Update To New Revised Standard Bible Makes Substantive — And Controversial — Changes
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(OPINION) As religion writers and historians know, the 1611 King James Version of the Bible begat the 1952 Revised Standard Version, which begat the 1989 New Revised Standard Version, which now begets the new “Updated Edition” of the NRSV.
It’s the “NRSVue” — a surefire news topic. This Bible will be available in e-book format by Christmas and in print around May 1.
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The NRSV copyright is held by the National Council of Churches, a cooperative body of mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations. It assigned this rewrite to the Society of Biblical Literature, a professional guild of university and seminary scholars, whose 63-member team made approximately 12,000 “substantive” changes and thousands more that are trivial. The team consulted African American church leaders, a group said to be “historically excluded” from prior Bible translation projects.
The result “improves” upon the original NRSV policy “to eliminate masculine-oriented language when it can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.” The church council says both of its versions seek to be “as free as possible from the gender bias inherent in the English language.”
A typical example is saying “brothers and sisters” when the original Greek literally said only “brothers” but was referring generally to people of both genders. The update omits footnotes that specify what the Greek said. Plural pronouns will abound, which depending on the translation, can occasionally make the antecedent unclear or miss the direct force of a singular pronoun. In the rewrite, the Bethlehem “wise men” are now “magi.”
Both the 1989 and 2021 renditions leave language about God undisturbed. “He” is still permitted, and he remains the “Lord” and “Father.”
That contrasts with the politically correct pressures of the day, as scanned in this Religion News Service article: ”What are God’s pronouns? How the church today is (or isn’t) gendering God.” RNS’ own columnist Mark Silk asserts that God should no longer be “he” but “they,” despite the implied departure from belief in the one God, because the deity is not a gendered male in Jewish or Christian theology.
An older gambit replaced prayers to “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” with “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier,” which the Roman Catholic Church has outlawed, along with the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Other neologisms in the air say God should no longer be “himself” but the potentially amusing “Godself.” A Presbyterian Church (USA) advisory recommends some use of “I am,” “Mother” or “Her” in divine references, while the Episcopal Church hopes to downplay “He” and “Him” in the pending revision of its Book of Common Prayer. These issues, plus the campaign for nonbinary language, will raise interest in the changes expected in the next edition of the standard Associated Press Stylebook, now in preparation.
The updated NRSV works around terms that are seen as offensive. “Epileptics” becomes people “having epilepsy,” and “paralytics” becomes those “afflicted with paralysis.” “Whoredom” is now “prostitution.” “Servant girl” is replaced by “female servant” and “slave women” by “enslaved women,” which underscores victimhood. Jewish holiday names are now capitalized. And for accuracy’s sake, leprosy is now “skin disease” because the Bible was not referring to that malady as known today.
There are also alterations based upon earlier or better ancient manuscripts of the biblical books that have been unearthed. For example, 30 words are added in 1 Kings 8:16 due to a text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which repeats language but does not change the meaning. The updated Bible adds more alternative readings listed in footnotes. For example, Acts 9:8 says Saul could see “nothing,” but a footnote notes other ancient texts have “no one.”
A tiny point but, oddly, the official logo for the updated NRSV is “nRSV,” combining a lower-case “n” with the three upper-case letters.
Go figure.
Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for The Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.