Expert: Michael Clark, Ph.D. - 10/25/2008

Question
there is much controversy when it comes to which bible is the word of God, some people say king james was an evil man that changed the book. there are other translations like the one's the jw's feel is the actual word of God. jw's also believe that kjv is the mark of the beast and that all that read it is marked. plz shed light on the subject thnx God bless

Answer
I really think that as a Catholic you should just read whichever Catholic Bible appeals to you.

Many laypersons time and again confuse the Fundamentalist and Catholic takes on cosmology, history, science and sacred scripture. The following illustrates the enormous gap between Catholics and Fundamentalists:

In The New Catholic Study Bible, Eugene A. LaVerdiere, S.S.S. notes:

"The first eleven chapters of Genesis are much closer to mythical forms of writing. Myth, in this case, must not be understood to mean that events told were fictional or untrue. A myth is a profoundly true statement which speaks to universal aspects of life and reality. It is a statement whose meaning rises above time and space...We do Scriptures a serious injustice if we read [biblical] myth as though it were history. Such a tendency must be resisted along with the opposite tendency to read [accurate] biblical history as though it were mythical (pp. 1360-61)."

Likewise Orlando R. Barone says:

"The Scripture does indeed supply legitimate conclusions on religious matters. But those conclusions are not reached easily and are seldom found in one pointed quote. And as for answers to scientific questions, the Bible is not really the place to look for them. The science of the Bible writers was primitive, and it is doubtful God thought to accelerate human knowledge in this field by infusing scientific facts into the mind of the sacred authors. People cannot make of Scripture a weapon to use superficially against all those with whom they wish to disagree (Ibid, p. 1373)."

And the commentator on Genesis says, quite plainly, that it presents "a religious message, not a scientific one" (Ibid, p. 2).

Source: The New Catholic Study Bible, St. Jerome Edition. New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1985.

I hope this helps.