The Problem with the New American Standard Bible

Number 4 of the fourfold aim of the Lockman Foundation regarding the New American Standard Bible is:

"They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place, the place which the Word gives Him, NO WORK WILL EVER BE PERSONALIZED." [Emphasis mine]

At least at one time that was the promise.

When at one time the translators claimed anonymity, you can know view the list of translators at Lockman's own website, originally posted at http://www.gospelcom.net/lockman/nasb/nasbtrans.php

Original NASB translators:
Peter Ahn
Warren Allen
Gleason Archer
Herman Austel
Kenneth Lee Barker
Fred Bush
David L. Cooper
Richard W. Cramer
Edward R. Dalglish
Charles Lee Feinberg
Harvey Finley
Paul Gray
Edward F. Harrison  John Hartley
F. B Huey, Jr.
Charles Isbell
David W. Kerr
William L. Lane
Timothy Lin
Oscar Lowry
Elmer Martens
Henry R. Moeller
Reuben A. Olson
J. Barton Payne
Walter Penner
John Rea  W.L. Reed
Robert N. Schaper
Moisés Silva
Ralph L. Smith
Merrill C. Tenney
Robert L. Thomas
George Townsend
Bruce Waltke
Lowell C. Wendt
William C. Williams
Herbert M. Wolf
Kenneth Wuest
Fred Young

The revisers of the "NASB Updated Edition" in 1995 are:
Timothy L. Deahl
Paul Enns
Buist M. Fanning
Thomas Finley
Osvaldo Garcia  Kenneth Hanna
W. Hall Harris
Harold Hoehner
J. Carl Laney
David K. Lowery  Ted Martin
H. Bruce Stokes
Duane Wetzler
Dale Wheeler
Don Wilkins

The work has indeed been personalized. Why! With its popularity as the "most literal Bible", perhaps there was opportunity for remuneration.

Robert Bowman tries to water down this accusation and comes to the defense of the Lockman Foundation with the following on one of his online groups:

"Frankly, this is ridiculous. The Lockman Foundation never took a blood oath swearing that the names of the translators would never be revealed. Assuming the translation committee was kept anonymous to avoid "personalizing" the work, there is nothing unethical about rethinking their policy."

This is special pleading on the part of Bowman, as the wording they chose to use was "NO WORK WILL EVER BE PERSONALIZED." Back in the late 70's, Bible translator Barclay Newman wrote a scathing review of the NASB, and in the end of the review, he had mentioned that he wrote and asked for the names of the translators, and they had refused on account of not EVER personalizing this translation.

Barclay Newman's objection to the NASB leads us to wonder why many experts do not accept the NASB Bible.

There is no reference to it in the BAGD, Aland's _Text of the New Testament_ or my edition of the UBS Greek text and it's companion piece, the Textual Commentary of the Greek NT. It is not mentioned in Eerdman's Dictionary of the Bible under "Bible Translations" and the same goes for Oxford's Companion to the Bible. F.F. Bruce does not reference it in his Commentary. James Dunn does not use it, Hurtado doesn't either. Metzger gives it a brief mention in his book _The Bible in Translation_ and even makes use of Laurence Vance's _Double Jeopardy_ in the review. This is an interesting move since Vance states in his Epilogue that "it would be double jeopardy to accept the NASBU [New American Standard Bible Update] as the word of God."

In Metzger's article _Recent Translations: A Survey and Exploration_ in the 1992 Southerwestern Journal of Theology [34.2: 5-12] he completely ignores the NASB. James Barr in his _Modern English Bibles as a Problem for the Church_ [Quarterly Review/Fall 1994] stated that

"Bibles are being written in English which have as one of their aims the pleasing of the sort of Bible readers who will buy them and like them, and it is especially on the side of the more evangelical readership that this is at present happening."

This is true of the NASB, as it is an Evangelical translation. Evangelical detractors of the New World Translation often accuse the NWT translators of producing a Bible that says what they want it to say, but the loudest critics of the New World Translation are only holding up a rhetorical mirror. The NASB, NIV and ESV are all reactions in response to the RSV, a Bible that does not say what they want it to say.

Yet none of the above mentioned scholars have no problem using the RSV, or the NEB which is contemporary to the NASB. The same goes for Glassman's _The Translation Debate_, while Barclay Newman calls the NASB a "tragedy" and a "nightmare" in _The Word of God-A Guide to English Versions of the Bible_.

The reason for all this is that the NASB is the "most literal" and the "most accurate" ONLY to the Conservative/Protestant/Evangelical mindset, as the NASB says what they want it to say.

No one else seems to be so easily fooled.

The NASB is not a progressive move in a better direction over and above the American Standard Version of 1901. The NASB will always be a pale imitation. It does not deserve to be the NEW ASV, and I am happy to see that the ASV has been given new life thanks to the internet and its public domain status.