In my review of the CSB Personal Size Giant Print Bible, I told you how I use two Bibles. The New King James Version is the one I teach from, and the Christian Standard Bible is the one I read for my own soul. A lot of the time I have both open on the table.

That second Bible has been working its way toward the front of the room for a while now. When I’m getting ready for a Friday night study and need to bring a passage on home, I reach for the CSB more often than not. The second reading opens up something the first one left shut. I’ve done it often enough that it’s time to make it official.

So here is the change. In everything I write for The Berean Heart, the blog posts, the study guides, the handouts, and the books, the NKJV remains my main text. The CSB now stands beside it. When a passage needs a second angle, or when the CSB says it more plainly, you’ll see both.

Why the NKJV Stays

The NKJV is a Bible with a family tree. Thomas Nelson published the New Testament in 1979 and the whole Bible in 1982, and the translators set out to update the King James Version without losing it. The cadence survived. If you memorized Psalm 23 or John 3:16 from the King James, you’ll recognize it in the NKJV.

Its New Testament stands in the same line as the King James too. It is translated from the Textus Receptus, the Received Text, which goes back to the printed Greek New Testaments of the 1500s, beginning with Erasmus in 1516. William Tyndale translated from Erasmus. English-speaking Christians read the Scriptures through that Greek text for centuries.

And the NKJV is a word-for-word translation. When I want to see the shape of a Greek or Hebrew sentence, the order of its ideas, the words it repeats, the NKJV shows me. That makes it the right Bible for close study, and that is why it stays at the center.

Why the CSB Joins It

The CSB came out in 2017 as a thorough revision of the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Its translators call their method optimal equivalence. Where a word-for-word rendering reads clearly in English, they keep it. Where it would trip up a modern reader, they translate for the meaning.

Sometimes the difference is just plain English. Take Philippians 4:6.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

Philippians 4:6, NKJV

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Philippians 4:6, CSB

Paul’s verb is merimnaō (μεριμνάω, G3309). The NKJV says “be anxious.” The CSB says “worry.” Both are accurate. The NKJV itself translates the same verb “worry” in the Sermon on the Mount, “do not worry about your life” (Matthew 6:25). The CSB puts Philippians 4:6 in the words a man would use over a cup of coffee, and the man sitting across the table hears it the first time.

Other times the CSB catches a second meaning in the Greek, and the two translations together give you the whole of it. We’ve been working through the Gospel of John on Friday nights, so take John 1:5.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

John 1:5, NKJV

That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

John 1:5, CSB

John’s verb is katalambanō (καταλαμβάνω, G2638). It means to seize, to lay hold of something. You can lay hold of a thing with your mind, and then the word means to grasp or understand. You can lay hold of a thing with your hands, and then it means to overpower or overtake. John uses it again in 12:35, where Jesus warns, “Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you.”

The NKJV chose the first sense. The darkness never understood the light. That is the sorrow running through John’s whole Gospel. “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (John 1:10). The CSB chose the second sense. The darkness never put the light out. That is the cross and the empty tomb.

Each translation prints the other’s reading in a footnote. I believe John meant us to hear both. And I would rather you see both on the page than find one in the text and the other in a footnote you skipped.

I would rather you see both on the page than find one in the text and the other in a footnote you skipped.

One more, because every Bible teacher ought to keep this verse taped to the lectern.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15, NKJV

Be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15, CSB

The word behind “rightly dividing” is orthotomeō (ὀρθοτομέω, G3718). It is built from orthos, straight, and temnō, to cut. This is the only place it appears in the New Testament. The Greek Old Testament uses it in Proverbs 3:6, where God makes your paths straight. Picture a road crew cutting a straight way through the woods, or a farmer laying a straight furrow behind his mule.

The NKJV keeps the picture of the cutting. The CSB tells you what the cutting is for. A teacher cuts a straight path through the text so the people behind him can walk it. That is what I am trying to do every Friday night, and I want both translations in my hand while I do it.

I wrote about how translators wrestle with one rich Greek word in an earlier post from the Feed Yourself series, Why Your Translations Disagree, and Why That’s a Gift. Romans 3:25 is the example there, and it makes the same case from another angle.

Two Streams of Greek Manuscripts

There’s one more reason I value these two together, and as a student of the text it is the reason I care about most.

In the New Testament, the NKJV and the CSB are translated from two different Greek texts. The NKJV follows the Textus Receptus. The CSB follows the Nestle-Aland 28th edition and the United Bible Societies’ 5th edition, usually called the critical text. The critical text gives more weight to the oldest manuscripts, and many of those were found or published long after the King James came off the press. In the Old Testament both translations work from the same Hebrew Masoretic Text, so the differences show up in the New.

The two Greek texts agree in the overwhelming majority of places. Where they differ, it is usually a word or a phrase. Once in a while it is a whole verse. I walked through several of those places, Matthew 17:21, Acts 8:37, and 1 John 5:7, in that review.

Reading the two side by side keeps me honest. If I taught from only one, I could go years without noticing where the manuscripts part ways. With both open, I see it every time, and now you will too. Where a passage turns on one of those differences, I’ll show you both readings and tell you plainly why they differ. No doctrine of the faith stands or falls on these readings. But you should be able to see the evidence and weigh it for yourself.

What You’ll See Here

Every Scripture quotation on this site will carry its translation, NKJV or CSB, so you never have to guess. When I set the two side by side, the NKJV comes first. When a post quotes enough of either one, the copyright notices will sit at the bottom of the page.

I’m not asking you to trade in your Bible. If you read the NKJV, keep reading it. Hold on to the King James your grandmother wore soft at the edges. And if you want a second translation to read beside your own, the CSB is the one I would hand you.

The Words Under the Words

Word	Original	Strong’s	Meaning
merimnaō	μεριμνάω	G3309	To be anxious, to worry, to be weighed down with cares. Matthew 6:25, Philippians 4:6
katalambanō	καταλαμβάνω	G2638	To seize or lay hold of. With the mind, to grasp or comprehend. By force, to overcome or overtake. John 1:5, John 12:35
orthotomeō	ὀρθοτομέω	G3718	To cut straight, as a road or a furrow. To handle the Word accurately. 2 Timothy 2:15, Proverbs 3:6 in the Greek Old Testament
eugenēs	εὐγενής	G2104	Well-born, of noble stock. Luke uses it for noble character. Luke 19:12, Acts 17:11
anakrinō	ἀνακρίνω	G350	To examine closely, to sift evidence, as a judge does. Luke 23:14, Acts 17:11
parash	פָּרַשׁ	H6567	To make distinct, to declare plainly, possibly to translate. Nehemiah 8:8

A Berean Habit

This ministry takes its name from Acts 17. Luke tells how the Jews of Berea received Paul’s preaching, and the two translations tell it this way.

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

Acts 17:11, NKJV

The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Acts 17:11, CSB

Read them together and you get more than either one gives alone. The NKJV says the Bereans were “fair-minded,” and its footnote tells you the Greek is literally “noble.” The word is eugenēs, well-born, from good stock. Jesus uses it for the nobleman in the parable of the minas (Luke 19:12). The CSB says “of more noble character.” Luke took a word for family pedigree and made it a word about character. Their nobility showed in how they handled God’s Word.

The verb is anakrinō. Luke uses it in his Gospel for Pilate examining Jesus (Luke 23:14). It is the word for a judge going over the evidence. The NKJV says the Bereans “searched.” The CSB says they “examined.” Either way, they did not take Paul’s word for it. They opened the Scriptures every day to see whether these things were so.

Nearly five hundred years before Paul came to Berea, Ezra stood on a wooden platform in Jerusalem and read the Law to a crowd that had gathered in the square. The Levites worked among the people beside him.

So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading.

Nehemiah 8:8, NKJV

The CSB says they read “translating and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.” The Hebrew word behind “distinctly” is parash, to make plain, and it can also carry the sense of translating. Many of those families had come home from Babylon speaking Aramaic, the language of the empire, and the Law was written in Hebrew. Somebody had to bridge the gap between the text and the listener. The aim that morning was understanding, and it is still the aim on Friday nights. Two faithful translations, read side by side, are one of the best tools I know for reaching it.

So open your Bible, whichever one you love, and open a second one beside it. Then do what the Bereans did. Search the Scriptures daily, and see whether these things are so.

Going Deeper

If you want to learn how the Greek New Testament came together and why the manuscripts differ, start with Dirk Jongkind’s An Introduction to the Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge (Crossway). It is short and written for ordinary readers. For the translation side, Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss wrote How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth (Zondervan). If you want to see the reasoning behind each variant in the critical text, Bruce Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament goes through them one at a time.

And read the prefaces of your NKJV and your CSB. Most people never do. The translators tell you exactly what they set out to do and which texts they worked from.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.