Question/insight #49: "Could you please tell me more about the ASV Bible?"

Response #49:

The American Standard Version [ASV] Bible was first published in 1901. It is basically the American version of the Revised Version [RV], the New Testament of which was published in 1881, and the entire Bible of which was published in 1885. Though the RV was actually initiated by the English scholars, it almost immediately became a joint English-American project. For the most part the ASV is the RV with American spellings and American idiomatic expressions, but there are some differences from the RV in interpretation and in word usage. The ASV is essentially based upon the same documents and research data that were used for the RV, the translation of which began in 1870.

American biblical scholarship, which ultimately published the ASV, had been part of the RV translation effort since 1870. The English scholars had agreed that during the first fourteen years of publishing the RV they would show in an appendix the American scholars' preferred "readings and renderings." The American scholars agreed not to publish an American version until at least fifteen years after the RV Bible was published in 1885, so they waited until 1901 to publish the ASV.

[For more information on how the RV and the ASV, even though they were authorized revisions of the KJV, were generally rejected by clergy, browse http://www.bibletexts.com/bl-ver.htm. The unrivaled dominance of the KJV as an English language translation was no seriously challenged in any church by any translation until the 1952 Revised Standard Version (RSV) finally overtook the KJV. As explained in the abovementioned webpage article, the New International Version (NIV) is now the leading English Bible sold in stores today, and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is the translation most adopted by and placed in today's mainstream Protestant Christian churches.]