"A Quick Guide to Bible Translations," Religious Resources Page:  http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/guides/biblver.htm

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) 1989: the result of continuing revisions from the committee(s) who made RSV .

Erroll F. Rhodes, "A Concise History of the English Bible," American Bible Society: http://www.americanbible.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6145

The New Revised Standard Version, prepared by a Committee of the National Council of Churches under the direction of Bruce M. Metzger (born 1914). The revision aimed to eliminate the archaisms still used in the Revised Standard Version, to attain greater accuracy, clarity and/or euphony, and to use gender-inclusive language when possible. The Bible was published both with and without the Deuterocanon.

"New Revised Standard Version," Bible Researcher.com : http://www.bible-researcher.com/nrsv.html

        Bible, 1990. Bruce M. Metzger et al., The New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
        This is a revision of the Revised Standard Version on the basis of the UBS third edition (see Aland Black Metzger Wikren Martini 1975). It modernizes and simplifies the language of the RSV, and also revises it in the interest of "gender-inclusiveness." In general, the translation is less literal than the RSV, but more literal than the New International Version.
        The deliberately non-Christian interpretation of the Old Testament which made the RSV unacceptable to conservatives is continued in this revision. In fact the most notorious verse of the RSV, Isaiah 7:14, in the NRSV is moved even further away from its connection with the New Testament. The RSV had rendered it "a young woman shall conceive" (future); but the NRSV has "the young woman is with child" (present), which effectively prevents the Christological interpretation (and there is no footnote to inform the reader that the RSV's "shall conceive" is a possibility).
        The inclusive language alterations are very thorough, involving thousands of alterations designed to completely erase the Bible's generic masculine pronouns and other usages offensive to feminists. An attempt has been made to downplay the extent to which this policy was imposed upon the committee by the National Council of Churches (the copyright holder, which in 1980 also commissioned the Inclusive Language Lectionary as another revision of the RSV), but it is evident that it did not arise spontaneously from a consensus of the translators themselves. Barry Hoberman, writing in the Atlantic Monthly [1] near to the end of the work on the NRSV, reported the following comments from members of the committee:

         "The basic principle that the RSV committee uses is that we will remove all masculine - dominated language that has been introduced by the translators," says George MacRae, who serves on the New Testament panel. Thus, no attempt will be made to disguise the fact that every book of the Bible is the product of a thoroughly male-dominated society. To pretend that the ancient Near Eastern world of the Bible was not radically different from our own world would be to deprive Scripture of its historical context. "I think it's part of God's revelation in history that we take history, and we take the time-boundedness of a biblical writer, seriously," says William Holladay, an Old Testament panel member who teaches at Andover Newton Theological School, in Massachusetts. "Then, it's the teaching task of the church or the synagogue, it seems to me, to say, 'Well, all right, Jeremiah said it this way. What God intends through those words may be something a little bit different, so let's talk about that for a while.'"

        These quotations would seem to indicate that McRae and Hollady, at least, were unaware of how thoroughly the gender-neutral language policy was about to be implemented in the final editing stages of the NRSV.
        J.J.M. Roberts, another member of the NRSV translation committee, later published an article [2] in which he protested against the "tyrannical and arbitrary authority" assumed by the final editorial committee which had been elected to revise the translation for "stylistic consistency":

        ... the members of this editorial committee understood their task as involving a far greater authority to revise the translation than the full committee ever intended. According to Dentan [one of the five members of the committee], 'This editorial committee was given power to determine the final form of the text before publication.' Such a formulation is dangerously ambiguous. What the full committee understood and intended as the task of the editorial committee was actually quite limited; while respecting the basic work of the full committee, the editorial committee was expected to make the relatively minor changes to the finished product that were necessary for the sake of stylistic consistency. At least in the case of the Old Testament editorial subcommittee, that is not what happened. Some hint of the far more intensive reworking carried out by this small committee ... can be seen in Dentan's account of non-scholarly consideration that colored their work ... the editorial committee made thousands of changes, some quite substantive, to the translation of the Old Testament made by the full committee, and when members of the full committee became aware of the extent of these changes, many were outraged, feeling that much of their own work on the translation over the years had been irresponsibly gutted."

        Roberts allows that the "inclusivity" of the NRSV makes it well-suited "for liturgical public reading," but he points out that this advantage has come at a real price. After discussing the loss of particularity, emphasis, concreteness, and vividness in two passages of the Old Testament (Psalms 1 and 41), he gives the following comment on "brothers and sisters" as a translation for adelphoi in the New Testament:

       It is likely that Paul was using the Greek term "brothers" in an inclusive sense ... Nonetheless, Paul did not highlight a concern for inclusivity by using the compound expression "brothers and sisters." To articulate this concern in translation by expressing what Paul left unexpressed is to impose a twentieth century, western cultural agenda on a first century text. Such anachronistic glosses make sociological or cultural appraisal of the world of the original text more difficult and cast doubts on the reliability of such a translation for serious historical work.

        Despite such hard feelings and complaints of the translators themselves, [3] the NRSV was quickly adopted as a replacement of the RSV in the liberal denominations associated with the National Council of Churches. It has also been favored by liberal university professors, for use as a text in "religion" courses. Two study editions have appeared: The New Oxford Annotated Bible (1991), edited by Bruce Metzger and Roland Murphy; and the HarperCollins Study Bible (1993) edited by Wayne Meeks and others. In both of these editions, the introductions and annotations are decidedly liberal.
        Obviously, there is little chance of this version becoming popular outside of the shrinking "mainline" churches for whom it was executed. Indeed, it may be wondered whether any considerable attention will given to it even within these churches, in which the exposition and study of the Bible has practically ceased.
        In a report on the National Council of Churches' work of Bible translation to the NCC general assembly held in Oakland, California in November, 2001, General Secretary Robert Edgar "mentioned that the NCC is exploring various possibilities regarding the sale or license of the copyright to the Revised and Newly Revised Standard Versions of the Bible. The NCC owns the copyrights to both versions. Edgar noted that the NCC had already refused one offer to purchase the copyrights. He said that the NCC would not exist today if it did not receive $500,000 a year in royalties from the sale of the RSV and NRSV Bibles." [4]

---

1. Barry Hoberman, "Translating the Bible" in The Atlantic Monthly Volume 255, No. 2 (February 1985), pages 43-58.

2. J.J.M. Roberts, "An Evaluation of the NRSV: Demystifying Bible translation." Insights: A Journal of the Faculty of Austin Seminary 108/2 (1993), formerly the Austin Seminary Bulletin.

3. And for good measure we will note the remarks of Robert Jewett, professor of New Testament at Garrett-Northwestern Theological Seminary. Jewett is himself a liberal, and a supporter of the feminist cause, but he insists upon the obligation of liberal scholars to behave honestly in translating the Bible. Regarding the NRSV he says: "We're facing, with the NRSV, liberal dishonesty in spades. The modern liberated perspective which imposes itself on the text is about as dishonest as you can be. All the way through the NRSV, implying that Paul has all these liberated concepts and so forth like the current politically correct person in an Ivy League school: I mean that's just ridiculous. Here you have the imposition of liberal prejudice on the biblical text with the ridiculous assumption that our modern liberal views were Paul's." Against the specious arguments offered by apologists for these politically correct alterations, Jewett declares that a gender-neutral translation that claims to be accurate is "almost as bad as Stalin's revisions of world history in which every 10 years he'd change all the history textbooks." These remarks were published in WORLD magazine, vol. 16, no. 6 (Feb. 13, 1998).

4. Jerald Walz, listserve news report, Ecumenical Flagship Still Drifting, Taking on Water.

"New Revised Standard Version," Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Revised_Standard_Version

        The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, released in 1989, is an update of the Revised Standard Version (RSV).
        There are three editions of the NRSV:

1. the NRSV standard edition, containing the Old and New Testaments (Protestant canon);
2. the NRSV with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books in addition to the Old and New Testaments;
3. the NRSV Catholic Edition containing the Old Testament books in the order of the Vulgate.

        There are also Anglicised editions of the NRSV, which modify the text slightly to be consistent with British spelling and grammar.

Contents
    * 1 History
    * 2 Principles of Revision
          o 2.1 Improved Manuscripts and Translations
          o 2.2 Elimination of Archaicism
          o 2.3 Gender Neutrality
          o 2.4 Translating the Deuterocanonicals
    * 3 Approval of the NRSV
    * 4 Controversies
    * 5 Study Editions
    * 6 External links

History
        The NRSV was translated by the Division of Christian Education (now Bible Translation and Utilization) of the National Council of Churches, an ecumenical Christian group. There has also been Jewish representation in the group responsible for the Old Testament.
        Only one of the translators of the main original RSV, Harry Orlinsky, was also involved with the NRSV. However, the Chairman of the NRSV translators, Bruce Metzger, had been involved with the RSV Apocrypha.

Principles of Revision
Improved Manuscripts and Translations
        The original Old Testament translation of the RSV was completed before the Dead Sea Scrolls were generally available to scholars. The NRSV was intended to take advantage of these and other manuscript discoveries, and to reflect advances in scholarship since the RSV had been released.

Elimination of Archaicism
        The RSV retained the archaic second person familiar forms ("thee and thou") when God was addressed, but eliminated their use in other contexts. The NRSV eliminated all such archaicisms.

Gender Neutrality
        In the preface to the NRSV, Bruce Metzger wrote for the committee that "many in the churches have become sensitive to the danger of linguistic sexism arising from the inherent bias of the English language towards the masculine gender, a bias that in the case of the Bible has often restricted or obscured the meaning of the original text." [1] The RSV observed the older convention of using masculine nouns in an inclusive sense (e.g. "man" instead of "person"), and in some cases used a masculine word where the source language used a neuter word. The NRSV by contrast adopted a policy of gender-neutral language: "The mandates from the Division specified that, in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture."

Translating the Deuterocanonicals
        The RSV translation of the deuterocanonical books was made after the fact as an ecumenical gesture. The NRSV translated these works as part of its initial effort, though the standard edition omitted these books.

Approval of the NRSV
        Many Protestant churches officially accept the NRSV or commend it to their members. For example, the Episcopal Church added the NRSV to the list of translations in Canon II.2 which are approved for reading in church services, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) website commends the translation.
        Although the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops approves only the New American Bible for liturgical use, the NRSV is used in the English-language edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and is the version authorized for liturgical use in Canada. Several versions of the Bible, including the NRSV, carry an imprimatur.

Controversies
        While the NRSV quickly became the de facto standard in many denominations, some of its translation decisions were criticized.
        The NRSV retained the RSV decision to translate "almah" in Isaiah 7:14 as "young woman" instead of "virgin", though a footnote acknowledged that the Septuagint read "virgin" (that is, "parthenos").
        Conservatives continued to object to this; the Septuagint and the Gospel of Matthew translate the word into Greek as "parthenos" (virgin), and English translations prior to the RSV had followed the Greek. Other nontraditional translations were also criticized (e.g. preferring "wind" for "rûach" in Genesis 1 instead of "spirit").
        The gender-neutral language policy was also criticized. The feminist influence was questioned, and the types of translation techniques used to accomplish this policy were not all accepted. For example, the NRSV tends to translate adelphoi as "brothers and sisters", but this is not strictly speaking a translation; it is an interpretation which parallels the understanding in English of "brethren" to include sisters as well as brothers. Many critics felt that the translation should reflect the underlying text more exactly and should avoid the expansions and deletions which the NRSV used in pursuit of this policy.
        Some Protestants criticized the inclusion of the deuterocanonical books, since most Protestant groups do not include them in the canon of scripture.
        Conservative evangelical dissatisfaction with the NRSV, combined with a desire for a more up-to-date translation in the KJV tradition, led to the publication in 2001 of the English Standard Version (ESV). It eschewed the gender-inclusive terminology used by the NRSV, and reversed many controversial RSV translation decisions; for example, in Isaiah 7:14 it returned to the translation of "almah" as "virgin", as against the RSV's "young woman".
        In spite of Orthodox participation in the translation, Orthodox churches have mostly been cool to the NRSV. Annotated versions of the RSV were accepted by some Orthodox, but the Orthodox Study Bible chose the New King James Version New Testament as a starting point, and the Old Testament committee chose to make a new translation of the Septuagint rather than use any existing English translation. Orthodox criticism of the NRSV generally followed conservative Protestant lines, but in addition criticized the use of the Masoretic text as the Old Testament textual basis. In 1990 the synod of the Orthodox Church in America decided not to permit use of the NRSV in liturgy or in Bible studies.

Study Editions
    * The Harper Study Bible (1991, ISBN 0-310-90203-7)
    * The HarperCollins Study Bible with Apocrypha (1997, ISBN 0-06-065527-5)
    * The Spiritual Formation Bible (1999, ISBN 0-310-90089-1)
    * The Access Bible with Apocrypha (1999, ISBN 0-19-528217-5)
    * The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 3rd edition (2001, ISBN 0-19-528478-X)
    * The New Interpreter's Study Bible with Apocrypha (2003, ISBN 0-687-27832-5)
    * The Renovare Spiritual Formation Bible with Apocrypha (2005, ISBN 0-06-067108-4)

        1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
        6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.
        15 (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, "He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' ") 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

NRSV: To the Reader         This preface is addressed to you by the Committee of translators, who wish to explain, as briefly as possible, the origin and character of our work. The publication of our revision is yet another step in the long, continual process of making the Bible available in the form of the English language that is most widely current in our day. To summarize in a single sentence: the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952, which was a revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which, in turn, embodied earlier revisions of the King James Version, published in 1611.
        In the course of time, the King James Version came to be regarded as "the Authorized Version." With good reason it has been termed "the noblest monument of English prose," and it has entered, as no other book has, into the making of the personal character and the public institutions of the English-speaking peoples. We owe to it an incalculable debt.
        Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James Version was based made it apparent that these defects were so many as to call for revision. The task was begun, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870. The (British) Revised Version of the Bible was published in 1881-1885; and the American Standard Version, its variant embodying the preferences of the American scholars associated with the work, was published, as was mentioned above, in 1901. In 1928 the copyright of the latter was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education and thus passed into the ownership of the churches of the United States and Canada that were associated in this Council through their boards of education and publication.
        The Council appointed a committee of scholars to have charge of the text of the American Standard Version and to undertake inquiry concerning the need for further revision. After studying the questions whether or not revision should be undertaken, and if so, what its nature and extent should be, in 1937 the Council authorized a revision. The scholars who served as members of the Committee worked in two sections, one dealing with the Old Testament and one with the New Testament. In 1946 the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was published. The publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, took place on September 30, 1952. A translation of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament followed in 1957. In 1977 this collection was issued in an expanded edition, containing three additional texts received by Eastern Orthodox communions (3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151). Thereafter the Revised Standard Version gained the distinction of being officially authorized for use by all major Christian churches: Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox.
        The Revised Standard Version Bible Committee is a continuing body, comprising about thirty members, both men and women. Ecumenical in representation, it includes scholars affiliated with various Protestant denominations, as well as several Roman Catholic members, an Eastern Orthodox member, and a Jewish member who serves in the Old Testament section. For a period of time the Committee included several members from Canada and from England.
        Because no translation of the Bible is perfect or is acceptable to all groups of readers, and because discoveries of older manuscripts and further investigation of linguistic features of the text continue to become available, renderings of the Bible have proliferated. During the years following the publication of the Revised Standard Version, twenty-six other English translations and revisions of the Bible were produced by committees and by individual scholars—not to mention twenty-five other translations and revisions of the New Testament alone. One of the latter was the second edition of the RSV New Testament, issued in 1971, twenty-five years after its initial publication.
        Following the publication of the RSV Old Testament in 1952, significant advances were made in the discovery and interpretation of documents in Semitic languages related to Hebrew. In addition to the information that had become available in the late 1940s from the Dead Sea texts of Isaiah and Habakkuk, subsequent acquisitions from the same area brought to light many other early copies of all the books of the Hebrew Scriptures (except Esther), though most of these copies are fragmentary. During the same period early Greek manuscript copies of books of the New Testament also became available.
        In order to take these discoveries into account, along with recent studies of documents in Semitic languages related to Hebrew, in 1974 the Policies Committee of the Revised Standard Version, which is a standing committee of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., authorized the preparation of a revision of the entire RSV Bible.
        For the Old Testament the Committee has made use of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977; ed. sec. emendata, 1983). This is an edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic text as current early in the Christian era and fixed by Jewish scholars (the "Masoretes") of the sixth to the ninth centuries. The vowel signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted in the main, but where a more probable and convincing reading can be obtained by assuming different vowels, this has been done. No notes are given in such cases, because the vowel points are less ancient and reliable than the consonants. When an alternative reading given by the Masoretes is translated in a footnote, this is identified by the words "Another reading is."
        Departures from the consonantal text of the best manuscripts have been made only where it seems clear that errors in copying had been made before the text was standardized. Most of the corrections adopted are based on the ancient versions (translations into Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin), which were made prior to the time of the work of the Masoretes and which therefore may reflect earlier forms of the Hebrew text. In such instances a footnote specifies the version or versions from which the correction has been derived and also gives a translation of the Masoretic Text. Where it was deemed appropriate to do so, information is supplied in footnotes from subsidiary Jewish traditions concerning other textual readings (the Tiqqune Sopherim, "emendations of the scribes"). These are identified in the footnotes as "Ancient Heb tradition."
        Occasionally it is evident that the text has suffered in transmission and that none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text. Such reconstructions are indicated in footnotes by the abbreviation Cn ("Correction"), and a translation of the Masoretic Text is added.
        For the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament the Committee has made use of a number of texts. For most of these books the basic Greek text from which the present translation was made is the edition of the Septuagint prepared by Alfred Rahlfs and published by the Württemberg Bible Society (Stuttgart, 1935). For several of the books the more recently published individual volumes of the Göttingen Septuagint project were utilized. For the book of Tobit it was decided to follow the form of the Greek text found in codex Sinaiticus (supported as it is by evidence from Qumran); where this text is defective, it was supplemented and corrected by other Greek manuscripts. For the three Additions to Daniel (namely, Susanna, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, and Bel and the Dragon) the Committee continued to use the Greek version attributed to Theodotion (the so-called "Theodotion-Daniel"). In translating Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), while constant reference was made to the Hebrew fragments of a large portion of this book (those discovered at Qumran and Masada as well as those recovered from the Cairo Geniza), the Committee generally followed the Greek text (including verse numbers) published by Joseph Ziegler in the Göttingen Septuagint (1965). But in many places the Committee has translated the Hebrew text when this provides a reading that is clearly superior to the Greek; the Syriac and Latin versions were also consulted throughout and occasionally adopted. The basic text adopted in rendering 2 Esdras is the Latin version given in Biblia Sacra, edited by Robert Weber (Stuttgart, 1971). This was supplemented by consulting the Latin text as edited by R. L. Bensly (1895) and by Bruno Violet (1910), as well as by taking into account the several Oriental versions of 2 Esdras, namely, the Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic (two forms, referred to as Arabic 1 and Arabic 2), Armenian, and Georgian versions. Finally, since the Additions to the Book of Esther are disjointed and quite unintelligible as they stand in most editions of the Apocrypha, we have provided them with their original context by translating the whole of the Greek version of Esther from Robert Hanhart’s Göttingen edition (1983).
        For the New Testament the Committee has based its work on the most recent edition of The Greek New Testament, prepared by an interconfessional and international committee and published by the United Bible Societies (1966; 3rd ed. corrected, 1983; information concerning changes to be introduced into the critical apparatus of the forthcoming 4th edition was available to the Committee). As in that edition, double brackets are used to enclose a few passages that are generally regarded to be later additions to the text, but which we have retained because of their evident antiquity and their importance in the textual tradition. Only in very rare instances have we replaced the text or the punctuation of the Bible Societies’ edition by an alternative that seemed to us to be superior. Here and there in the footnotes the phrase, "Other ancient authorities read," identifies alternative readings preserved by Greek manuscripts and early versions. In both Testaments, alternative renderings of the text are indicated by the word "Or."
        As for the style of English adopted for the present revision, among the mandates given to the Committee in 1980 by the Division of Education and Ministry of the National Council of Churches of Christ (which now holds the copyright of the RSV Bible) was the directive to continue in the tradition of the King James Bible, but to introduce such changes as are warranted on the basis of accuracy, clarity, euphony, and current English usage. Within the constraints set by the original texts and by the mandates of the Division, the Committee has followed the maxim, "As literal as possible, as free as necessary." As a consequence, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) remains essentially a literal translation. Paraphrastic renderings have been adopted only sparingly, and then chiefly to compensate for a deficiency in the English language — the lack of a common gender third person singular pronoun.
        During the almost half a century since the publication of the RSV, many in the churches have become sensitive to the danger of linguistic sexism arising from the inherent bias of the English language towards the masculine gender, a bias that in the case of the Bible has often restricted or obscured the meaning of the original text. The mandates from the Division specified that, in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture. As can be appreciated, more than once the Committee found that the several mandates stood in tension and even in conflict. The various concerns had to be balanced case by case in order to provide a faithful and acceptable rendering without using contrived English. Only very occasionally has the pronoun "he" or "him" been retained in passages where the reference may have been to a woman as well as to a man; for example, in several legal texts in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In such instances of formal, legal language, the options of either putting the passage in the plural or of introducing additional nouns to avoid masculine pronouns in English seemed to the Committee to obscure the historic structure and literary character of the original. In the vast majority of cases, however, inclusiveness has been attained by simple rephrasing or by introducing plural forms when this does not distort the meaning of the passage. Of course, in narrative and in parable no attempt was made to generalize the sex of individual persons.
        Another aspect of style will be detected by readers who compare the more stately English rendering of the Old Testament with the less formal rendering adopted for the New Testament. For example, the traditional distinction between shall and will in English has been retained in the Old Testament as appropriate in rendering a document that embodies what may be termed the classic form of Hebrew, while in the New Testament the abandonment of such distinctions in the usage of the future tense in English reflects the more colloquial nature of the koine Greek used by most New Testament authors except when they are quoting the Old Testament.
        Careful readers will notice that here and there in the Old Testament the word Lord (or in certain cases God) is printed in capital letters. This represents the traditional manner in English versions of rendering the Divine Name, the "Tetragrammaton" (see the notes on Exodus 3.14, 15), following the precedent of the ancient Greek and Latin translators and the long established practice in the reading of the Hebrew Scriptures in the synagogue. While it is almost if not quite certain that the Name was originally pronounced "Yahweh," this pronunciation was not indicated when the Masoretes added vowel sounds to the consonantal Hebrew text. To the four consonants YHWH of the Name, which had come to be regarded as too sacred to be pronounced, they attached vowel signs indicating that in its place should be read the Hebrew word Adonai meaning "Lord" (or Elohim meaning "God"). Ancient Greek translators employed the word Kyrios ("Lord") for the Name. The Vulgate likewise used the Latin word Dominus ("Lord"). The form "Jehovah" is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word. Although the American Standard Version (1901) had used "Jehovah" to render the Tetragrammaton (the sound of Y being represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin), for two reasons the Committees that produced the RSV and the NRSV returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version. (1) The word "Jehovah" does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew. (2) The use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom the true God had to be distinguished, began to be discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.
        It will be seen that in the Psalms and in other prayers addressed to God the archaic second person singular pronouns (thee, thou, thine) and verb forms (art, hast, hadst) are no longer used. Although some readers may regret this change, it should be pointed out that in the original languages neither the Old Testament nor the New makes any linguistic distinction between addressing a human being and addressing the Deity. Furthermore, in the tradition of the King James Version one will not expect to find the use of capital letters for pronouns that refer to the Deity—such capitalization is an unnecessary innovation that has only recently been introduced into a few English translations of the Bible. Finally, we have left to the discretion of the licensed publishers such matters as section headings, cross-references, and clues to the pronunciation of proper names.
        This new version seeks to preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the years. It is intended for use in public reading and congregational worship, as well as in private study, instruction, and meditation. We have resisted the temptation to introduce terms and phrases that merely reflect current moods, and have tried to put the message of the Scriptures in simple, enduring words and expressions that are worthy to stand in the great tradition of the King James Bible and its predecessors.
         In traditional Judaism and Christianity, the Bible has been more than a historical document to be preserved or a classic of literature to be cherished and admired; it is recognized as the unique record of God’s dealings with people over the ages. The Old Testament sets forth the call of a special people to enter into covenant relation with the God of justice and steadfast love and to bring God’s law to the nations. The New Testament records the life and work of Jesus Christ, the one in whom "the Word became flesh," as well as describes the rise and spread of the early Christian Church. The Bible carries its full message, not to those who regard it simply as a noble literary heritage of the past or who wish to use it to enhance political purposes and advance otherwise desirable goals, but to all persons and communities who read it so that they may discern and understand what God is saying to them. That message must not be disguised in phrases that are no longer clear, or hidden under words that have changed or lost their meaning; it must be presented in language that is direct and plain and meaningful to people today. It is the hope and prayer of the translators that this version of the Bible may continue to hold a large place in congregational life and to speak to all readers, young and old alike, helping them to understand and believe and respond to its message.
 

For the Committee,
Bruce M. Metzge

        The NRSV represents the most intentionally inclusive English translation of the Bible since the beginning of the English Bible. That inclusiveness has several apects. In the translation committee were representatives of a wide cross section of Protestants, Roman Catholics and English speaking Orthodox churches. The directions from the sponsoring agency, the National Council of Churches, sought to produce an English translation that would be acceptable by these three branches of Christianity, as a means of fostering Christian unity. Consequently, the various Deuterocanonical Books, used by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, were included in the translation project from the outset. Another aspect of inclusiveness intentionally built into the translation is the gender inclusive language. This translation, growing out of and especially targeting mainline Protestant groups, seeks to address the growing issue of male-biased language in American culture generally. With increasingly larger numbers of women coming into vocational Christian ministry, and seeking ordination, this translation has paid careful attention to the generic oriented use of the masculine gender in Hebrew and Greek in the scripture texts. This has proven to be one of the more controversial issues about the NRSV, as the above quote from the Bible Researcher.com reflects. Many very conservative Protestants, as this web site typically reflects, are uncomfortable with such an approach, since in large part their tradtions remain largely male oriented.
        The translation methodology is an ecclectic mixture of FE and DE approaches, with the FE perhaps more dominant than the DE method. As an update of the Revised Standard Version, formal language is the style of English, although the NRSV adopts less formal English style than its precedessor, the RSV. The English is primarily American English, although some concern to adopt International English can be traced. The modified formal style and other related factors makes the NRSV highly useful for public worship, and for most Bible study situations. It doesn't have the level of rhyme and rhythm that the KJV possesses, and thus the text isn't not as easily memorized. But its readability level, as measured by a FOG type testing, particularly the Flesch-Kincaid test, makes the translation relatively easy to understand. For example, Jhn. 1:1-18 measures in the Flesch-Kincaid testing a grade level 6 with a score of 79 in the NRSV, while the KJV measures grade level 7 with a score of 78. This compares with the Good News (TEV), in its DE translation approach, which scores a Grade Level 7 and a score of 74.

"A Quick Guide to Bible Translations," Religious Resources Page:  http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/library/guides/biblver.htm

Erroll F. Rhodes, "A Concise History of the English Bible," American Bible Society: http://www.americanbible.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6145

"New Revised Standard Version," Bible Researcher.com : http://www.bible-researcher.com/nrsv.html

"New Revised Standard Version," Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Revised_Standard_Version

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