How many versions of the Bible do we really need?

If you stacked all the Bibles sitting in American homes, the tower would rise 29 million feet, nearly 1,000 times the height of Mount Everest.

More than 90 percent of American households own a Bible, and the average family owns three, according to pollsters at the Barna Group. The American Bible Society hands out 5 million copies of the Good Book each year; 1.5 billion Gideon Bibles wait in hotel rooms worldwide.

Scripture outsells the latest diet fads, murder mysteries and celebrity bios year after year. Evangelical publishers alone sold an estimated 20 million Bibles in recession-battered 2009, raking in about $500 million in sales, according to Michael Covington, information and education director of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

Experts say it's nearly impossible to calculate exactly how many Bibles are sold each year. But one thing is clear: The Good Book is great for business.

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Carl Matthews

So far as I am concerned, a good KJV Study Bible is all that is needed. Other sources outside the Bible are needed however.
- Popeye09
  
  Mr. Matthews, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but personally I am very cautious about what "outside sources" I purchase and use. It has taken me more than 35 years and an untold sum of money to begin to discover what additional outside resources are sound and worth the cost.
joe agnost

I'd say 1 version is too many… ;)
Popeye09

joe agnost, how can you be sure? An agnostic doesn't know if there is a God or not, so one can't be sure whether he/she needs a Bible or not, does he/she? So, in the final analysis, it seems to me you have no right to voice an opinion on this question, especially one as ignorant as the one you posted.
- joe agnost
  
  Ignore my unfortunate name… I am an atheist.
  
  Popeye wrote: "An agnostic doesn’t know if there is a God or not, so one can’t be sure whether he/she needs a Bible or not, does he/she?"
  
  This isn't correct. Even somebody who is agnostic about the existence of god can see as plain as day that the bible is both flawed and useless.
  
  Does god exist? Perhaps – however ridiculously unlikely that is.
  
  Does the christian god exist? No, just like the muslims, hindus, scientologists, jews, rastas and all of the other man-made gods are certainly not correct.
  
  If god does exist (which is incredibly unlikely – unlikely enough for me to claim atheism) it most certainly isn't one of the gods man has invented.
Billy Miller

Oh, but joeagnost does need a Bible, he will never know who he is until he starts reading the Bible.

Joe thinks that he sounds smart,

We think that he sounds ignorant.
Ben Reid

I wish all these Bible publishers would take the millions of dollars they spend developing endless new English versions of the Bible, and spend that money instead on printing and distributing Bibles in the languages of the many people groups around the world that still don't have even one page of the Scriptures in their own language.