Bible version debate

There have been various debates concerning the proper family of biblical manuscripts and translation techniques that should be used to translate the Bible into other languages. Biblical translation has been employed since the first translations were made from the Hebrew Bible (Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic) into Greek (see Septuagint) and Aramaic (see Targum). Until the Late Middle Ages, the Western Church used the Latin Vulgate almost entirely while the Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, mostly used the Greek Byzantine text. Beginning in the 14th century, there have been increasing numbers of vernacular translations into various languages. With the development of modern printing techniques, these increased enormously.

The English King James Version or "Authorized Version", published in 1611, has been one of the most debated English versions. Many supporters of the King James Version are disappointed with the departure from this translation to newer translations that use the critical text instead of the Byzantine text as the base text. There have also been debates regarding the benefits of formal translations over dynamic equivalence translations. Supporters of formal translation such as the King James Version criticize translations that use dynamic equivalence on the grounds that accuracy is compromised, since this technique tends to reword the text instead of translating it more literally in a word-for-word fashion. Additionally, these supporters are critical of translations using the critical text because they believe that biblical text has been deliberately deleted from the original autographs. Debates of this type involve theological concepts as well as translation techniques which are outlined in the process of textual criticism.