Translations & Copyright

Last updated: 2026-05-19

Christos cites short passages from a range of English Bible translations for comparative, educational study. Each cited translation is reproduced from its publisher's authoritative text. Below are the copyright notices and attributions for every translation that appears on this site.

All scripture quotations are used under fair-use educational provisions; each is limited to short excerpts shown alongside other translations for comparison. No translation is reproduced in whole or in any substantial portion. If you are a rights holder and have concerns, please contact us.

NIV — New International Version

ESV — English Standard Version

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

NRSVue — New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition

Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

NASB — New American Standard Bible

NABRE — New American Bible, Revised Edition

Scripture texts marked NABRE are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

NET — New English Translation

REV — Revised English Version

NWT — New World Translation

Scripture quotations marked NWT are taken from the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, © 2013, 2018 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Cited here for comparative study; inclusion does not imply endorsement of the translation or the publisher's theology.

Where translation becomes interpretation

Every translation makes decisions the Greek does not make for it. Most are invisible and harmless. A few land directly on the questions this site examines, and it is worth knowing where they are — in every direction, not only the ones that favour a particular conclusion.

Capitalisation. Greek manuscripts of the New Testament period are written entirely in capitals with no word division, so no distinction between "word" and "Word", or "spirit" and "Spirit", exists in the text. Every such choice in English is an editorial judgement. It is applied unevenly even within one verse: at Romans 8:15 most versions print a lowercase "spirit of slavery" and a capitalised "Spirit of adoption", though the Greek word is the same and neither has the article.
Supplied words. The NASB renders Philippians 2:6 "who, as He already existed in the form of God" — where "already" translates nothing in the Greek participle. The NIV's "being in very nature God" likewise renders morphē ("form") with a term drawn from later doctrinal vocabulary.
Direction of travel. At John 13:3, several versions have Jesus "returning to God" or "going back to God". The verb is hypagō, "to go away"; Greek has hypostrephō for "return", and it is not used here. Compare the risen Jesus's own "I have not yet ascended to the Father" (John 20:17).
Pronouns for the Spirit. Rendering the neuter relative pronoun as "who" rather than "which" — as at Acts 5:32 — encodes a conclusion about personhood in a grammatical choice. See The Holy Spirit.
Capitalised interpretations. At 1 Peter 1:11 the NASB prints "the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted" — capital S, capital H — which turns an ambiguous phrase into a statement about a person acting. The Greek is pneuma Christou, and whether it means the Holy Spirit, Christ's own spirit, or the spirit that testified about Christ is exactly what the verse is disputed over.
Substituted names. At John 12:41 the Greek has a pronoun, "his glory"; the NIV prints "Jesus' glory", resolving an ambiguity the text leaves open.
Red-letter editions. Printing some words in red is a speaker attribution, and in places where the speaker genuinely changes without warning — the closing verses of Revelation, for instance — it presents an editorial judgement as a typographical fact.
And in the other direction. The REV, produced by Biblical Unitarians, adds "[in purpose]" at John 10:30 — a bracketed gloss that supplies the interpretation rather than leaving it to the reader. The New World Translation's "a god" at John 1:1 is a defensible construal of an anarthrous predicate, but it is a construal, and it is presented without a note. Both are the same kind of move as the ones listed above.

None of this means translations are untrustworthy. The overwhelming majority of the New Testament is rendered accurately and consistently across all major versions. It means that on the handful of verses where the doctrinal stakes are highest, a reader who wants to weigh the arguments should know which words are in the text and which are the translator's.

Editorial note

Where we add bold emphasis within a translation, that emphasis is editorial — it marks the contested phrase under discussion on each page and is not part of the original published translation. Where ellipses (...) appear, they indicate omitted material between cited clauses; the omitted text is never theologically load-bearing for the comparison shown.

Christos is an independent educational project. Citing a translation does not imply endorsement by the translation's publisher, nor does it imply that the publisher endorses any position presented on this site.

Corrections

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