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American Standard Version (ASV)

The American Standard Version Bible

From Wikipedia: The American Standard Version (ASV) is rooted in the work that was done with the Revised Version (RV) (a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version of 1611). In 1870, an invitation was extended to American religious leaders for scholars to work on the RV project. A year later, Protestant theologian Philip Schaff chose 30 scholars representing the denominations of Baptist, Congregationalist, Dutch Reformed, Friends, Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopal, and Unitarian. These scholars began work in 1872.




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A Conservative Version ACV

A Conservative Version ACV

A Conservative Version ACV

This is a “conservative right-wing” group (conservapedia.com) that is translating the Bible using modern idioms instead of trying to be literal. They reject the idea that a Bible translator needs to know Greek and Hebrew and have a good, sound translation theory, they just try to put the Bible into modern “hip” phraseology.

Andy Schlafly is the head of this mess. He doubts that everything in the Bible was really said, and places doubts on many passages as later additions.

I would stress that there are two valid interests running through Bible translations: (1) the Bible must accurately represent the origins, (2) the Bible translation that we use must be understandable to the majority of the people. Although there is some validness to both points of view, we must hold accuracy over ease of understanding. The diversity of people from one extreme (illiterate) to highly educated means that the best Bible translation must hit the majority of people, and this is not using street language or slang, but the English that the majority of the educated people speak. This would throw out this translation as being poor from its conception.




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