When people want an example of a very literal modern English Bible, they usually name the New American Standard Bible. For more than half a century it has been the translation of choice for many students of the original languages, and the one other translations are compared against when the question is “what does the Greek actually say?”

Its story begins with an older Bible that it set out to preserve, and continues with a recent one that grew out of it: the Legacy Standard Bible of 2021.

The American Standard Version

The American Standard Version of 1901 was the American form of the Revised Version (see English translations since the King James). Its translators worked from a Greek text close to that of Westcott and Hort, and they tried to render each Greek or Hebrew word by the same English word wherever possible, and to follow the structure of the original closely.

Scholars admired it. Ordinary readers found it stiff. The comment “strong in Greek, weak in English,” often attributed to the preacher Charles Spurgeon, was made about the British Revised Version, but it describes the ASV equally well. It also had one very visible feature: it rendered the divine name in the Old Testament as “Jehovah.”

Jehovah is my shepherd; I shall not want. (Psalm 23:1, ASV)

By the middle of the twentieth century the ASV’s copyright had passed to what became the National Council of Churches, which used it as the basis of the Revised Standard Version (see The RSV and the ESV). Many conservative Protestants disliked the RSV, and some felt that the ASV itself was in danger of being forgotten.

The Lockman Foundation

The Lockman Foundation was established in 1942 by F. Dewey Lockman and his wife Minna, who gave part of their citrus ranch in La Habra, California, to a non-profit corporation for Christian work. In the 1950s it sponsored the Amplified New Testament, and in the late 1950s its board turned to a new project: a revision of the ASV that would keep its accuracy while making its English current.

The NASB New Testament appeared in 1963. The complete Bible followed in 1971 and was dedicated at a service at Dewey Lockman’s home church in Anaheim. By the foundation’s own account, in 1977 the Christian Booksellers Association recorded it as the best-selling Bible in America.

The foundation summarised its purpose in what it calls the Fourfold Aim: that its translations should be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek; grammatically correct; understandable to the masses; and give the Lord Jesus Christ his proper place. The order is significant. Faithfulness to the original comes first, and readability third.

How the NASB translates

The NASB’s preface describes its approach as following the original as closely as English allows, and several features of its printed editions make the original visible to the reader.

  • Italics mark words supplied for English sense that are not in the original, as in the King James Version.
  • Small capitals in the New Testament mark quotations from the Old Testament.
  • An asterisk marks Greek verbs in the present tense that the translators rendered as past tense in English. Greek storytellers often used the present tense to narrate past events, and the NASB both translates it naturally and lets the reader see that it was there.
  • Pronouns referring to God are capitalised.
  • In many editions each verse begins on a new line, with bold numbers marking where paragraphs begin, a layout that suits study but breaks up the flow of reading.

The result is precise and consistent, and also, by common consent, harder to read aloud than most modern translations. In Romans 1:1, for example, the NASB has Paul call himself “a bond-servant of Christ Jesus,” a compound coined to convey that the Greek word doulos means more than a hired servant, where the King James Version and ASV say “a servant of Jesus Christ.”

The NASB also departed from its parent in one obvious way: it abandoned “Jehovah” for the traditional “LORD” in capital letters. Its preface explains that the name was not pronounced in Jewish tradition and that “LORD” follows long-standing practice.

Revisions: 1977, 1995 and 2020

The NASB has been revised several times, each time cautiously.

  • 1977. A light revision, adjusting wording and correcting details.
  • 1995. A more thorough update, often called the NASB95. Its most visible change was to drop “thee,” “thou” and “thy” in prayers and other addresses to God, which earlier editions had kept. It also revised words whose meanings had shifted and smoothed some awkward word order. For many readers, the 1995 text became the NASB, and it remains in print.
  • 2020. The most substantial revision, published as the NASB 2020. It updated the text against more recent editions of the Hebrew and Greek, and made the English more natural in many places.

The NASB 2020’s handling of gender language drew most comment. Where the Lockman Foundation judged that the original audience would clearly have understood women to be included, it added “and sisters” after “brothers,” printed in italics to show that the words are not in the Greek. It kept “he” and “him” for generic singular references, which it described as a line it would not cross because changing them would conflict with its Fourfold Aim. Some readers welcomed the italicised “and sisters” as both clear and transparent; others thought it unnecessary, or felt that the 2020 edition gave up some of the literalness that had made the NASB distinctive. Others again thought it did not go far enough. These are the same debates that surround the NIV and the ESV (see Gender language in translation).

The Legacy Standard Bible

Some readers who preferred the 1995 NASB wanted a translation that would carry its approach further rather than moderate it. The result was the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB).

The LSB was produced by a team of scholars from The Master’s Seminary and The Master’s University in southern California, institutions long led by the pastor John MacArthur, under the direction of Abner Chou. It was made with the permission of the Lockman Foundation, which holds the copyright, and is published and managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing. A New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs appeared in March 2021, and the complete Bible in October 2021.

The LSB began from the NASB 1995 and revised it against the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Its stated aim is to be a “window” into the original, with particular attention to consistency: rendering a given word in the original by the same English word as often as the context allows, so that readers can trace terms across the Bible. Its best-known distinctives follow from that principle.

  • ”Yahweh.” Where the Hebrew has the divine name YHWH, the LSB prints “Yahweh” instead of “LORD.” Its Psalm 23 begins “Yahweh is my shepherd.” The translators argued that the name itself carries meaning, being connected in Exodus 3 with God’s self-existence, and that replacing it with a title hides that from readers. The World English Bible makes the same choice, as here:

God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. (Exodus 3:15, WEB)

  • ”Slave.” The LSB renders doulos as “slave” throughout, so that Romans 1:1 reads “a slave of Christ Jesus.” The translators argued that “servant” softens the claim that believers belong wholly to Christ. Critics replied that the English word “slave” carries associations, especially from the history of chattel slavery in the Americas, that differ from the varied forms of ancient slavery, and that “servant” has a long English pedigree.
  • ”Lovingkindness.” The LSB keeps the older NASB rendering “lovingkindness” for the Hebrew hesed, which more recent translations have often replaced with “steadfast love,” “faithful love” or “loyal love.”

On the divine name, the LSB has also been questioned. Some critics have pointed out that the New Testament, quoting the Old, uses the Greek word for “Lord,” and that the pronunciation “Yahweh” is a scholarly reconstruction. Others objected on grounds of Jewish sensitivity to the name, or of long Christian liturgical practice, the same considerations that led the Vatican in 2008 to ask Catholic liturgy not to use the name (see The divine name in translation). Supporters answered that the Old Testament uses the name thousands of times, and that the reader should see what the text says.

Strengths and criticisms

The NASB tradition is valued for what it sets out to do:

  • It lets readers who do not know Hebrew or Greek see the structure, tenses and vocabulary of the original as closely as English allows.
  • Its consistency makes it useful for word studies and for comparing parallel passages.
  • Its italics and other conventions are honest about where the translators have added to the text.

The main criticisms concern the same features:

  • Its English can be awkward, especially in narrative and poetry, and less suited to public reading than most modern translations.
  • Close adherence to form can mislead. A Greek idiom reproduced word for word can mean something different, or nothing at all, in English. Critics of formal equivalence such as Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss argue that a “literal” translation is not always the more accurate one (see Word for word or meaning for meaning?).
  • Consistency has limits. Words in any language have ranges of meaning, and using one English equivalent everywhere can force a sense that does not fit a particular context.

Defenders reply that a literal translation is meant to be read alongside others, or with teaching, and that its value lies precisely in leaving interpretation to the reader where possible.

Seeing the structure

The NASB and LSB rest on a conviction that Open Word Bible shares: that readers deserve to see what the original says, not only what a translator thinks it means. Open Word Bible tries to serve that conviction differently. Its Literal level stays close to the form of the Greek and Hebrew, while its Balanced and Readable levels express the same meaning decisions in more natural English (see Three levels, one meaning), so that no one rendering has to do everything. Choices that affect wording but not meaning, such as “brothers” or “brothers and sisters” where the whole church is meant, or capitals for pronouns referring to God, are reader settings; a setting for the divine name is planned (see Settings change wording, never meaning). It translates from the SBL Greek New Testament and the Westminster Leningrad Codex, records the reasoning for each sentence, and uses translations like the NASB and LSB only for comparison. Its drafts are AI-assisted and await review by named human reviewers, and it is released under CC0.

Sources

  • Lockman Foundation. “History” and “Who We Are.” Official website.
  • Lockman Foundation. “More Information about NASB 2020.” Official website.
  • “Preface to the New American Standard Bible.” New American Standard Bible. La Habra: The Lockman Foundation, 1971; updated 1995.
  • “Preface.” Legacy Standard Bible. Three Sixteen Publishing, 2021.
  • Legacy Standard Bible. “Foreword” and “FAQs.” Official website, lsbible.org.
  • Lewis, Jack P. The English Bible from KJV to NIV: A History and Evaluation. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991.
  • Metzger, Bruce M. The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
  • Fee, Gordon D., and Mark L. Strauss. How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007.
  • Bible quotations are from the American Standard Version and the World English Bible (both public domain), as marked; the NASB and LSB are quoted only in short phrases.