A recent survey of Bible translations used by pastors in the U.S. of different denominations [dead link removed] gave me the idea for this post. I have little to say about the survey itself except that it was strange that they didn't include Presbyterians as a category and that they didn't single out the NET, RSV, or ESV.

What I'm mainly interested in doing here is giving people enough information to choose what English translations of the Bible are best for various purposes. I don't think there's one best translation, and which one you pick will be affected by a number of factors, including things about yourself and the circumstances in which you'll be using this particular Bible. First, though I want to report two real occurrences from my friend who worked in a religious bookstore. One woman asked about purchasing a Bible. He asked her what translation she wanted. Her response: "English!" This was not someone who spoke English as a second language, from whom such a response makes perfect sense. The second case is often told as a joke, but this really happened to my friend. Someone came into the store asking for a Bible. He asked what translation the person wanted, and he received in response, "The King James, you know, the one Jesus used." Well, I hope to do a better job of explaining Bible translations than those who failed these people.
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First I should say that some people, for reasons they have little or no control over, already have some reasons to prefer Bibles of certain sorts. Some factors that might go into this are age or level of understanding of the English language, both of which can easily (or will of necessity) change over time. Someone at a very young age might do best with a translation that's easier to use, particularly with an easier vocabulary and more straightforward grammar that sounds like English. Some translations don't have this, and sometimes they have good reasons not to (e.g. in service of a certain sort of accuracy). For new speakers of English, similar criteria will come into play. So this is one factor that will be important for some people but not others, and it's not something you should expect to continue to have the same role ten years down the road.
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​Some people say something like the following:

"You can't quote the Bible to prove the Bible because it's circular reasoning."

There's something about what they're saying that's right. The following is a bad argument:

1. The Bible says it's the word of God.
2. I can trust what it says, since it's the word of God.
3. Therefore, I can trust it when it says it's the word of God, so I should believe that it's the word of God.

However, that's not the only thing someone can mean when saying that the Bible can count as evidence for Christianity. I have in mind a very different kind of argument. What Christians call the Old Testament (and what scholars today call the Hebrew Bible) could have taken something like 1500 years to produce, perhaps shorter but certainly well over 1000 years even by liberal estimates (though how much of it one says is early depends on one's presuppositions). Adding in the New Testament (or Greek Bible, if you prefer that name) brings it to 1500-2000 years. Think about what's happened in the last 2000 years.
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Two related arguments come to mind. One has to do with prophecy. The other is from the unity of the Bible.