Over on Facebook, I participate in a group that I created several years ago, called Bible Versions Debate and Discussion.  I stopped being an Admin of the group, because I hated trying to moderate discussions about the Bible.  It seems to me that is virtually impossible for some people to disagree with a Bible translation without resorting to overly dramatic or inflammatory language.  Case in point: the other day, I simply asked if anyone had any thoughts on the CEB, now that the version is complete.  Almost immediately, someone posted a YouTube video that, in its title refers to the CEB as a PERVERSION, and proceeds to rip the CEB apart (figuratively), using the King James Version as the ultimate criterion for orthodoxy.  Now, I do not understand this kind of approach.  Isn't it possible to critique a Bible translation, and even to indicate that you don't think it's a good translation, without accusing the translators of a wilful perversion of God's Word?  I mean, although I have followed the CEB with interest for some time, it's not my favorite translation in the world.  Some of the choices the translators made strike me as weak, inaccurate, or inelegant.  But that doesn't mean that the CEB translators have some secret agenda to erode people's faith in God and the Bible.  It simply means that the CEB and I disagree in places.  

When it comes to badly done translations, very few Bibles come close to the New World Translation, and even that one is not 100% horrible throughout.  Indeed, if I were to turn to a random page in the NWT, I would probably have no problems with what I read.  When they mess it up, they mess it up pretty badly, but the rest of it is okay.  But I don't spend all of my energy trying to show Jehovah's Witnesses how awful their official Bible translation is.  I don't write blog after blog about the "perversion" of the NWT.  If anyone askes me about it, I tell them that I would avoid it, and suggest a few better versions.  What makes some people have to excoriate everything with which they disagree?  "The King James Bible is the best translation ever made; therefore, every modern Bible translation is part of a plot by the devil (or the Roman Catholic Church or the New Age movement)."  Crazy.

My basic message to the people who insist on being the drama kings and queens of Christian faith is this: get over yourselves.