Is there a particular Bible translation that most of you believe is most accurate in its use of the key words like eternal, hell, all, etc? Also is there a particular study bible or Bible commentary that you would recommend? I’m familar with Esword for translations and commentaries and would love if there was one I could just download onto e-sword so that it would be handy right by all the other commentaries and translations. I’d also love if it had a lot of the cultural background, for all the scriptures not just the ones dealing with eternity and salvation.
I suggest downloading the free “Online Bible”. Once you have it it’s not online. It will be in your computer. It’s probably the most complete Bible program available.
I suggest getting the free “Basic Starter Pack”. Then you can add free translations, etc.
If you use a literal translation, they usually keep Sheol, Gehenna, Hades, instead of translating them as “hell.” They also translate aion as “age” and aionios as something along the lines of “age-lasting.”
The ones I’m most familiar with are:
Young’s Literal Translation
The Emphasized Bible by Rotherham
For study online, I mostly use:
blueletterbible.org
studylight.org
the Greek Word Study Tool
The interlinear at: scripture4all.org or this one: interlinearbible.org/
And this for the Septuagint and word studies: katabiblon.com/
Sonia
Some of the recommendations above can be picked up through eSword, or am I wrong? (I don’t have it myself, since I do most of my work and study at my office, which has a computer eSword wouldn’t run on; but I seem to recall it.)
The nice thing about computer Bibles is that they usually have good search tools; but the Concordant Literal Translation of the New Testament is a good printed Bible with lots of internal text tools and a full term concordance in the back. It’s one of the texts the scripture4all software/project uses, too.
Arguably the best single language study Bible I’ve found is Jonathan Mitchell’s New Testament translation (which used to be available in pdf, but I’m unsure if it is anymore.) It’s far from being an easy translation to read, but he collects all known plausible grammatic and colloquial interpretations of pieces of verses and provides them together in a unique patchwork fashion so that you can consider for yourself how various translations/interpretations of verses fit together. (He also includes the most common textual variants.) He keeps his own commentary to a minimum, but has also started printing a commentary of various NT texts starting with a good swatch of epistles. (I personally regard this as being less helpful, but your mileage may vary. 
)
I think most translations are available on e-sword, I don’t use it often but I’ve started trying to organize my Bible notes on a google doc and figured if I’m already at the computer I might as well start using husband’s esword to look at versions and commentaries. I think that if a commentary isn’t on there it should be fairly easy to add, I’ll have to check with him on that. I read a few days ago about William Barkley who was a Universalist wrote the Daily Study Bible which was actually a series of 17 commentary volumns. I was wondering if it was worth looking into more. If it is very obscure though it probably isn’t on e-sword or available for a very reasonable price.
Concordant Literal Version for eSword is worth having.
I find the ESV & HCSB helpful as often they have the literal translation listed in the footnotes.
Barclay tended to be more theologically unorthodox (in the catholic faith statement sense of the Creeds, as I learned recently) than I’d be comfortable recommending (vs virgin birth, vs trinity), but I can hardly forbid people checking him out either. 
(If it comes to that, the main translator of the Concordant Literal NT was a variety of Arian; but I know of nothing in his translation that would tend toward that, and I’ve often used it in trinitarian apologetics, so I can testify his translation has no bias either way in that regard.)
I’m honestly unsure how to get hold of his commentary series. I thought he lived around the turn of the 19th/20th century, but it happens he died not very long ago, so I doubt his work is in the public domain yet.
Edited to add: oh wait he has an e-Sword module! Handy. (Not for me as my office can’t use Windows, or later Mac versions, but handy in principle. )
Tentmakers has a bunch of e-sword modules including the Jonathan Mitchel NT, the Youngs (old and new), Rotherham and others. Here’s a link: tentmaker.org/e-sword_modules/index.html (I think they have the Concordant, too.)
I mentioned in my first post in this thread that the Online Bible which you can download free from the website I indicated, can hold a lot of translations. You can also download many of the translations free as well.
The online Bible has a great search function, and you can display several translations simultaneously. In the NT, I do this with an English translation and the Westcott-Hort Greek. In the OT, I often display the English translation of the Septugint, together with the Greek Septuagint.
Here are the Bibles in English, as well as in Greek and Latin, and even the Koran, which I have on my Online Bible. Besides these the Online Bible contains dozens of writings by well-known Christian authors:
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
American King James Version
American Standard Version 1901
Authorized Version 1769
Authorized Version Red Letter 1769
The Bible in Basic English
Calvin Bible
Darby Version 1884
Diaglot 1865
Douay Rheims American Edition 1899
English Standard Version
Geneva Bible 1559
God’s Word to the Nations
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Interlinear Greek New Testament
Jubilee Bible
Jewish Publication Society Old Testament
21st Century King James Version
Leeser Old Testament 1853
Living Oracles
An English Translation of the Septuagint
The Message Bible
Murdoch 1851
New American Standard Version 1995
New King James Version
Noyes Translation 1869
Philips New Testament 1972
Rotherham Bible 1902
Revised Standard Bible 1947
Revised Webster Bible
World English Bible
Webster Bible 1833
Weymouth New Testament 1912
Williams New Testament 1936
Wuest New Testament: An Expanded Translation
The New Testament by William Tyndale
Young’s Literal Translation
GREEK BIBLES
Septuagint
Analytic Septuagint
Textus Receptus NT 1550
Tischendorf Greek NT 1872
Westcott Hort Greek NT 1881
LATIN BIBLES
Jerome’s Vulgate 405 A.D.
Jerome’s Latin Apocrypha
TRANSLATIONS OF THE APOCRYPHAS
Revised Standard Apocrypha
New Testament Apocrypha
Douay Rheims Apocrypha
TRANSLATIONS OF THE KORAN
Koran by Abdullah Yusuf Ali
Koran by Pickthal
Koran by Shakir
Koran by Yusufali
Thanks for the info, Paidion. And especially thanks for talking a little bit more about it. I’m so excited to get the Septuagint in an easy to use format! I just downloaded the program and while it’s too late tonight, I’m eager to have a look at it as soon as I can. 
Love, Cindy
I just wish either of those two softwares worked on my Mac at the office. 
Amen
Jason, one of the guys in our fellowship is a Mac fan and he uses e-sword. At first he had a windows os just to run it, but he tells me that now e-sword now comes in an apple-friendly version – in case you haven’t checked lately.
I know, last time I checked (earlier this week or late last week) it requires 10.5 or later. We have to use 10.4.11.
sweet, esword does mac now!!!
Awwww – bummer! 
But I’m very glad, RHM, that you’ll be able to run e-sword now!
It can be done.
Install Virtualbox for OSX (free.)
Install an old copy of Windows XP (along with guest additions so you can view XP full screen.)
You can then run Windows XP just like a regular installation.
I installed the “On-line Bible” when Paidion posted about it, but I still can’t figure out how to use it. Does anyone have a link to a good tutorial for this program? The “tutorial” included in the help section isn’t much use.