The modern American translations
Between them these account for most English Bibles sold anywhere today — including one whose famous name no longer means the edition most people are quoting.
| Bible | Year | The spirit of the change |
|---|---|---|
| Good News Bible / TEV | NT 1966 · Bible 1976 · rev. 1992 | Translate the meaning into the simplest English that carries it. |
| New International Version | 1978 · 1984 · 2011 | A deliberately mainstream evangelical Bible, readable but not loose. |
| Contemporary English Version | NT 1991 · Bible 1995 | Written to be heard, and tested by reading it aloud. |
| The Message | NT 1993 · Bible 2002 | Contemporary idiom for people who had stopped hearing it. |
| Holman Christian Standard → Christian Standard Bible | 2004 → 2017 | Aiming between literal and readable — and quietly removing “Yahweh.” |
| NET Bible | 2005 · 2nd ed. 2019 | Show the workings. |
| Modern Language Bible | 1959 · 1969 | The New Berkeley Version, from the originals. |
Good News Bible
Translate the meaning into the simplest English that carries it, for readers whose first language is not English. The first mass-market Bible built on that principle, and the one that made dynamic equivalence a mainstream idea rather than a theory.
Contemporary English Version
The American Bible Society going further than the Good News Bible: written to be heard, and tested by reading it aloud to listeners rather than by reading it on a page.
The Message
Eugene Peterson rewriting the Bible in contemporary idiom for people who had stopped hearing it.
A paraphrase, but made from Hebrew and Greek — which is what separates it from the Living Bible, and which is why the arrow into it comes off a junction rather than off another English Bible. See the exceptions: here ancestry and character point opposite ways.
Modern Language Bible
The New Berkeley Version, 1959 and 1969 — a mid-century American translation from the original languages, and one of the three translations bound together in the parallel Bibles that introduced a lot of readers to the idea that translations differ at all.
New International Version
A deliberately mainstream evangelical Bible, readable but not loose, by a standing committee that keeps revising it. The best-selling English Bible in the world.
⚠️ “NIV” does not mean the 1978
The New International Version has been revised three times, and the 2011 edition replaced everything before it. The 1984 is out of print.
The TNIV (New Testament 2002, Bible 2005) attempted inclusive language, met sustained public objection, and was withdrawn — then most of what it did was absorbed into the 2011 anyway.
So a reader who says “the NIV” almost certainly means the 2011, and a reader quoting an NIV from memory is probably quoting the 1984.
It is the same trap as “Douay-Rheims” meaning Challoner and “King James” meaning Blayney’s 1769 — three times on this one chart, the famous name belongs to an edition nobody is actually holding.
Holman Christian Standard → Christian Standard Bible
A Southern Baptist alternative to the NIV, aiming between literal and readable.
The 2017 revision quietly removed the “Yahweh” its predecessor had printed — see the divine name, where this is the clearest case on the chart of a translation changing its mind, because the same publisher did both.