The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha (1989)

My latest deep dive subject is biblical history, and on top of my decades-old New Oxford Annotated Bible and my recently purchased Harper Collins Study Bible, I wanted a version without all the extras that might be easier for just reading without distraction. I'm sure not everyone is reviewing the same version here. Mine is the paperback, which was a bargain at $5.99 on Amazon. The print is tiny--I mean the scriptures themselves--and the short footnotes, which are just references or alternate readings, are smaller still. The print does appear readable, however, and there may be room for a note here or there, although the margins are very small. I'll treat this as almost a disposable version, and see how long it lasts! ( )

*** top shelf

Clear concise language that seems somewhat more faithful and less subjective and flowery than other versions. ( )

The NRSV has consistently struck me as a poor comedown from the RSV. I am not able to do a full assessment of the OT portions -- my Hebrew is minimal -- but I have a good grasp of classical / koine Greek and am continually irritated by the way in which the NRSV slides, by choice of words, from translation to paraphrase; in some cases misleading paraphrase.

To take a random example: in the Gospel of John, the chief priests' reply to Pilate's "Behold your king" is not "We have no king but Caesar"; instead, it is "We have no king but the emperor". Aside from the fact that the Greek actually says "Kaisara". in the third decade of the first century, under Tiberias, "Caesar" was still a family name and not a title: the new translation gets the implication wrong: not a reference to the person currently holding an office but to a person of a given name.

The text does represent, by and large, the current established Nestle-Aland NT text and the current up-to-date text of the OT and Deuterocanonical books. However, its failures as a translation seem to me to outweigh the advantage of its better source-text.

For all its pervasive use as a liturgical text I cannot recommend this translation. ( )

Kindle Bibles are works-in-progress. Very basic edition with links to books only. Word search is slow but seems to be stable. ( )