Evan Blackmore is a retired medical practitioner and psychiatrist. His wife Marie, Ph.D., works in disability services as a researcher. Their most recent books are Leviticus (Truth Commentaries) and Between Malachi and Jesus (DeWard Publications).

Introduction

Christ's followers are not to keep the gospel to themselves. On the contrary, they are to "make disciples of all the nations" (Matt. 28:19, NKJV; Mark 13:10; Rom. 16:26). To do that, God's word must be proclaimed in many different languages. So it was in the very beginning of the church, on the Day of Pentecost: the apostles "began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance"—and as a result, "devout men, from every nation under heaven," each "heard them speak in his own language" (Acts 2:4-11).

Today, international travel is simpler, cheaper, and quicker than ever before. This means that there are more and more contacts between speakers of different languages, and more and more opportunities to preach the gospel across language barriers.

At any time, new neighbors or workmates may arrive from a foreign country, perhaps with very limited English. If so, it could be helpful to get them a Bible in their own language.

Or you yourself may visit a foreign country. If so, you might want to carry a Bible in the appropriate language, so that you can show Scripture passages to people whom you meet, and so that you can follow the Scriptures when you worship with the congregation there.

Maybe you learned a foreign language at school. Even if you have no use for it at the moment, you might still want to read the Bible in that language from time to time, to keep your old knowledge from rusting. You can never foresee when it might become useful in the Lord's service.

Also, reading the Bible in different languages can improve your own understanding of God's word. Have you ever looked at the moon through a small telescope? Its landscape is always the same—but different features stand out at different times of the month, because they are lit from different angles. The same thing happens when you read the Bible in different languages. In faithful translations, the sense of a Bible passage is always the same—but different languages highlight its features differently, and therefore you notice details of it that you never saw before.

But which foreign language Bible should you choose? As in English, so in other languages, not all Bible versions are equally reliable. And those that are most readily available aren't necessarily the best. In many languages, the most widely marketed Bibles include equivalents of the New Jerusalem Bible with its Vatican II Roman Catholicism, the New World Translation with its doctrines of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Good News Bible with its skeptical attitude to God's Word. Probably you wouldn't care to buy such Bibles yourself, and certainly you wouldn't want to put them into the hands of unbelievers or new converts whose senses were not yet exercised to discern between good and evil (Heb. 5:14).

During the next few months, we plan to describe some of the most trustworthy Bible versions in the most widely spoken languages of the Americas (Portuguese, Spanish, French) and western Europe (German, Dutch, Italian). Because of space limitations, we will concentrate on versions that follow the wording and sentence structure of the original Greek and Hebrew quite closely—in the way that the King James Version, American Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, New King James Version, and English Standard Version do in English.

Portuguese Versions of the Bible

The spelling of most western languages has remained much the same for centuries, but Portuguese spelling was radically modernized during the early 20th century. For instance, the Bible books that used to be called Job, Psalmos, Haggeo, and Philippenses are now called Jo, Salmos, Ageu, and Filippenses. Therefore, trying to read a pre-1920 Portuguese Bible is like trying to read an original-spelling 1611 KJV Bible. Most of the words are familiar, but they are sometimes hard for modern Portuguese readers to recognize, because they are spelled in unfamiliar ways.

There are also minor differences between the American Portuguese of Brazil and European Portuguese (just as there are between American English and British English).

The first complete Portuguese version of the Bible was issued in 1749-1753. It was mainly the work of João Ferreira de Almeida, and is usually called the Almeida Version. Several different revisions of it are available.

The Versão Almeida Revista e Corrigida (abbreviated ARC or RC) was first issued in 1898 and is now available in several modern-spelling editions. In most Scripture passages it is undoubtedly the most precise Portuguese translation available, broadly comparable in approach to the New American Standard Bible and New King James Version. Like them, it uses italics to mark words added by the translators. It prints a very full New Testament text (even including passages that have very little manuscript support, such as the reference to the three heavenly witnesses in 1 John 5:7-8), but within each passage it often chooses the wording that has the strongest manuscript support. For instance, in Revelation 22:19 it reads árvore de vida ("tree of life"); the traditional reading "book of life" (NKJV) is found in no known Greek manuscript, and most likely arose in Latin (the words for "book" and "tree" can be confused in Latin, but not in Greek).

Different modern reprints of the ARC differ very slightly, as the translation has been further revised for different publishers. Overall, the editions published by Geográfica (in Brazilian Portuguese) and the Sociedade Bíblica de Portugal (in European Portuguese) tend to follow the original Greek and Hebrew most precisely, whereas editions published by the Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil tend to be slightly more paraphrastic (more like the ARA; see below).

The Versão Almeida Corrigida Fiel (abbreviated ACF or CF) was published by the Sociedade Bíblica Trinitariana do Brasil in 1994. It revised the ARC to match the policies that had been adopted by the English KJV translators in 1611: for instance, it reads livro da vida ("book of life") in Revelation 22:19. Nevertheless in most verses there is little or no difference between these two versions.

The Versão Almeida Revista e Atualizada (abbreviated ARA or RA), a modernization of the ARC, was completed in 1959 and slightly revised in 1995. It is the standard liberal Protestant Bible in Portuguese (somewhat like the New Revised Standard Version in English). It is simpler and easier to read than the ARC and ACF. This is partly because it sometimes omits little details where the translators felt the sense could be understood without them. For instance, when the apostles were baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2), the sound is described by the ARC as um vento veemente e impetuoso ("a powerful and violent wind"), but the ARA simplifies this to um vento impetuoso ("a violent wind"). Unlike the ARC and ACF, the ARA does not use italics to indicate words added by the translators. Like the NRSV, it occasionally departs from the text of Scripture altogether because of its translators' modern theological theories. For instance, the ARA changes "the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning" (Ps. 49:14) to será el sepulcro su última morada ("the grave will be their final resting place"). No ancient Bible manuscript (in any language) says anything like that, but the change is generally favored by modern liberal scholars, because they think the psalm's original writer could not have believed in life after death (A. A. Anderson, Psalms [London: Oliphants, 1972], I: 379). Thankfully, the ARA has very few such blemishes (certainly fewer than the NRSV).

The accompanying chart (p. 33) shows a representative Scripture passage in the three main revisions of the Almeida Version. Here, as in most parts of the Bible, there is no significant difference between the ARC and ACF, and little difference between them and the ARA. Apart from revisions of the Almeida Version, the main Portuguese Bible is the Nova Versão Internacional (abbreviated NVI), published in 2001. This is a Portuguese adaptation of the New International Version, and has improved on it in some respects. For example, the Portuguese NVI reads carne ("flesh") wherever the English NIV has "sinful nature" (Rom. 7:18; 8:5; etc.), and says that everything under the sun is inutilidade ("futility") where the English NIV says, less accurately, that everything under the sun is "meaningless" (Eccl. 1:2). But not all the NIV's main errors have been corrected. Like the English NIV, the Portuguese NVI says not simply that David was conceived in sin, but that he was conceived "a sinner" (pecador, Ps. 51:5), and that the "righteousness from God… is by faith from first to last" (a justiça de Deus… do princípio ao fim é pela fé, Rom. 1:17). The Almeida Bibles do not have those errors.

If you're not familiar with the languages, make sure you don't buy a Spanish Bible by mistake instead of a Portuguese one. Some of them can look quite similar. In particular, there is a Spanish equivalent of the NIV, called the Nueva Versión International, which is customarily abbreviated NVI, just like its Portuguese relative. The Spanish NVI does not have the merits of the Portuguese NVI described above.