   #copyright

Revised Standard Version

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Religious texts

   Revised Standard Version
   50th Anniversary edition of the RSV
   Enlarge
   50th Anniversary edition of the RSV
   Full name: Revised Standard Version
   Abbreviation: RSV
   NT published: 1946
   OT published: 1952
   Derived from: American Standard Version
   Textual Basis: Masoretic text (OT)
   Nestle-Aland text (NT)
   Translation type: Literal
   Version Revised: 1971
   Copyright status: Copyrighted
   Religious Affiliation: National Council of Churches
   Genesis 1:1-3
   In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was
   without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and
   the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said,
   "Let there be light"; and there was light.
   John 3:16
   For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever
   believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

   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.

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) . 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).

The Deuterocanonicals and the 1965 Catholic Edition

   English translations of the Bible +/-
   Old English translations (pre-1066)
   Middle English translations (1066-1500)
   Early Modern English translations (1500-1800)
   Modern Christian translations (post 1800)
   Modern Jewish translations (post 1853)
   Miscellaneous translations

   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
   Enlarge
   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.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Standard_Version"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
