Revised Standard Version | |
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Full name | Revised Standard Version |
Abbreviation | RSV |
OT published | 1952 |
NT published | 1946 |
Derived from | American Standard Version |
Textual basis | NT: Novum Testamentum Graece. OT: Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia with limited Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint influence. Apocrypha: Septuagint with Vulgate influence. |
Translation type | Borderline of formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. |
Reading level | Middle School |
Version revision | 1971 (NT only) |
Copyright | 1946, 1952, 1971 (the Apocrypha is copyrighted 1957, 1977) by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA |
Religious affiliation | Protestant (usually mainline) |
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.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
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The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English-language translation of the Bible published in several parts during the mid-20th century. The RSV is a revision of the American Standard Version (ASV) authorized by the copyright holder, the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches.
The RSV posed the first serious challenge to the popularity of the King James Version (KJV). It was intended to be a readable and literally accurate modern English translation, not only to create a clearer version of the Bible for the English-speaking church but also to "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries" and "to put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition."
The RSV was published in the following stages:
In later years, the RSV served as the basis for two revisions – the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of 1989, and the English Standard Version (ESV) of 2001.
In 1928, the International Council of Religious Education (ICRE) acquired the copyright to the ASV.
From 1930–32, a study of the ASV text was undertaken to decide the question of a new revision, but due to the Great Depression, it was not until 1937 that the ICRE voted in favor of revising the ASV text. A panel of 32 scholars was assembled for that task. Also, the Council hoped to set up a corresponding translation committee in Great Britain, as had been the case with the RV and ASV, but this plan was canceled because of World War II.
Funding for the revision was assured in 1936 by a deal made with the publisher Thomas Nelson & Sons that gave Thomas Nelson & Sons the exclusive rights to print the new version for ten years. The Committee determined that, since the work would be a revision of the "Standard Bible" (as the ASV was sometimes called because of its standard use in seminaries in those days), the name of the work would be the "Revised Standard Version".
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. In the Book of Isaiah, they sometimes followed readings found in the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls.