New American Standard Bible

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New American Standard Bible
Full name: New American Standard Bible
Abbreviation: NASB or NAS
Complete Bible published: 1971
Derived from: American Standard Version
Textual Basis: 21% deviation from Nestle-Aland 27th edition (NT)
Translation type: 7% paraphrase rate
Copyright status: Lockman Foundation
Online address: http://lockman.org
Genesis 1:1-3
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is an English translation of the Bible. The most recent edition of the NASB text was published in 1995, with the original having been published in 1971. The New Testament alone was previously published in 1963. The rights to the NASB text are owned by the Lockman Foundation.

The NASB was published in the following stages

  • Gospel of John (1960)
  • The Gospels (1962)
  • New Testament (1963)
  • Psalms (1968)
  • Complete Bible, Old and New Testaments (1971)
  • Modified Editions (1972, 1973, 1975, 1977)
  • Updated Edition (1995)

Contents

[edit] Translation philosophy

The New American Standard Bible is widely regarded as one of the most literally translated of 20th-century English Bible translations. According to the NASB's preface, the translators had a "Fourfold Aim" in this work:

  1. These publications shall be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
  2. They shall be grammatically correct.
  3. They shall be understandable.
  4. They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place, the place which the Word gives Him; therefore, no work will ever be personalized.

As its name implies, the NASB is a revision of the American Standard Version of 1901. This translation was begun as an alternative to the Revised Standard Version (1946-1952/1971), itself a revision of the ASV, but considered by many to be theologically liberal. Thus, using the ASV as its English basis, the NASB's translators went back to established Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts and revised the ASV as literally as possible, deliberately interpreting the Old Testament from a Christian standpoint, in harmony with the New Testament[citation needed].

The Hebrew text used for this translation was the third edition of Rudolf Kittel's Biblia Hebraica, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia was consulted for the 1995 revision. For Greek, Eberhard Nestle's Novum Testamentum Graece was used; the 23rd edition in the 1971 original, and the 26th in the 1995 revision.

Seeing the need for a literal, modern translation of the English Bible, the translators sought to produce a contemporary English Bible while maintaining a word-for-word translation style. In cases where word-for-word literalness was determined to be unacceptable for modern readers, changes were made in the direction of more current idioms. In such instances, the more literal renderings were indicated in footnotes.

The greatest perceived strength of the NASB is its reliability and fidelity to the original languages without theological interpretation. Its corresponding weakness is that its readability and literary style sometimes prove confusing to the average reader. In addition, its printing of verses as individual units instead of paragraphs makes the text appear fragmented (though more recent editions are available in paragraph format). The NASB, along with other literal translations, also allows for ambiguities in the text's meaning. Though some perceive this as a weakness in the translation, it is actually a function of the aforementioned lack of theological interpretation.

[edit] Updated NASB (1995)

In 1995, the Lockman Foundation reissued the NASB text as the NASB Updated Edition (or more often, the Updated NASB or NASB95). Since then, it has become known simply as the "NASB" and has supplanted the 1971 text in most current printings (although the Thompson Chain Reference Bibles - published by Kirkbride and Nelson - still use the older edition for their NASB Bibles).

In removing or replacing literal renderings of antiquated phrases and words, and many conjunctions, the current edition is slightly less literal than the original. It has introduced inclusive language in about 85 places. The NASB remains, however, the most literal version of the English Bible commonly used in churches today. It is commonly used in many Christian colleges and seminaries for in-depth study, because of its strict adherence to the original languages.

[edit] Sources

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

    The Bible in English +/-
    Old English (pre-1066)
    Middle English (1066-1500)
    Early Modern English (1500-1800)
    Modern Christian (1800-)
    Modern Jewish (1853-)
    Miscellaneous
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    In other languages