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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.

Translation philosophy

The New American Standard Bible is widely regarded as 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.

Seeing the need for a literal, modern translation of the English Bible, the translators sought to produce a comtemporary 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.

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 current printings.

In removing or replacing literal renderings of antiquated phrases and words, the current edition is slightly less literal than the original. 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, becuase of its strict adherance to the original languages.

History and textual basis

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 then-popular Revised Standard Version (1952 edition), which was perceived as too liberal in its translation style. 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.

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.

Sources

External links

1971 books | Bible versions and translations

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "New American Standard Bible".

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