5.2.2 Revised Standard Version---

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

Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1946-1957: an attempt to improve on the language of the RV/ASV; more widely accepted, but not supplanting KJV.

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

The Revised Standard Version (RSV), a revision of the American Standard Version prepared by a committee headed by Luther A. Weigle (1880-1976). Based on a new understanding of the history of the original texts following the discovery of Greek papyrus manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Intended for use in public and private worship, not merely for reading and instruction, the RSV uses a more current form of English. The New Testament was published in 1946, and the complete Bible in 1952. The Deuterocanonical books were first published in 1957. In 1973, an interconfessional edition was issued, expanded to include 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh of the Orthodox Scripture Deuterocanon.

"Revised Standard Version (1946-1977)," Bible Researcher.com : http://www.bible-researcher.com/rsv.html

      New Testament, 1946. Luther Weigle, et al., The New Covenant, Commonly Called the New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Revised Standard Version, Translated from the Greek, Being the Version Set Forth A.D. 1611, Revised A.D. 1881 and A.D. 1901, Compared with the Most Ancient Authorities and Revised A.D. 1946. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946. Revised 1952, 1959, 1971. Roman Catholic edition, 1965.
        The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament purported to be a revision of the American Standard Version, although very little of the ASV remains in the RSV. The Greek text usually followed was the 17th edition (1941) of the Nestle text (see Nestle 1927). The American Standard Version excelled in literal accuracy, but the RSV tended to be more free in its renderings. As F.F. Bruce puts it, the RSV translators "blurred some of the finer distinctions in New Testament wording which ... have some significance for those who are concerned with the more accurate interpretation of the text." (1) The New Testament was well received by American churches, including the evangelical ones; but the Old Testament (1952) provoked a storm of controversy, and killed the version's chances of becoming a generally accepted standard Bible in America.

The New Testament Committee (prior to 1952)

    * Luther A. Weigle, Yale University, Chairman.
    * James Moffatt, Union Theological Seminary, Executive Secretary. (died 1944)
    * Henry J. Cadbury, Harvard University.
    * Edgar J. Goodspeed, University of Chicago.
    * Walter Russell Bowie, Union Theological Seminary.
    * Frederick C. Grant, Union Theological Seminary.
    * Millar Burrows, Yale University. (joined 1938)
    * Clarence T. Craig, Oberlin Graduate School of Theology.
    * Abdel R. Wentz, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg.

       Bible, 1952. The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Containing the Old and New Testaments, translated from the original tongues; being the version set forth A.D. 1611, revised A.D. 1881-1885 and A.D. 1901; compared with the most ancient authorities and revised A.D. 1952. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1952. 2nd edition, 1971.
        The RSV Old Testament was not well received outside of liberal circles, chiefly because the translators often deliberately rendered Old Testament passages in such a way that they were contrary to the interpretations given in the New Testament. This was done on the principle that the Old Testament ought to be interpreted only in reference to its own historical (Jewish) context. Christian interpretations, including those of the New Testament writers, are therefore deliberately excluded as "anachronistic." But this, as conservative critics perceived, practically amounted to a denial of the truth of the New Testament. As the conservative scholar R. Laird Harris wrote,

       It is a curious study to check the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, a monument of higher critical scholarship, and note how every important Old Testament passage purporting to predict directly the coming of Christ has been altered so as to remove this possibility ... It is almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the admittedly higher critical bias of the translators has operated in all of these places. The translations given are by no means necessary from the Hebrew and in some cases ... are in clear violation of the Hebrew." (2)

        The verse most often mentioned by conservatives was Isaiah 7:14, in which the RSV translators rendered the Hebrew word almah as "young woman" instead of "virgin." While this was not a case of a clear violation of the Hebrew (the word must be interpreted according to its context), it was by no means necessary. (3) And there were many other instances of the same problem, which revealed a pattern of systematic contradiction of the New Testament interpretations of Old Testament passages. For example, in Genesis 22:18 the RSV renders an ambiguous sentence as "by your descendents shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves" contrary to the interpretation given by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3:8 and 3:16. The objections of conservatives were not merely captious criticisms concerning the meaning of a word here and there; the controversy was about whether or not a version of the Old Testament which ignores and contradicts the New Testament in so many places has any right to be received as the standard Bible of American churches.
        The members of the RSV OT committee were not entirely insensitive to traditional expectations. In a few cases they retained familiar language of the ASV and KJV because of its liturgical or devotional importance among English-speaking Christians, despite their opinion that the traditional renderings were inaccurate in some respect. An example of this is in the twenty-third Psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd ..."), a Psalm which is often memorized and used in ministry. In verse 4 of this Psalm the phrase "shadow of death" is retained as a rendering of the Hebrew word  twmlc (vocalized tsalmaveth in the Masoretic text), although in every other occurrence of the word the RSV has changed the ASV's "shadow of death" to "gloom," which involves a different vocalization of the word (tsalmuth). It was the committee's opinion that this word does not really mean "shadow of death," but they retained the traditional phrase in this Psalm because it is so familiar. (4) They had regard for the fact that the traditional rendering of this Psalm has comforted multitudes of Christians in the hour of death. But it now seems that the condescension of the RSV translators was needless, because more recent scholarship has tended to support the traditional understanding of the word as a compound of lc "shadow" and  twm "death." (5) This seems to be an example of the "scholarly herd" phenomenon that has become all-too-common in academic biblical studies—a new idea about the meaning of some word is presented as an advance beyond the knowledge of all previous generations, it gains almost universal acceptance in a few years, makes its way into a new Bible version, and is then rejected by scholars of the next generation. Scholarly claims concerning "the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures" (RSV preface) are too often of this nature, being ill-supported and ephemeral. Conservative skepticism about such claims is often justifiable and even salutary. We may thank God that the RSV translators made an exception in this important passage, but it is not a good reflection on liberal "mainline" scholarship that a correct translation was retained here only by an overriding pastoral concern.
        On the other hand, we may say that the RSV committee went too far in accommodating tradition when, for their second edition, they decided to re-insert the Story of the Adulteress in the eighth chapter of John's Gospel. In the 1946 RSV New Testament and in the first edition of the complete Bible, the committee omitted this apocryphal story (relegating it to the margin), in accordance with the longstanding and unanimous judgment of textual scholars. It took some courage for them to do this, because the story is quite popular in the churches — especially among those who find it convenient as a supporting text for antinomian teachings. There must have been many complaints about this, and the restoration of the passage in the RSV's second edition was not surprising. The claim made in the preface to the second edition, that it "profits from textual and linguistic studies published since the Revised Standard Version New Testament was first issued in 1946," seems rather hollow in view of this. If there was anything in the first edition of the RSV that can be called a substantial improvement over past English versions in the presentation of textual scholarship, it was the omission of this passage.
        The second edition rightly restores the sentences in Luke 22:19b-20, which were omitted for insufficient reasons in the first edition. The omission depended upon a theory of "Western non-interpolations" developed by F.J.A. Hort at the end of the nineteenth century, in which verses that have solid attestation in ancient manuscripts are nevertheless omitted because they are absent from a handful of manuscripts which do not ordinarily omit things. This theory of "Western non-interpolations" was the most questionable part of Hort's contribution to textual studies, and it was generally abandoned by scholars during the 1970's. The restoration of Luke 22:19b-20 in the RSV second edition was an early sign of movement away from Hort's theory, but the second edition continued to omit a number of Hort's "non-interpolation" sentences and phrases (in Luke 24:3, 6, 12, 36, 40, 51, and 52). By 1989 this theory of the text was so much out of favor that Kurt Aland declared that it "can only be regarded today as a relic of the past." (6)
        The rejection of the RSV by evangelicals had serious consequences for the future of the version. At the time that it was replaced by the New Revised Standard Version in 1990, the RSV was one of the least popular versions in America, having only about 5 percent of the market share in Bibles.

The Old Testament Committee (prior to 1952)

    * Luther A. Weigle, Yale University, Chairman.
    * Fleming James, University of the South, Executive Secretary.
    * Julius A. Bewer, Union Theological Seminary.
    * James Moffatt, Union Theological Seminary. (died 1944)
    * William R. Taylor, University of Toronto.
    * George Dahl, Yale University.
    * Willard L. Sperry, Harvard University.
    * Leroy Waterman, University of Michigan.
    * Millar Burrows, Yale University. (joined 1938)
    * Kyle M. Yates, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
    * William F. Albright, Johns Hopkins University.
    * J. Philip Hyatt, Vanderbilt University.
    * Herbert G. May, Oberlin Graduate School of Theology.
    * Harry M. Orlinsky, Jewish Institute of Religion.

       Apocrypha, 1957. The Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament. Translated from the Greek and Latin tongues, being the version set forth A. D. 1611, rev. A. D. 1894, compared with the most ancient authorities and rev. A. D. 1957. New York: Nelson, 1957.
        Prepared by Floyd V. Filson, Bruce M. Metzger, Robert H. Pfeiffer, and Allen P. Wikgren, together with members of the New Testament committee.
       Roman Catholic Edition, 1966. The Holy Bible: Revised standard version, containing the Old and New Testaments. Catholic edition, prepared by the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain; with a foreword by His Eminence John Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Nelson, 1966.
        Although the RSV translators in their revisions of 1952, 1959 and 1971 turned a deaf ear to the criticisms offered by conservative Protestants, they did cooperate with Roman Catholics in the production of this edition. The extra books included in the "deuterocanon" of the Roman Catholic Church were inserted among the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with traditional Catholic practice. A number of minor alterations were made in the New Testament in accordance with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church (e.g., "full of grace" substituted for "favored one" in Luke 1:28). For this the chief editor of the RSV, Luther Weigle, was rewarded by Pope Paul VI, who conferred upon Weigle the "Papal Knighthood of St. Gregory the Great" in 1966. (7) In 1969 six Roman Catholic scholars joined the RSV Committee. The RSV Catholic edition received the imprimatur (i.e. it was officially declared to be acceptable for use by Catholics) and it went on to become a Bible of choice among many conservative Catholics who did not care for the "inclusive language" of later versions sponsored by the Roman Catholic hierarchy (i.e. the New American Bible and the New Jerusalem Bible).
      Ecumenical Edition ("Common Bible"), 1973. The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocrypha/Deuteroncanonical books: An Ecumenical Edition. Cover title: Common Bible. (New York and London: Collins, 1973).
        This volume was designed as an edition of the RSV which would include the Apocryphal books in an arrangement that would be acceptable to Protestants and Catholics alike. A compromise was worked out, providing for the publication of a Bible that would contain four sections, in this order: the Old Testament, the "deuterocanonical" books of the Catholic Church, the three books of the Protestant Apocrypha that are not included in the Roman Catholic canon, and the New Testament. The edition was presented to and approved by Pope Paul VI. Metzger reports that "In a private audience granted to a small group, comprising the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Athenagoras, Lady Priscilla and Sir William Collins, Herbert G. May, and the present writer, Pope Paul accepted the RSV 'Common' Bible as a significant step in furthering ecumenical relations among the churches." (8)
      Ecumenical Study Bible, 1977. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, eds., The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha: Revised standard version, containing the second edition of the New Testament and an expanded edition of the Apocrypha. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
        This edition of the RSV, was the first to include a translation of the three additional books which are received as Scripture only in the Eastern Orthodox churches: 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151. The translation was done by five members of the RSV committee. Bruce Metzger reports that "At the close of 1976, the writer presented to His All Holiness Demetrios I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and titular head of the several Orthodox Churches, a pre-publication copy of The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, expanded edition. In accepting the gift, the Ecumenical Patriarch expressed satisfaction at the availability of an edition of the Sacred Scriptures which English readers in all branches of the Christian church could use." (9)

Notes

1. The English Bible: A History of Translations, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. page 193.

2. Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible: An Historical and Exegetical Study. Contemporary Evangelical Perspectives. 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), p. 58.

3. Allan A. MacRae, writing in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament edited by Harris, Archer and Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980) explains that while almah may not be a technical word for a "virgin," it does mean "a young woman, one of whose characteristics is virginity. This is borne out by the fact that the LXX translates it as parthenos in two of its seven occurrances, and that its use in Isaiah 7:14 was quoted to Joseph by the angel as a prediction of the virgin birth. Some translators interpret Mat. 1:22-23 as being simply a comment by Matthew, but it is more reasonable to consider that the argument that convinced Joseph was the fact, pointed out to him by the angel, that such an event had already been predicted by Isaiah. There is no instance where it can be proved that almah designates a young woman who is not a virgin." (vol. 2, p. 672).

4. See J.A. Wharton, "Shadow," in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4 (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), p. 302. Wharton explains the thinking of the RSV translators: "The familiar KJV phrase 'shadow of death' is based upon a popular etymology of  twmlcin which the word is understood to be a combination of lc, 'shadow,' plus twm, 'death' ... whereas the word is now seen as a form derived from ~lc (unused in Hebrew; Akkadian tsalamu, 'grow black') and should be translated with the RSV: 'gloom,' 'deep darkness' (the RSV retains 'shadow of death' in Ps. 23:4 for the sake of the traditional phrase, which is not seriously msleading in this verse). The error probably goes back to a very ancient homiletical interpretation of the word, which is accepted by the Greek translations (skia qanatou, 'shadow of death') and appears in free adaptations of Isaiah 9:2—Hebrews 9:1 in the New Testament (Matthew 4:16; Luke 1:79)." But subsequent scholarship has tended to support the traditional etymology.

5. See Walter L. Michel, "SLMWT, 'Deep Darkness' or 'Shadow of Death'?" Biblical Research (Papers of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research) 29 (1984), pp. 5-20; David Winton Thomas, "salmawet in the Old Testament," Journal of Semitic Studies 7 (1962), pp. 191-200; and Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I, Anchor Bible, p. 147. Thomas and Dahood maintain that in this compound of lc and twm, the twm "death" should not be understood literally but only as a way of adding a superlative force to lc, and so the RSV translation "gloom" is still seen as an adequate equivalent. However, it should be noted that their philological analysis rejects the speculative etymology accepted by the RSV translators, supports the traditional etymology and vocalization, and thus makes "shadow of death" once again a respectable literal rendering. And it is not likely that twm in this rare poetic word has lost all of its proper meaning and gives only a "superlative force" to lc.

6. Kurt Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, translated by Erroll F. Rhodes, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 236.

7. See Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures, p. 142.

8. Bruce Metzger, "The RSV-Ecumenical Edition," Theology Today 34/3 (October 1977).

9. Bruce Metzger, "The RSV-Ecumenical Edition," Theology Today 34/3 (October 1977).

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

        The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible that was popular in the mid-20th century. It posed the first serious challenge to the King James Version (KJV), aiming to be both a readable and literally accurate modern English translation of the Bible.

Contents
    * 1 Revision
    * 2 Publication and updates
    * 3 The Deuterocanonicals and the 1965 Catholic Edition
    * 4 Revisions
    * 5 Adaptations
    * 6 References
    * 7 External links

Revision
        The RSV is a comprehensive revision of the King James Version of 1611, the English Revised Version of 1881-1885, and the American Standard Version of 1901, with the ASV text being the most consulted. It sought not only to clearly bring the Bible to the English-speaking church, but to "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries."
        The copyright to the ASV was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education in 1928, and this Council renewed the ASV copyright the next year. In 1935, a two-year study began to decide the question of a new revision, and in 1937, it was decided that a revision would be done and a panel of 32 scholars was put together for that task. The decision, however, was delayed by the Great Depression. Funding for the revision was assured in 1936 by a deal that was made with Thomas Nelson & Sons. The deal gave Thomas Nelson & Sons the exclusive rights to print the RSV for ten years. The translators were to be paid by advance royalties.

Publication and updates
        The translation panel used the 17th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek text for the New Testament, and the traditional Hebrew Masoretic Text for the Old Testament. However, they amended the Hebrew in a number of places. In the Book of Isaiah, they sometimes followed readings found in the then newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. The New Testament was released in 1946, and the Old Testament in 1952.
        The RSV New Testament was well received, but reaction to the Old Testament was different. Many accepted it as well, but many also denounced it. It was claimed that the RSV translators had translated the Old Testament from an odd viewpoint (some said a Jewish viewpoint, pointing to agreements with the Jewish Publication Society of America Version and the presence on the editorial board of a Jewish scholar, Harry Orlinsky) and that other views, including those of the New Testament, were not considered. Some conservative sections of the Church accused the RSV of tampering with some passages that can be read as prophecies relating to Jesus. Particularly criticised was the translation of Isaiah 7:14 as "a young woman" rather than the traditional Christian translation of "the virgin" (agreeing with the New Testament and the Septuagint). Of the seven appearances of "almah", the Septuagint translates only two of them as "parthenos" (that is, virgin"). The word "betulah" by contrast appears some fifty times, and the Septuagint and English translations agree in understanding the word to mean "virgin" in almost every case. In the end, disputes continue over what "almah" does mean; the RSV translators chose to reconcile it with other the other passages where it does not necessarily mean "virgin".
        Fundamentalists and evangelicals in particular accused the translators of deliberately tampering with the Scriptures to deny the virgin birth doctrine of Christ, and they cited other Messianic prophecies that were obscured in the RSV (i.e., Psalm 16.10, Genesis 22.18)[1]. Some people were so enraged over the RSV that they took their anger to extremes. For example, a pastor in the Southern USA burned a copy of the RSV and sent the ashes as a protest to Luther Weigle, the chairman of the translation panel. Others began to create unfounded charges that members of the translation panel were communists. At Senator Joseph McCarthy's request, these charges were printed in the US Air Force training manual. It was the RSV that helped ignite the King James Only Movement within the Independent Baptist and Pentecostal churches.
        There were three key differences between the RSV and the KJV and American Standard Version (ASV). One difference was the way the name of God (YHWH) is translated. The ASV translated the name as "Jehovah," (modern scholars usually render it as Yahweh). The RSV returned to the practice of the KJV by translating the name as the "LORD". Another change was in the usage of archaic English for second-person pronouns, "thou", "thee", "thy", etc. The KJV and ASV used these terms for both God and humans. The RSV used archaic English only for God. In the New Testament, the RSV followed the latest available version of Nestle's Greek text whereas the ASV had used an earlier version of this text (though the differences were slight) and the KJV had used the Textus receptus.
        Minor modifications to the RSV text were authorized in 1959 and completed in 1962. At the same time, other publishing companies besides Thomas Nelson were allowed to print it, such as Zondervan, Holman, Melton, Oxford, and American Bible Society. The most obvious 1962 change was reverting to the Greek phrase "the husband of one wife" in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1; in 1946-52 it was paraphrased as "married only once".
        In 1971, the RSV Bible was rereleased with the Second Edition of the Translation of the New Testament. The most obvious changes were the restoring of Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11 to the text (in 1946, they were put in footnotes). Also restored was Luke 22.19b-20, containing the bulk of Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper; whereas in 1946-52 it had been cut off at the phrase "This is my body", and the rest had only been footnoted; for this verse did not appear in the original Codex Bezae manuscript used by the translation committee. Many other verses were rephrased or rewritten for greater clarity and accuracy. Moreover, the footnotes concerning monetary values were no longer expressed in terms of dollars and cents but in terms of how long it took to earn each coin (the denarius was no longer defined as twenty cents but as a day's wage).
        In 1957, at the request of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, the Deuterocanonicals ((called the Apocrypha by most Protestant Christians) were added to the RSV. The RSV Apocrypha was a revision of the English Revised Version Apocrypha of 1894. To make the RSV acceptable to Eastern Orthodox congregations, an expanded edition of the Apocrypha containing 3 & 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151 was released in 1977.
        In 1965, the Catholic Biblical Association adapted – under the editorship of Bernard Orchard OSB and Reginald C. Fuller – the RSV for Catholic use with the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, which included revisions up through 1959, along with a small number of new revisions in the New Testament, mostly to return to familiar phrases, and a few footnotes were changed. This edition is currently published and licensed by Ignatius Press. This edition contained the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament placed in the traditional order of the Vulgate.
        The Catholic RSV was also used as the English text for the Navarre Bible commentary.
        In 2006, Ignatius Press released the Revised Standard Version-Second Catholic Edition (see Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition), which updated the archaic language in the 1966 RSV-Catholic Edition, and exchanged some footnotes and texts to reflect a more traditional understanding of certain passages. (see also Ignatius Catholic Study Bible series)

Revisions
        In 1989, the National Council of Churches released a full-scale revision to the RSV called the New Revised Standard Version.
        In 2001, publisher Crossway Bibles released its own Protestant evangelical update to the RSV called the English Standard Version (ESV). This version was commissioned for the purpose of correcting RSV passages which conservatives had long disagreed with: ie., the RSV's Isaiah 7:14 usage of the phrase "young woman" was changed back to "virgin".

Adaptations
        There have been many adaptations of the RSV over the years.
        The Common Bible of 1973 was a way to place the books in a way that pleased both Catholics and Protestants. The Common Bible was divided into four sections:
    * The Old Testament (39 Books)
    * The Deuterocanonical Books (12 Books)
    * The Non-Deuterocanonical Books (Three Books; Six Books after 1977)
    * The New Testament (27 Books)
        The expanded Apocrypha gave the Common Bible a total of 81 books; it included 1 Esdras (also known as 3 Ezra), 2 Esdras (4 Ezra), and the Prayer of Manasseh, books that have appeared in the Vulgate's appendix since Jerome's time "lest they perish entirely", but which are not considered canonical by Roman Catholics and are thus not included in most modern Catholic Bibles. In 1977, the RSV Apocrypha was expanded to include 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, and Psalm 151, three additional sections accepted in the Eastern Orthodox canon (4 Maccabees again forming an appendix in that tradition). This action increased the Common Bible to 84 Books, making it the most comprehensive English bible translation to date with regard to books not accepted by all denominations. The goal of the Common Bible was to help ecumenical relations between the churches.

The 1982 Reader's Digest Condensed RSV
        The 1982 Reader's Digest Condensed RSV
        In 1982, Reader's Digest published a special edition of the RSV that was billed as a condensed edition of the text. The Reader's Digest edition of the RSV was intended for those who don't read the Bible or who read it once in a while. It was not intended as a replacement of the full RSV text. In the end, 55% of the Old Testament and 25% of the New Testament was cut. Familiar passages such as the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 23 and the Ten Commandments were retained. For those who wanted the full RSV, Reader's Digest provided a list of publishers that sold the complete RSV at that time.
        2002 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1952 edition of the RSV. To mark this event, Oxford University Press issued a special edition of the RSV. This edition contained the 1971 revised New Testament and the 1977 expanded Apocrypha.

         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 were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
        6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. 9 The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. 11 He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. 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 nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.
        15 (John bore witness to him, and cried, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.'") 16 And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.

Preface to the Revised Standard Version
(2nd ed., 1971)

        The Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611.
        The first English version of the Scriptures made by direct translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, and the first to be printed, was the work of William Tyndale. He met bitter opposition. He was accused of willfully perverting the meaning of the Scriptures, and his New Testaments were ordered to be burned as "untrue translations." He was finally betrayed into the hands of his enemies, and in October 1536, was publicly executed and burned at the stake.
        Yet Tyndale's work became the foundation of subsequent English versions, notably those of Coverdale, 1535; Thomas Matthew (probably a pseudonym for John Rogers), 1537; the Great Bible, 1539; the Geneva Bible, 1560; and the Bishops' Bible, 1568. In 1582, a translation of the New Testament, made from the Latin Vulgate by Roman Catholic scholars, was published at Rheims.
        The translators who made the King James Version took into account all of these preceding versions; and comparison shows that it owes something to each of them. It kept felicitous phrases and apt expressions, from whatever source, which had stood the test of public usage. It owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale.
        The King James Version had to compete with the Geneva Bible in popular use; but in the end it prevailed, and for more than two and a half centuries no other authorized translation of the Bible into English was made. The King James Version became the "Authorized Version" of the English-speaking peoples.
        The King James Version has with good reason been termed "the noblest monument of English prose." Its revisers in 1881 expressed admiration for "its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression … the music of it cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm." It 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 grave defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for revision of the English translation. The task was undertaken, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870. The English 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 in the work, was published in 1901.
        Because of unhappy experience with unauthorized publications in the two decades between 1881 and 1901, which tampered with the text of the English Revised Version in the supposed interest of the American public, the American Standard Version was copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes. In 1928, this copyright was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education, and thus passed into the ownership of the churches of the United States and Canada which 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 as to whether further revision was necessary. For more than two years the Committee worked upon the problem of whether or not revision should be undertaken; and if so, what should be its nature and extent. In the end the decision was reached that there is need for a thorough revision of the version of 1901, which will stay as close to the Tyndale-King James tradition as it can in the light of our present knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek texts and their meaning on the one hand, and our present understanding of English on the other.
        In 1937, the revision was authorized by vote of the Council, which directed that the resulting version should "embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures, and express this meaning in English diction which is designed for use in public and private worship, and preserves those qualities which have given to the King James Version a supreme place in English literature."
        Thirty-two scholars have served as members of the Committee charged with making the revision, and they have secured the review and counsel of an Advisory Board of fifty representatives of the cooperating denominations. The Committee has worked in two sections, one dealing with the Old Testament and one with the New Testament. Each section has submitted its work to the scrutiny of the members of the other section; and the charter of the Committee requires that all changes be agreed upon by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the Committee. The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was published in 1946. The publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, was authorized by vote of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. in 1951.
        The problem of establishing the correct Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament is very different from the corresponding problem in the New Testament. For the New Testament we have a large number of Greek manuscripts, preserving many variant forms of the text. Some of them were made only two or three centuries later than the original composition of the books. For the Old Testament, only late manuscripts survive, all (with the exception of the Dead Sea texts of Isaiah and Habakkuk and some fragments of other books) based on a standardized form of the text established many centuries after the books were written.
        The present revision is based on the consonantal Hebrew and Aramaic text as fixed early in the Christian era and revised by Jewish scholars (the "Masoretes") of the sixth to ninth centuries. The vowel-signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted also 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.
        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 before the time of the Masoretic revision and therefore reflect earlier forms of the text. In every such instance, a footnote specifies the version or versions from which the correction has been derived, and also gives a translation of the Masoretic Text.
        Sometimes it is evident that the text has suffered in transmission, but 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 corrections are indicated in the footnotes by the abbreviation Cn, and a translation of the Masoretic Text is added.
        The discovery of the meaning of the text, once the best readings have been established, is aided by many new resources for understanding the original languages. Much progress has been made in the historical and comparative study of these languages. A vast quantity of writings in related Semitic languages, some of them only recently discovered, has greatly enlarged our knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Sometimes the present translation will be found to render a Hebrew word in a sense quite different from that of the traditional interpretation. It has not been felt necessary in such cases to attach a footnote, because no change in the text is involved and it may be assumed that the new rendering was not adopted without convincing evidence. The analysis of religious texts from the ancient Near East has made clearer the significance of ideas and practices recorded in the Old Testament. Many difficulties and obscurities, of course, remain. Where the choice between two meanings is particularly difficult or doubtful, we have given an alternative rendering in a footnote. If in the judgment of the Committee the meaning of a passage is quite uncertain or obscure, either because of corruption in the text or because of the inadequacy of our present knowledge of the language, that fact is indicated by a note. It should not be assumed, however, that the Committee was entirely sure or unanimous concerning every rendering not so indicated. To record all minority views was obviously out of the question.
        A major departure from the practice of the American Standard Version is the rendering of the Divine Name, the "Tetragrammaton." The American Standard Version used the term "Jehovah"; the King James Version had employed this in four places, but everywhere else, except in three cases where it was employed as part of a proper name, used the English word Lord (or in certain cases God) printed in capitals. The present revision returns to the procedure of the King James Version, which follows 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 signs 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"). The ancient Greek translators substituted the work Kyrios (Lord) for the Name. The Vulgate likewise used the Latin word Dominus. 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. The sound of Y is represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin. For two reasons the Committee has 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; and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.
        The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus.
        We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek text. The evidence for the text of the books of the New Testament is better than for any other ancient book, both in the number of extant manuscripts and in the nearness of the date of some of these manuscripts to the date when the book was originally written.
        The revisers in the 1870's had most of the evidence that we now have for the Greek text, though the most ancient of all extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament were not discovered until 1931. But they lacked the resources which discoveries within the past eighty years have afforded for understanding the vocabulary, grammar, and idioms of the Greek New Testament. An amazing body of Greek papyri has been unearthed in Egypt since the 1870's—private letters, official reports, wills, business accounts, petitions, and other such trivial, everyday recordings of the activities of human beings. In 1895 appeared the first of Adolf Deissmann's studies of these ordinary materials. He proved that many words which had hitherto been assumed to belong to what was called "Biblical Greek" were current in the spoken vernacular of the first century A.D. The New Testament was written in the Koiné, the common Greek which was spoken and understood practically everywhere throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries of the Christian era. This development in the study of New Testament Greek has come since the work on the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version was done, and at many points sheds new light upon the meaning of the Greek text.
       A major reason for revision of the King James Version, which is valid for both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the change since 1611 in English usage. Many forms of expression have become archaic, while still generally intelligible—the use of thou, thee, thy, thine and the verb endings -est and -edst, the verb endings -eth and -th, it came to pass that, whosoever, whatsoever, insomuch that, because that, for that, unto, howbeit, peradventure, holden, aforetime, must needs, would fain, behooved, to you-ward, etc. Other words are obsolete and no longer understood by the common reader. The greatest problem, however, is presented by the English words which are still in constant use but now convey a different meaning from that which they had in 1611 and in the King James Version. These words were once accurate translations of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; but now, having changed in meaning, they have become misleading. They no longer say what the King James translators meant them to say.
        Thus, the King James Version uses the word "let" in the sense of "hinder," "prevent" to mean "precede," "allow" in the sense of "approve," "communicate" for "share," "conversation" for "conduct," "comprehend" for "overcome," "ghost" for "spirit," "wealth" for "well-being," "allege" for "prove," "demand" for "ask," "take no thought" for "be not anxious," etc.
        The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, was published on September 30, 1952, and has met with wide acceptance. This preface does not undertake to set forth in detail the lines along which the revision proceeded. That is done in pamphlets entitled An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament and An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, written by members of the Committee and designed to help the general public to understand the main principles which have guided this comprehensive revision of the King James and American Standard versions.
        These principles were reaffirmed by the Committee in 1959, in connection with a study of criticisms and suggestions from various readers. As a result, a few changes were authorized for subsequent editions, most of them corrections of punctuation, capitalization, or footnotes. Some of them are changes of words and phrases made in the interest of consistency, clarity, or accuracy of translation.
        The Revised Standard Version Bible Committee is a continuing body, holding its meetings at regular intervals. It has become both ecumenical and international, with Protestant and Catholic members, who come from Great Britain, Canada, and the United States.
        The Second Edition of the translation of the New Testament (1971) profits from textual and linguistic studies published since the Revised Standard Version New Testament was first issued in 1946. Many proposals for modification were submitted to the Committee by individuals and by two denominational committees. All of these were given careful attention by the Committee.
        Two passages, the longer ending of Mark (16.9-20) and the account of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 7.53-8.11), are restored to the text, separated from it by a blank space and accompanied by informative notes describing the various arrangements of the text in the ancient authorities. With new manuscript support, two passages, Lk 22.19b-20 and 24.51b, are restored to the text, and one passage, Lk 22.43-44, is placed in the note, as is a phrase in Lk 12.39. Notes are added which indicate significant variations, additions, or omissions in the ancient authorities (Mt 9.34; Mk 3.16; 7.4; Lk 24.32,51, etc.). Among the new notes are those giving the equivalence of ancient coinage with the contemporary day's or year's wages of a laborer (Mt 18.24,28; 20.2; etc.). Some of the revisions clarify the meaning through rephrasing or reordering the text (see Mk 5.42; Lk 22.29-30; Jn 10.33; 1 Cor 3.9; 2 Cor 5.19; Heb 13.13). Even when the changes appear to be largely matters of English style, they have the purpose of presenting to the reader more adequately the meaning of the text (see Mt 10.8; 12.1; 15.29; 17.20; Lk 7.36; 11.17; 12.40; Jn 16.9; Rom 10.16; 1 Cor 12.24; 2 Cor 2.3; 3.5,6; etc.).
        The Revised Standard Version Bible 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 and private worship, not merely for reading and instruction. We have resisted the temptation to use phrases that are merely current usage, and have sought to put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition. We are glad to say, with the King James translators: "Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one … but to make a good one better."
        The Bible is more than a historical document to be preserved. And it is more than a classic of English literature to be cherished and admired. It is a record of God's dealing with men, of God's revelation of Himself and His will. It records the life and work of Him in whom the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among men. The Bible carries its full message, not to those who regard it simply as a heritage of the past or praise its literary style, but to those who read it that they may discern and understand God's Word to men. That Word must not be disguised in phrases that are no longer clear, or hidden under words that have changed or lost their meaning. It must stand forth in language that is direct and plain and meaningful to people today. It is our hope and our earnest prayer that this Revised Standard Version of the Bible may be used by God to speak to men in these momentous times, and to help them to understand and believe and obey his Word.
 

        The rather tatered history of the RSV makes for interesting reading, and also reveals a lot about what was happeneing in Protestant Christianity in the US in the 1950s through the 1970s. The divide between mainline Protestant traditions and re-emerging Evangelical traditions grew substantially. Disagreements over the RSV helped contribute to that divide. On the other hand, ecumenical concerns that typified this period of US Christianity history are clearly reflected in the growing cooperation of the RSV translation committee (under sponsorship of the National Council of Churches) with Roman Catholic leaders, and then with Eastern Orthodox traditions. The rather negative critique in the Bible Researcher review above puts some of this in sharp focus from the very conservative perspective. Thus an English Bible intended to bring Christians closer together was only partially successful. Mainline Protestants developed closer ties with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox traditions through the later editions, but at the same time the RSV helped drive wedges inside Protestantism between mainline traditions and evangelicals.
        In my estimation, one of the failures by the publishers in the early days was the marketing strategy that made supposed "errors" in the KJV the basis for purchasing the RSV with its "corrections." In certain scholarly circles this PR approach worked, but with the general public in the post-WWII era this strategy generated a substantial backlash. This immediately generated the view that the RSV was nothing more than a 'liberal' Bible intended to undermine the faith of Christians with a deep love for scripture study. This segment of the purchasing public was large enough in the 1950s and 60s to generate efforts to destroy the RSV and any influence it might have on the Christian community. The rapid growth of evangelical communities of faith, coupled with the gradual decline in numbers inside the more 'mainline' denominations, during the second half of the twentieth century has created obstacles that the RSV has never successfully overcome.
        The formal language of the RSV pushes it toward public worship use, and limits its usefulness as a study Bible. This, inspite of being the English translation used with the earlier editions of the New Oxford Study Bible, as well as some other study Bible publications. The formal language approach is largely an effort to update the colloquialisms and outdated terminology of the later editions of the KJV. The use of the more recent Hebrew and Greek language texts with critical apparatii taking advantage of increased biblical text manuscript discoveries generated variations in wording and occasional omission of verses. Although based on solid scholarship and most likely reflecting the wording of the original biblical texts, these "gaps" and differences from the wording of the KJV served mostly the fuel the fires of criticism of the RSV in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. By the time of the NRSV in the 1990s the marginal variations of wording etc. had become so commonplace that they no longer "raised eyebrows" among most evangelicals. The RSV helped open the door to understanding this. The NIV paved the way for evangelicals in accepting this. The NRSV freely adopted these scholarly advances without serious problems.
        In readability analysis, the RSV translation of John 1:1-18 generates a score of 80 with a grade level of 7 using the Fleisch-Kincaid analysis. In that system, the closer to a score of 100 the better the readability. A grade level of 7 suggests that a seventh grade kid should be able to read the Johannine progogue with basic understand. In comparison with the same passage, the NRSV generates a grade level 6 with a score of 79, 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. To be certain, different passages will produce different readability scores. But this provides some basis of comparison.
        The Wikipedia article on the Fleisch-Kincaid method makes this obervation:

As a rule of thumb, scores of 90–100 are considered easily understandable by an average 5th grader. 8th and 9th grade students could easily understand passages with a score of 60–70, and passages with results of 0–30 are best understood by college graduates. Reader's Digest magazine has a readability index of about 65, Time magazine scores about 52, and the Harvard Law Review has a general readability score in the low 30s.

This test has become a U.S. governmental standard. Many government agencies require documents or forms to meet specific readability levels. The U.S. Department of Defense uses the Reading Ease test as the standard test of readability for its documents and forms.

Most states require insurance forms to score 40–50 on the test.

"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

"Revised Standard Version (1946-1977)," Bible Researcher.com : http://www.bible-researcher.com/rsv.html

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

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