Yes, it is the best translation ever made. And it's good that an atheist can appreciate it, even if his main interest is literary. Here's his assessment of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Yes he read that at his father's funeral.
As much philosophical as spiritual, with its conditional and speculative “ifs” and its closing advice — always italicized in my mind since first I heard it — to think and reflect on such matters: this passage was the labor of men who had wrought deeply with ideas and concepts.
I now pluck down from my shelf the American Bible Society’s “Contemporary English Version,” which I picked up at an evangelical “Promise Keepers” rally on the Mall in Washington in 1997. Claiming to be faithful to the spirit of the King James translation, it keeps its promise in this way: “Finally, my friends, keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly and proper. Don’t ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise.”
Pancake-flat: suited perhaps to a basement meeting of A.A., these words could not hope to penetrate the torpid, resistant fog in the mind of a 16-year-old boy, as their original had done for me.
Well: perhaps an unusually precocious 16-year-old boy. I never grew up on this, alas – it was far too Protestant. I did get a daily draft of the Book Of Common Prayer, another masterpiece, at my Protestant secondary school. And its cadences still linger in my unconscious.
The Dish 