Why is my Bible different from yours?                                              
 Part 5 The Revised Versions

Following on from the production of the Authorised Version, one would almost believe no other translation was produced until the late nineteenth century. However whilst the Authorised Version remained the standard against which new translations were compared by the man in the pew, a number of new versions were printed and largely disappeared from sight. The reason for many of these newer versions was down to the increased awareness of  better Greek manuscripts coming to light indeed as early as 1627 Charles 1st was presented with what is now known as the Alexandrine Codex it gave a much better text than had been used in the Authorised Version. One must remember in the days when documents were copied by hand the older the manuscript the better the text is likely to be.

In 1870 the for runner of the House Of Bishops decided that a revision of the authorised version should be undertaken to address those errors in the text which had been used in 1611 and any changes that were deemed appropriate by modern scholarship.. The work was undertaken by two parallel groups of scholars in England and the USA, with the aim of producing one single translation. This aim was not achieved and the Revised Version was published in England in 1885 and the American Standard Version in 1901.

The Revised Version had achieved its main aim of using a better text from which to translate however as a translation it was not so successful. The RV is a literal translation and therefore lacks the readability of the older Authorised Version. It did however gain greater usage in schools, Universities and Students of the Word. Indeed it remains worthy of comparison for those who lack the use of the original languages.

The American Standard was very similar but slightly more conservative in outlook and remains of similar use today, although it is not widely available.

The knowledge and study of Biblical Texts and language made great advances in the early part of the twentieth Century and whilst in England an attempt to amend the Revised Version of the Bible was disrupted by the Second World War in America the work on a new translation continued. The new version was to “embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the scriptures and express the meaning in English diction which is designed for use in public and private worship and preserves those qualities which have given the King James Version a supreme place in English literature”.

 The outcome was the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in 1952. A version which to quote T W Manson, a former Professor of Biblical Studies at Manchester, is   “reliable and speaks directly to the man in the pew in language he can be reasonably expected to understand”. The translation ceased to use the “th” in the third person singular so instead of “he saith” it read “he says”. The translation also does away with the pronoun of the second person singular (thou, thee, thy) unless addressed to God.

The RSV also uses a range of English words for one Greek word and this gives a much greater readability. For me it remains the best of present translations, it is true to the text retains a readability and a use of appropriate language which few if any of the modern translations can manage.  To quote another Manchester Biblical Studies Professor FF Bruce  “The revisers have succeeded in satisfying the requirements of those mid twentieth century readers who look for an English Bible which will do for today and tomorrow what the A.V. did for the seventeenth and following centuries.”