Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Articles examining Bible translations and translators, evaluating textual accuracy, translation philosophy, manuscript evidence, doctrinal bias, readability, and faithfulness to Scripture.
It is challenging to enter this next era of the English Bibles without talking about Desiderius Erasmus and the Textus Receptus (Received Text) that would impact English Translations for centuries to come. Erasmus is credited with saying, “When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.”
While the Wycliffe Bible is not the first English Bible, it is the first complete English Bible. It came to us through the efforts and influence of John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384), a Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Oxford, England, called the “morning star of the Reformation" because of the religious principles that he developed through his investigation of Scripture and witnessed about, a great risk to himself.
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.
