Members of our congregations sometimes ask which versions of the Bible are acceptable for public reading during church services and whether there is any official statement from The Church of England concerning this.
The answer is that there was a statement from The House of Bishops in 2002 that laid down the criteria for selection and gave a list of bible versions that met those criteria.
I have appended the list here but for a full explanation please go to the website:-
The Authorized Version or King James Bible (AV), published in 1611, of which a Revised Version was published in 1881-5
The Revised Standard Version (RSV), originally published in the USA in 1952 and based on the 1901 American Standard Version of the 1881 revision of the AV
The New International Version (NIV), copyrighted 1973-1984 by the International Bible Society
The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), published in 1985 - a revision of the Jerusalem Bible (JB), originally published in 1966, which was based on the Bible de Jérusalem (1956)
The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), an inclusivized revision of the RSV, published in an anglicized version in 1989
The Revised English Bible (REB), published in 1989 - a revision of the New English Bible (NEB), which was originally published between 1961 and 1970
The English Standard Version (ESV)