New American Standard Bible

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The New American Standard Bible is a translation of the Bible into the English language . The New Testament first appeared in 1963, the Complete Bible in 1971, a revised version in 1995. The rights holder of the NASB is the Lockman Foundation .

history

As the name suggests, the NASB is a revision of the ASV ( American Standard Version ) from 1901. The translation began as an alternative to the Revised Standard Version (1946–1952 / 1971), which is itself a revision of the ASV.

The NASB was published in the following phases:

  • Gospel According to John (1960)
  • The Gospels (1962)
  • The New Testament (1963)
  • The Psalms (1968)
  • The Entire Bible, including the Old and New Testaments (1971)
  • Modified Editions (1972, 1973, 1975, 1977)
  • Updated version (1995)

Translation principles

The New American Standard Bible is considered one of the most literal translations of the 20th century in the English-speaking world. This is mainly due to the goals of the translators mentioned in the foreword of the NASB:

  1. The publication should remain true to the original.
  2. It should be grammatically correct.
  3. It should be understandable.
  4. It should justify Jesus Christ as the Word of God describes Him.

The ASV provided the basis for the English text. The translators consulted the recognized basic texts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek and revised the ASV as literally as possible. For the Hebrew text, the 3rd edition of the Biblia Hebraica published by Rudolf Kittel was used, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls . The 1995 NASB update is based on the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia , the 5th edition of the Biblia Hebraica . For the Greek parts the Novum Testamentum Graece by Nestle-Aland was used, the 23rd edition in 1971, the 26th edition in 1995.

The aim of the translators was to put together a literal and modern translation of the Bible. In cases where a literal translation was deemed unacceptable to today's readers, changes were made in favor of a more contemporary idiom. In such cases, the literal translation is added as a footnote.

The greatest strength of the NASB is its reliability and its loyalty to the original languages. The resulting weakness is that the NASB is sometimes confusing to the average reader. In addition, the paragraph structure according to verse (in contrast to the structure according to meaning sections) makes the Bible appear fragmented (however, newer editions are also available with a division into meaning sections).

The 1901 American Standard Version (ASV) noted in the preface that the auditors concluded that a Jewish superstition that held the divine name too sacred to be pronounced was no longer in the English or any other translation of the Old Testament should be authoritative. Thus, in the ASV of 1901, the name of God "Jehovah" was reintroduced in around 7,000 places in the Bible where it originally appeared.

However, this was reversed at the NASB and the name of God was replaced by "LORD" in most places.

Updated version (1995)

In 1995 the Lockman Foundation published the NASB in its updated version as the NASB Updated Edition . Since then it has only been known as NASB and has largely supplanted the 1971 edition, even if the old edition is still used occasionally.

By removing or changing antiquated phrases and words and many conjunctions, the current version is slightly less literal than the previous edition. Still, the NASB is considered by many to be the most literal translation commonly used in churches today.

translator

The updated NASB (1995) involved more than 20 translators from various denominational backgrounds, all of them conservative Bible scholars with doctorates in Biblical languages, theology, or other advanced degrees.

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The New American Standard Bible . In: The Most Literal is Now More Readable . The Lockman Foundation. Retrieved December 14, 2007.
  2. ^ The Lockman Foundation