in the 20th century
that they started rolling out all this garbage in these languages.
Well, it's our job to be the restorer of the paths
and to build up the old waste places
and to dust off these old Bibles that were published
and that were used to win souls
and to reap great harvests in these countries in the past.
And we need to do it again in our generation.
And so we need to bring back this 1874 Hindi New Testament
because that's a massive segment of people that need the Gospel
and that need the Word of God in electronic format
and in a paperback New Testament.
I feel very strongly about that particular project.
Another thing that people ask me sometimes is just,
hey, where do I get an English Bible?
Where do I get the King James?
Well, you can get a King James pretty much anywhere.
I mean, they're at the Dollar Tree, for crying out loud.
But honestly, if you want to know where to get a really good King James,
I'll tell you, the one that I like the most,
and I've been saying this for years, ever since I found this thing,
this is called the Drill Edition.
But I love this thing just because it doesn't have any notes or anything.
It's just the text of the Bible.
I don't want a bunch of study notes and a bunch of junk.
You know, I'd rather just let the Holy Spirit teach me.
So I really like this blue hardback, and it's affordable.
You know, I don't really keep things nice,
so I like to get stuff that's cheap.
So, you know, you can get one of these Drill Editions,
FramingTheWorld.com sells these for a real reasonable price.
So this is my personal favorite King James Bible.
The one that I like to use is this one right here.
And so stay tuned for updates on this New Testament project.
You know, I'm giving you all the information I have
as far as foreign language New Testaments,
but I'm hoping to be coming to you very soon with updates about, you know,
a finished Samoan Bible project, a finished Hindi Bible project,
and all the other languages, the Japanese New Testament,
Scandinavian New Testaments.
We want to bring all these back.
Now, one of the big obstacles, of course, is money.
So if you do want to donate to the project,
you can also go to FramingTheWorld.com
and donate towards some of the funds because, first of all,
we have to buy these ancient Bibles,
and then we also have to pay to get them laid out.
And the main cost is to print the New Testaments
because you have to print them a thousand at a time.
And so, you know, at four bucks a pop,
that's four thousand bucks, you know, to print a thousand Bibles.
If you want to offer them at five bucks, you know,
then you've got to print a thousand of them
if you want to sell them for five bucks each,
which, you know, the whole point is to make it affordable and easy to get.
So stay tuned for updates. Pray for this project.
And if you want to be a part of the project, if you want to help,
you can email me with information about New Testaments
that need to be restored or send me the links
of where they can be found in electronic format.
My email is sanderson1611 at gmail.com.
So you can help us with providing information
of what Bibles are already out there and where they can be purchased.
Also, if you want to make a donation to the project,
that's going to help us to be able to do more languages faster
and get these things out there and in people's hands
where they need to be. God bless you.