Best study bible to read as literature?

>Best study bible
If you're a Christian? ESV

>to read as literature
KJV no holds barred, no alternatives

From a glance though it seems that KJV is mainly and update to modern spelling, not so much grammar, so I can't see it compromising so much the literary integrity of the original KJV. Can anyone comment?

I mean NKJV compared to KJV

Depends on what you mean by "study bible." If you mean bible to study, the most literary translations is obviously KJV or Douay-Rheims. KJV specifically was written to be read aloud. They didn't just aim for truth or accuracy, but also for beauty.

If you mean an actual study bible, I'd say don't. Even for Christians study bibles can be dangerous, like when people start believing someone's notes are as authoritative as scripture or the "true translation." But for people interested in literature, they are beyond useless.

Get an annotated bible like the Oxford one, if you want important notes on the text that don't espouse a certain theology or at least try not to.

What about the New American (Catholic) Bible? got it in Confirmation a few years back--read Genesis and put it away

Big fan of the Companion Bible. Full KJV text with commentary from E. W. Bullinger. Some people love him, some people hate him. Google him to decide for yourself. If you're a fan of Infinite Jest, you might like the nearly infinite footnotes. There's a huge section on "the Gospel of the stars" about weird astrological interpretations that show the life of Christ. But you can ignore all that. It also has a nearly full concordance of all the Greek and Hebrew words in the original texts. And again, you can ignore all that and just have your Big Black Bible. You can carry TCB into any church, Protestant or Catholic, secure in the knowledge that you have the biggest, baddest Bible of anyone there.

>If you're a Christian? ESV
You mean if you're Protestant.

What's so great about the ESV? How does it stand against the RSV or, say, the NASB?

>Astrological
BURN THE INFIDEL

Norton Critical Edition of the KJV, 2 volumes, titled "The English Bible"

More like heretic. Even Aquinas believed in astrology, it's only fairly recently that the Church has turned against it.

And then a new Pope will decide it's fine again in a century or so. So it goes.

And then apologists that were against it the previous week will go online to defend it and say that it was always allowed.

>tfw no stability
>tfw changing my belief every week with every new decision of the pope
>tfw the Church """adapting""" to changes in society (e.g. feminism) -implying that the religious is below the ethical (ethical meaning: societal, general)
>tfw Christianity changes its "Universal and Necessary Truth" every hundred years
>tfw can't even decide which of the 1000 branches of Christianity I prefer -every one of them calling others "Not true Christians, will burn in Hell for Eternity"

>every one of them calling others "Not true Christians, will burn in Hell for Eternity"

None of the orthodox denominations (speaking broadly) actually teach this.

Oh, ok.
Then it's not "every one of them", but it's still a LOT of christians that believe their way is the only way -or at least the best way- and that everyone else has it wrong. There's no uniformity.

What about the third point? and the fourth? -ignore my hyperboles: every week, every hundred years, 1000 branches.

>There's no uniformity

You should not expect uniformity. Prior to Constantine everything was a big mess of sects, and even after him there were still substantial heretical groups persisting for centuries. The only "uniformity" that has ever existed was state-enforced. With that gone, people easily split apart. There's nothing you can do about it. Hell, the so-called "Vicar of Christ" couldn't stop the Great Schism and the Reformation. It sucks but it's just a fact of life.

>What about the third point? and the fourth?

I'm not really a Christian anymore (not sure, really) so I don't have a vested interest in trying to defend these things, but I'll say that there are denominations that exist which are not as affected as what you are getting at. Reformed Christians (conservative ones) have substantially the same theology they did at the time of the Reformation. Eastern Orhodox churches tend to be stable as well, with some notable exceptions. Within each larger sub-set of Christians there is generally a spectrum of groups ranging from very conservative to very liberal. You just have to find your place in it.

KJV is easy as hell to understand. Especially given "Biblical" (KJV) language has permeated our culture.
Idiot
Oxford World Classics KJV is decent. The notes can get pretty school of resentment though.

Aha. Thanks for your reply.

>reading Westcott & Hort heresy like ESV

...

I was made in the 21st Century and actually has a future, for further reading:

bible-researcher.com/esv.html

Thank you very much for this. I had mistaken the ESV for a 19th century translation (was probably thinking of the ASV), and I didn't know about that website.

It's decent but is nothing special compared to any other literal translation. It was made to reverse the innovations in the NRSV, which is pointless because, 1) the RSV still exists, 2) the NASB was already made for that purpose.

The only real upside is that the publisher's efforts to get it adopted by churches means it's pushing out the shitty NIV.