Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
With Wycliffe (1320-1384), we reach a landmark in the history of the English Bible in the production of the first complete version of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. It belongs to the last period of Wycliffe’s life, that in which he was engaged in open war with the Papacy and with most of the official chiefs of the English Church.
In Britain, as elsewhere, missionary work proceeded almost entirely by means of the spoken word. Any translation of the Scriptures consisted of a free and extemporaneous rendering of the Latin text into the vernacular speech.
Bible translation goes back to 280 to 150 B.C.E., when (seventy-two, according to tradition) translators gave us the Hebrew Old Testament books in Greek. From those days forward, translators have lived hazardous lives in trying to bring us the Word of God in the common languages of man. This has often been from the religious organizations themselves, who have caused the suffering and death of many translators. Is it any different today? How so?
The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is an English translation of the Bible. Published by the Lockman Foundation, the first NASB text—a translation of the Gospel of John—was released in 1960.
The Bible has a unique record of preservation, restoration, translation, and distribution. It has faced many enemies and yet it is the bestselling book of all time many times over. How did our English Bible come down to us?
“IT IS said that more books have been written about [Martin Luther] than anyone else in history, save his own master, Jesus Christ.” - Time magazine.
The importance of the Tyndale Bible in shaping and influencing the English language cannot be overstated. According to one writer, Tyndale is "the man who more than Shakespeare even or Bunyan has molded and enriched our language."
On the Bible translation scene, advocates of colloquial English Bible translations regularly and rigorously debunk the King James Version. In turn, it has become common for these debunkers to attempt to drive a wedge between the King James Version and William Tyndale’s translation work nearly a century earlier.
Over the last seven decades, dynamic equivalent (thought-for-thought) translation advocates have flooded the market with easy-to-read Bible translations. These focus on the reader, not the text, which has literally threatened the integrity of God's Word, and Ryken has been at the forefront of defending the arguments the dynamic equivalent advocates have raised.
It would seem that the Bible scholars who favor the interpretive dynamic equivalent translations are making a joint effort to redefine the spectrum of Bible translations. They do this to aid their cause of trying to move publishers away from producing literal Bible translations.