What Bible translation do you use, and why?

Short answer: we work from the Hebrew and the Greek, and we treat every English translation as a tool, never as the final authority. This is not snobbery. It is a simple fact about translation: every rendering is already an interpretation. The moment a translator chooses one English word over another, a decision has been made for you, usually a good one, but a decision all the same.

When we do reach for English, we lean on two. The Complete Jewish Bible, because it restores the Jewish names and the Jewish setting that other versions smooth over, putting Yeshua and Sha'ul (Paul) back in their own world. And the NASB, because it is stiff and literal, a close mirror of the original word order even when the English reads like a board creaking. The two together give you both the texture and the precision.

And when a passage turns on a single word, when the whole meaning hinges on one Hebrew or Greek term, we stop and show you the original itself rather than asking you to trust a gloss. The goal is never to crown one translation. It is to get under all of them, closer to what the text actually says. Read it in two versions side by side sometime; where they disagree is exactly where the study begins.