Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
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.
The Lexham English Bible (LEB) is a relatively accurate Bible translation. It is on par with the English Standard Version, and in some case more literal. The relatively new Lexham English Bible is being marketed as a “second Bible,” to be used with whatever “primary translation” the reader prefers. And this is how it should be used. I hope that this is a sign of a realization among publishers as well as Bible readers that not all Bible translations are equal, or always faithful to the original languages of the Scriptures.
