The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches, the NRSV was created by an ecumenical committee of scholars "comprising about thirty members". The NRSV relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. A major revision, the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue), was released in 2021.
Used broadly among biblical scholars, the NRSV was intended as a translation to serve the devotional, liturgical, and scholarly needs of the broadest possible range of Christian religious adherents.
The tradition of the King James Version has been continued in the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version. The full 84 book translation includes the Protestant enumeration of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament; another version of the NRSV includes the deuterocanonical books as part of the Old Testament, which is normative in the canon of Roman Catholicism, along with the New Testament (totalling 73 books).
The translation appears in three main formats: (1) an edition including the Protestant enumeration of the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament (as well an edition that only includes the Protestant enumeration of the Old Testament and New Testament); (2) a Roman Catholic Edition with all the books of that canon in their customary order, and (3) the Common Bible, which includes the books that appear in Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox canons (but not additional books from Oriental Orthodox traditions, including the Syriac and Ethiopian canons). A special edition of the NRSV, called the "Anglicized Edition", employs British English spelling and grammar instead of American English.
History
The New Revised Standard Version was translated by the Division of Christian Education (now Bible Translation and Utilization) of the National Council of Churches. The group included scholars representing Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christian groups as well as Jewish representation in the group responsible for the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. The mandate given the committee was summarized in a dictum: “As literal as possible, as free as necessary.”
Committee of translators
The following scholars were active on the NRSV Committee of translators at the time of publication.
William A. Beardslee
Phyllis A. Bird
George Coats
Demetrios J. Constantelos
Robert C. Dentan
Alexander A. DiLella, OFM
J. Cheryl Exum
Reginald H. Fuller
Paul D. Hanson
Walter Harrelson
William L. Holladay
Sherman E. Johnson
Robert A. Kraft
George M. Landes
Conrad E. L’Heureux
S. Dean McBride, Jr. Bruce M. Metzger Patrick D. Miller Paul S. Minear Lucetta Mowry Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm. Harry Orlinsky Marvin H. Pope Jimmy Jack McBee Roberts Alfred v. Rohr Sauer Katharine D. Sakenfeld James A. Sanders Gene M. Tucker Eugene C. Ulrich Allen Wikgren
Principles of revision
Improved manuscripts and translations
The Old Testament translation of the RSV was completed before the Dead Sea Scrolls were available to scholars. The NRSV was intended to take advantage of this and other manuscript discoveries, and to reflect advances in scholarship.
Gender language
In the preface to the NRSV Bruce Metzger wrote for the committee that “many in the churches have become sensitive to the danger of linguistic sexism arising from the inherent bias of the English language towards the masculine gender, a bias that in the case of the Bible has often restricted or obscured the meaning of the original text”. The RSV observed the older convention of using masculine nouns in a gender-neutral sense (e.g. "man" instead of "person"), and in some cases used a masculine word where the source language used a neutral word. This move has been widely criticised by some, including within the Catholic Church, and continues to be a point of contention today. The NRSV by contrast adopted a policy of inclusiveness in gender language. According to Metzger, “The mandates from the Division specified that, in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.”