Bible, Revised Standard Version (2024)

FAQs

Is the RSV a good Bible translation? ›

The RSV New Testament was well received, but reactions to the Old Testament were varied and not without controversy. Critics claimed that the RSV translators had translated the Old Testament from a non-Christian perspective.

The main difference between the RSV and ESV is not so much the content of the text, but the churches sponsoring each translation. The ESV's publisher Crossway is evangelical, while the RSV was promoted by the National Council of Churches, represented by mainline Protestants.

RSV is a little better than the KJV, but remember, it is a revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611. It's kind of a oddball version with many verb tense mistakes, and other problems.

This liberality, in the minds of its detractors, zeroed in on the translation of the word “almah” in Isaiah 7.14. What was previously translated “virgin” became in the RSV “a young woman” and thus began a firestorm of controversy from evangelical and conservative corners that has yet to abate.

In 1965, the Catholic Biblical Association adapted, under the editorship of Bernard Orchard OSB and Reginald C. Fuller, the Revised Standard Version (RSV) for Catholic use. It contains the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament placed in the traditional order of the Vulgate.

No single English translation will ever represent the original biblical languages perfectly. Why? In part because the Bible's ancient languages do not function like English. A word in Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic might not have an exact English word to match.

It is endorsed by dozens of evangelical leaders and used by Christians and churches around the world. The ESV has been endorsed by many pastors, ministry leaders, scholars, and authors in the US and abroad, including John Piper, R. C. Sproul, R.

The ESV® Catholic Edition is approved by the Catholic Church. Drawing on recent archaeological discoveries, the ESV® Catholic Edition is translated directly from more reliable manuscripts of the biblical books than older English translations.

The ESV excels in accuracy, literary quality, and doctrinal soundness, but it may be less accessible to those seeking a more readable and gender-inclusive translation.

Nonetheless, despite its limitations, this complete edition of the RSV has been used as a textbook in most Orthodox (and non-Orthodox) seminary and university courses in Holy Scripture. It has been the basis for more Orthodox and (non-Orthodox) scholarly works on the Bible than any other English translation.

Did the ESV come from the RSV? ›

The ESV is derived from the 1971 text edition of the Revised Standard Version. ESV translation committee member Wayne Grudem claims that approximately eight percent (or about 60,000 words) of the 1971 RSV text being used for the ESV was revised as of first publication in 2001.

It is also widely used by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, and the Uniting ...

Thus, with its revisions of the NRSV in accordance with the most up-to-date modern scholarship, the NRSVue has become the most historically accurate, compellingly clear, and broadly vetted English translation in the world. Academic reliability and everyday readability meet each other on every page.

With the development of stereotype printing at the beginning of the 19th century, this version of the Bible had become the most widely printed book in history, almost all such printings presenting the standard text of 1769, and nearly always omitting the books of the Apocrypha.

The Revised Version (RV) or English Revised Version (ERV) of the Bible is a late-19th-century British revision of the King James Version.