I do not see much discussion pertaining to the NRSV on this forum so I figured I would start one. Maybe it is not worth discussing but let’s give it a try. I am not familiar with this translation at all so I am completely unbiased. In my research, I have found that it is cited in many documents found on the Vatican website and was used in the CCC. Aside from the inclusive language that fire so many people up on here, what else is wrong with it? It is used in Canada if I am not mistaken and is apparently used by some in the Vatican so it can’t be all that bad. I would think that an update of the RSV would be a good thing. Plus if the layout has been improved it would be even better…let’s face it…the RSV, while a decent translation, lacks a decent formatting making it almost unreadable–even the RSV-2CE. Plus, the RSV does not offer a single volume study bible with good notes and cross-refs. Does the NRSV have a better format and are any decent study bibles offer in this translation? How is it in terms of literal accuracy?
You folks can get pretty fired up over bible translations so let em fly!!
Swampboy,
I would put the NRSV somewhere between the RSV/ESV and the NAB in regards to its translation philosophy. It is essentially a literal translation, while occasionally offering a more free rendering. Some of that has to do with its use of inclusive language, but only in the horizontal sense. The NRSV does not use inclusive language in regards to God. The NRSV was one of the first major translations, following the lead of the NJB, to introduce gender-inclusive language. In many ways it is the standard, although there are some places, particularly in OT references to the “Son of Man” and in Heb. 2, where the traditional rendering would have been more helpful. In most cases, however, whenever the NRSV does imploy inclusive language, there is a textual note at the bottom of the page which indicates the original Greek or Hebrew. The NRSV’s textual notes, which are many, are one of its great strengths.
Bruce Metzger (1914-2007), chair of the RSV revision committee, indicated in the
preface to the NRSV that one of the main reasons for the NRSV was the discovery of older textual manuscripts. In particular, the continued discovery of more scrolls from Qumran shed greater light on even more books of the Old Testament. While the translators based their translation on the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977; ed. sec. emendata, 1983), it departed often when the Qumran scrolls suggested doing so. Therefore, the Old Testament translators followed an eclectic text. The book that saw the most deviation from the Masoretic Text was 1 and 2 Samuel. In particular, the first few chapters of 1 Samuel relied heavily on the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries. It should be noted that the translators also used, more than in the RSV, early Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts. The translators of the Deuterocanonical/Apocrypha books made use of a number of texts, including findings from Qumran. This information can be found
here.
For the New Testament, translators followed the text of Nestle-Aland 26th edition/UBS 3rd edition, of which Bruce Metzger was a leading member.
In my mind, what makes the NRSV a very good translation is that it uses these newly discovered texts. Oftentimes, in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, these texts tend to confirm the LXX in a number of cases, thus making the NRSV more dependent on the LXX, while still using the MT as its base. I think that is an advantage.
Also, a great strength of the NRSV is that there are a lot of study tools available. There are various interlinears, dictionaries, Bible Maps, concordances, comparative translations, study Bibles, and a host of commentaries based off of it. And since the NRSV is a decendent of the RSV, the older RSV tools can be used with it as well.
Just my 2 cents!
