Well here’s the simple answer on why..

Don’t believe in the bible because there’s so many versions?
There’s a simple answer of why. Do you know Greek? Maybe Aramaic? Old English? How about Hebrew? No? Well that’s the the beginning of your answer.

One of the main reasons we see different versions of the Bible is because of the number of manuscripts available, not only that, but the English language has changed dramatically. Not to mention the people who speak one of the other 7,360 known languages? There are over 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts known to date, along with over 10,000 Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts and over 19,000 copies in Syriac, Coptic, Latin, and Aramaic languages.

Manuscript Families:

There’s 2 manuscript families in these manuscripts: Alexandrian text-type (also called Neutral or Egyptian) and Byzantine text-type (also called the Majority Text).

• The Byzantine text type looks at all the manuscripts and determines the final reading by what the majority of the manuscripts say.
• Rather than looking for a collective majority, the Alexandrian text type looks mainly at the date of the manuscript and the region of the world it’s from.

Translation Philosophy:

Once the manuscript families are determined for the translation of the Bible, translators need to decide what translation philosophy they will follow. There are 3 main ideas: formal equivalence, functional equivalence, and optimal equivalence.

1. Formal Equivalence focuses on translating word-for-word and strives to be as literal as possible. Bibles that fall under the formal equivalence philosophy would be the ESV, KJV, and NASB.

2. Functional Equivalence focuses on a thought-for-thought translation. Its goal is to make the text easy to read and easier to understand. Bibles that fall in this category would be the NLT and NIV.

3. Optimal Equivalence is a balance of word-for-word and though-for-thought where needed for the reader to better understand. The HCSB would be an example of this.

There’s also bibles that are paraphrased but lack accuracy and sometimes go beyond a thought-for-thought approach. These Bibles are good to better understand the story or text…but not for an in depth study.

But why are there so many English versions of the Bible?

With so many manuscripts (some differing from one another) and different translation philosophies, we have about 50 main versions of the English Bible today. If we count revisions, we are well into the hundreds of Bibles. But the main reason there are many versions of the English Bible is that over time the English language has changed dramatically. Old English sounds and reads differently than modern English. Some readers might be confused while reading certain passages, and don’t forget that certain words have changed in meaning from back then to now.

For example: In the KJV you will find that in 1 Corinthians 13 instead of using the word “love” it uses “charity.” Charity today means something completely different then what it meant back in the 17th century. Today we use the word “love,” and when we speak of charity, we are referring to the act of being generous or to an organization.

To sum it up, there are so many versions of the bible simply because it is broken down for everyone to understand in their own comprehension. Not everyone learns and understands the same. The bible is a book meant to learn and understand. What good would it make if it’s not broken down to our own understanding? A good way to look at it is, that’s how important the bible to humans. So important that there’s plenty of versions for you to to understand the meaning in its texts and get the truth out of it instead of assuming what the text means.

Bible versions and bible translations

Translations have to do with language, and versions have to do with difference or variety. Therefore, we can have an English translation of the Bible and 50 versions in just that one language.

Editions

Many of these have other editions, like the military edition, the sports edition, the men’s and women’s and teenagers’ and students’ editions, etc. In short, When it comes to the different editions of the Bible aimed at students or men or women or soldiers, all those are simply marketing packages in which the actual text of the Bible remains the same. They differ only in the additional items that accompany the text — the introductory content, the study notes, the devotional articles, and other material. All of these bibles are the same and give you the same amount of information as a bible without an addition, it just ads a bit more of a ‘topic based’ study along with it.

EXAMPLES

If a young man says “Aye, it’s chill, bro.” I could have translated this sentence in a number of ways with the exact same meaning.

“Hey, it’s all good, man.”

“Listen, everything is okay, my friend.”

“The situation is copacetic, loved one.”

The specific words differ in all these translations.
Another example the original meaning of gay, meant happy! Elated. Today gay refers to homosexuality.

TEXT EXAMPLE

Let me break it down once more. Lets break down Mark 10:50 and see how several English Bibles translate that verse.

Here it is in the original Greek: ὁ δὲ άποβαλῶν τὸ ἱμάτιον αὐτοῦ ἀναπηδήσας ἦλθεν πρὸς τὸν Ἰησοῦν.

The English Standard Version translates it like this: And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.

The New American Standard Bible: Throwing aside his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus.

The New International Version: Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

The New Revised Standard Version: So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.

The King James Version: And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.

My point here is simply to say that different translations do not prevent us from knowing what the original actually meant. In fact, reading two or three translations side-by-side can many times actually help fill out the picture of what’s happening.

I’m sure you still have one more lingering question… Why are there different translations of the Bible in the first place? Why have people gone to the extreme to make all those translations? The answer comes down to recognizing all the different ways people use the Bible in their lives. — Think about it. People read the Bible devotionally, they preach from it, they use it in Bible studies, they do scholarly work on it, they study it, they have conversations about doctrines from it, they defend their understanding of the faith with it. For most of these, a strict word-for-word translation of the original Greek or Hebrew would not be very useful. In fact, it would be frustrating.

That’s the main reason we have different translations — for different uses of the Bible. Sometimes a stricter, more word-for-word translation of the original language is exactly what you need. But at other times, you want something a bit more readable, a bit more readily understandable, and so some translations offer a more phrase-for-phrase (or even thought-for-thought) approach, preferring English syntax over Greek or Hebrew syntax.

In other words, every translation of the Bible has to aim, to one degree or another, at both accuracy and readability. Some translation committees take it as their mission to heavily privilege accuracy and sacrifice readability to a certain degree. Other translation committees set out to produce a version that is strictly readable, but that decision necessarily means the translators will have to rearrange some of the original language’s word order so that the sentences will sound “right” to an English-language ear.

I hope this made a more clear understanding for you!