Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
The debate as to where one should be in the spectrum of literal versus dynamic equivalent, i.e., their translation philosophy has been going on since the first translation of the Hebrew (Aramaic) into Greek, i.e., the Septuagint (280-150 B.C.E.).
UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, all major English Bible translations were based on the premise that the goal of Bible translation is to take the reader as close as possible to the words that the biblical authors actually wrote.
As we look over the ten classes of difficulties, we see they all arise from our imperfection in understanding, and not from the imperfection of the Bible. The Bible is perfect, but we, being imperfect, will have difficulties in understanding it. As we grow more and more in our understanding of God, our difficulties grow ever less and less, and so we are forced to conclude that when we dig deeper into God's Word, we shall have very few difficulties whatever with the Bible.
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.
It may not take much to convince you of the premise of this chapter. The Bible is, after all, the Bible. But literal translation has no claim to priority unless the individual words of the Bible are very important.