Customer Reviews

The Holy Bible, New Century Version/Duraflex

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"God intended for everyone to be able to understand his Word" begins the preface of the New Century Version (NCV). To reach such a goal, NCV translators used The Living Word Vocabulary, the standard used by such publishers of The World Book Encyclopedia to help decide suitable vocabulary for this version. This version, also, replaced rhetorical questions with direct statements. (Was it genuinely necessary to remove rhetorical questions?) It translated figures of speech according to their meaning, and conveyed the meaning of idiomatic expressions using different phrasing, if needed. Thus, with short sentences and simple words, the NCV is written at a third-grade reading level.

Granted, the NCV is very readable. That does not mean, however, its prose is worth reading: its prose is that bland! Many sentences are artificially short. As an unintended by-product of its effort for an understandable text, the NCV editors ended sucking most of the personality out of the text. Even more, some claim that the NCV is anti-Jewish, going beyond preserving "the evidence of intra-Jewish conflict" in the New Testament.

In the NCV 1 John 3:17 reads:

Suppose someone has enough to live and sees a brother or sister in need, but does not help. Then God's love is not living in that person. (NCV)

The NCV receives a C in accuracy but a B in readability.

Although this version is not really bad, for easy-to-read versions the International Standard Version and God's Word are--overall--among the best.