American Standard Version

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American Standard Version title page

The American Standard Version (ASV) with the full title The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible (alternatively also American Revised Version, Standard American Edition ) is an English-language translation of the Bible from the early 20th century with main circulation in North America. The ASV was first published in 1901 by the New York publisher Thomas Nelson & Sons . A recent follow-up translation is the revision edition of the New American Standard Version published since 1959 . The basis of the ASV is the Revised Version from 1881, a revision of the King James Bible . The ASV is therefore the American equivalent of the British Revised Version.

features

The divine name JHWH (Tetragrammaton) is consistently used at the references in the text of the Old Testament with the form Jehovah instead of the usual form of rendering in the capital LORD (the Lord) and GOD , as in the original version of the King James Bible. The reason for this change to the current practice of rendering is explained in the foreword (Preface iv) of the translator that “... the American auditors ... are of the unanimous conviction that a Jewish superstition that the divine name is viewed as too sacred in order to be pronounced, should no longer dominate in the English or any other version of the Old Testament. ”Other more marginal changes compared to the KJV concern grammatical adjustments to a contemporary, more modern English, as well as the expressions of certain terms such as instead of the Holy Ghost the Holy Spirit .

Revisions

The ASV is the basis of four English-language revision translations.

  • The Revised Standard Version, 1971 [1946–1952]
  • The Amplified Bible, 1965
  • The New American Standard Bible, 1995 [1963–1971]
  • The recovery version, 1999

literature

  • Bruce M. Metzger : The Bible in translation. Ancient and English versions. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids MI 2001, ISBN 0-8010-2282-7 .
  • William J. Chamberlain: Catalog of English Bible Translations. A Classified Bibliography of Versions and Editions Including Books, Parts, and Old and New Testament Apocrypha and Apocryphal Books. Greenwood Press, New York / Westport CN / London 1991, ISBN 0-313-28041-X . ( Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies, Number 21)
  • Gordon Campbell: Bible. The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. Oxford University Press 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-955759-2 .

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