I don’t really think that. I can’t convince myself that is true. My real opinion is that each version is useful and many of the differences appeals to the tastes of the individual readers. I am doing this to make a point about the assertion that the King James Version of the Bible is the definitive version and that all others are perversions of the Word of God. I seek to demonstrate an equally convincing case that the Message is the most pure and perfect version. If I succeed in that we can conclude that any version can be tauted as the best Bible. I have chosen the Message because it is probably the most questioned version and the most demonized. This will be an interesting project. Some of the following arguments will be nothing more than parallels to demonstrate that an argument claimed by one version can be claimed by any version.

The Message uses many translations to find the most adequate colloquial expressions. This provides two major benefits of the Message: the scriptures are in the language of today, and there is a redundancy in confirmed translation.

Being written in the language of today is, by some considered to be a weakness, but it is a strength. The use of modern phrases nods to the constant evolution of language and the adoption of new metaphors by which we communicate abstract ideas. This rate of change is natural and good in language. We would not expect to read an Old English text or German text simply because our current language came from those roots. A translation can be judged by how true it is to the original text and the clarity with which it is communicated in contemporary language. This is true for a translation 500 years or thirty years old. I will concede that one day soon, The Message will need to be replaced in order to be read in the language of today.

My personal experience is that it allows for me to connect with the meaning without having to ‘translate’ the text in to meaningful phrases for myself. That work has been done for me.

One charge against The Message is that it is the invention of one man, Eugene Peterson. That is simply not true. Eugene Peterson built this work on the translation efforts of all versions of the Bible. In order to bring out the meaning, he used many translation sources. Just as King James Version translators used the Tyndale Bible, and Tyndale undoubtedly had the benefit of Wycliffe’s manuscripts when creating a Bible in English.

All this talk about new colloquial versions of the Bible revolves around the Gutenberg press. The printing press is what made it truly an option to create a Bible for the common man, even with a proper colloquial version, handwritten manuscripts were too expensive to distribute outside of the clergy. The Gutenberg press is also what created written forms of the ‘barbarian’ languages. At once official grammars and spellings were made so that people of that language could read it and write it with understanding (the very same reason we all must learn spelling and grammar in school). But with the growth in printing and distribution, came alterations to the printed word, reflecting changes in the spoken word. With the printing press came the invention of new words, the disuse of others, and the only authority was if it was printed. This remains true today (look up for your self how Oxford English determines if a word is a word, it is if it has been published).

Having established that the printing press allows us to change the official versions of languages, and we can track it through the ages, please consider the World Wide Web. Printing books was cheaper than manuscripts, but not nearly as cheap as magnetic memory and a broadband internet connection. Now we are all publishers, or at least I am. You could be too. But I might invent a word here today, or reuse a new word and make it crediblicious. This is also true of TV and radio. The point is not to invent words, but to communicate what I mean using the language I speak. All I mean to say is, like the press, this accelerates the change language.

One last criticism is that the verse numbers in the text of The Message are not precisely marked, and that causes confusion when people give the citation for a Bible quote. Well, that is true, people will have to have an intimate thorough knowledge of scripture rather than segmented, isolated soundbites. Beyond that, chapters and verses were not added to the Bible until the fifteenth century. I’ve also found the use of individual verses allows use to misuse the Bible more handily by removing all context.

That is all I have for now, and I think it is pretty good for a stance I do not really hold. I do think The Message is useful, but it is not the only version I read. That, I think, is the best approach.