The Progressives’ Bible And Its Critics

The usual Bible translation for mainline liberal Protestants is the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue). It’s been out for awhile, but a new study Bible using that text has brought on new attention to this rendition of the Bible.

For centuries, the standard English Bible was the King James Version (KJV), first published in 1611. In 1952, a major revision was undertaken under the auspices of the National Council of Churches with the goal of retaining the familiar language and the cadence of the KJV while rendering it in more modern language and applying the findings of modern Biblical scholarship. The Revised Standard Version kept the thee‘s and thou‘s but caused controversy by, for example, rendering Isaiah 7:14, which in the KJV is “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son” to “a young woman shall conceive and bear a son.”

The New Revised Standard Version came out in 1989, eliminating the “thee’s” and other archaic language, and also, responding to a major concern of progressive theologians at that time, getting rid of much of the gendered language, rendering for example “brethren” as “brothers and sisters.” But references to God and the persons of the Trinity still retained the use of masculine pronouns.

Then in 2001, a conservative revision of the RSV came out, the English Standard Version (ESV), which reversed the higher-critical readings in the RSV, thus restoring “virgin” to Isaiah’s prophecy of the birth of Christ; used gender-neutral language only when specifically warranted; and attempted to use modern language while retaining traditional theological terminology (such as justification, redemption, grace, etc.), all the while attempting to maintain the literary quality of the English Bible tradition, as exemplified in the KJV.

Then in 2021 came the New Revised Standard Version updated edition (NRSVue), a thorough revision of the NRSV that took gender neutral language even further–while still retaining masculine pronouns for God–and also addressed a specific concern of today’s progressive Christians: homosexuality.

Last year the Westminster Study Bible was published, the first study Bible using the NRSVue, which has attracted new attention to the translation.

Here is the verdict of my fellow Patheos blogger Ben Witherington, a respected evangelical Bible scholar, responding to a video review of the NRSVue, embedded below:

This new updated edition of the NRSV does not allow the Bible to say what it actually says about same-sex sexual activity, nor is it fair to the full scope of what the Bible says about women and their roles. Furthermore, underlying all this is a rejection of the notion that Scripture itself should have the final authority over human reason, tradition, or experience on matters that it actually teaches us about.

Saying that he agrees with the detailed review on the video, Witherington continues:

There are numerous other problems with this translation, not the least is allowing people who are not experts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek or the Bible in its translations to contribute, at least in the essays to this Bible. Moderate and conservative Catholic and Protestant Bible scholars are also under-represented on the team who undertook this revision (some 20,000 changes to the previous NRSV), though Brent Strawn and David deSilva are mentioned. My advice is to stick to the latest edition of the NIV or the NET Study Bible. Having had Bruce Metzger as one of my mentors, who was the original head of the original NRSV team, and knowing of his views on the controversial issues of our day, I’m pretty sure he would not be happy with the tendentious way hot button issues are treated in this latest translation at the expense of what the Bible actually says.

You can sample the NRSVue readings and compare them with those of other translations at Bible Gateway. Look up a verse, then click “in all translations.” Please share your findings in the comments.

Here is the video that Witherington references: