Have a shit ton of random thoughts.

The majority of people of authority I've talked to say The NIV is legitimately reputable and is the result of a thorough and balanced translation process. The KJV is my go-to Bible when I want to read for the sake of beauty, the NIV is my goto for when I want to read for the sake of study. I once had a real good NIV study Bible and I'm almost sure it was this one, though I've discovered in the past year it's missing and I have yet to replace it. Learning Greek to read the Bible strikes me as super admirable. At the same time though, I think you can trust the NIV translators to give you a more accurate product than what you come up with through your own studies. That said, keep doing what you're doing, cause your own work might produce satisfying results you might not get otherwise.

I'd like to also say in defense of my image here, while I like the idea of reading the works of guys like Rumi, Hafiz, Lao Tse, etc., I'm personally not into mysticism. Things like qi, chakras, etc., not my thing. What I get out of these things is "Wow. That's a really creative way to say 'Be nice to that guy next to you' or 'Work honestly so your work brings good results.'" Don't take too much stock in that statement though, cause one, I think you can find messages like that from everywhere you look, no matter the time or culture, and two, I'm not a deep guy. You could literally write on a piece of paper that says "Don't be a jackass" and I'll be like "Okay, cool. I'm gonna run with that."

I think authenticity matters a lot when it comes to translations, whether we're talking about translating "Three Blind Mice" or "Frankenstein" or "The Bible." I think there's different merits to translations, focusing on literal accuracy, aesthetics, etc. There's a whole spectrum there and I've read Odder's response a second time today and I can kind of understand that maybe sometimes it's okay to translate something with more of an ear to making it sound nice. The thing is though, if someone said "So and so doesn't know that language very well, there are better translations out there" I'd think that's not so bad. I can look into better things. But to read "So and so made stuff up," that's not a bad translation. That's something worse.

One of the interesting things about texts, religious or otherwise aside from laws, is that they often can be open to interpretation by the reader in so many ways. I think that's partly by design. It allows people to take what they read and figure out how it applies to them as a an individual at that point and time in their life. It allows them to make a profound connection to what they're reading. When this type of reaction is applied to something people put a lot of value in, such as religious texts, that sense of profoundness is probably even more powerful. So even if people rely on an outdated translation, there's still something there for them to draw from and it can still be good.

That said, a lot of times, a little extra background and context in what you're reading can make a huge difference in how you perceive it and absorb it. Sometimes why something is being said in just ad important as to what is being said. So in that sense, a good background can be very helpful. There are a lot of denominations of Christianity that really embrace that mentality. Off the top of my head, I recall Presbyterians are pretty enthusiastic about making a lifelong commitment to deepening their religious knowledge.