Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.

Luke 10:32-33

Today we are most fortunate indeed to be the beneficiaries of wonderful Biblical scholarship that dates back five hundred years or more. Such diligence has produced a number of highly accurate translations of the Old and New Testaments in the English language, with the Authorized King James Verson(KJV), the New King James Version(NKJV) and the English Standard Version(ESV) representing just three of the best word for word renditions of the Holy Bible. As a keen reader of Scripture, I am always on the look out for new ways to improve my personal knowledge of the Bible, and, in this capacity, found yet another version to be particularly enlightening; enter the New American Standard Bible(NASB).

Like so many highly literal versions of the Bible, the NASB has an interesting history. Beginning in the 1880s, a team of American and British Bible scholars embarked on an ambitious project to update the archaic language of the KJV, producing the English Revised Version, which in turn formed the basis of the American Standard Version(ASV), first published in 1901. The ASV called upon a much larger number of manuscripts than the prestigious KJV, which were considerably older than any of the sources used to construct the KJV(mostly 10th and 11th centuries AD). And it was about this time that scholars began to notice a few small differences between the older and newer manuscripts. An example can be found in the Gospel of John chapter 5:

The KJV reads:

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

John 5:4

Once manuscripts dating back to the 4th and fifth centuries AD began to be uncovered, it was noted that many of them did not contain this verse, suggesting that it was accidently inserted by scribes at some later time. That is why most modern Bibles have a footnote at John 5:4 which says, ” older manuscripts do not contain this verse.”

And yet, here’s how the NASB deals with it.

]for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]

John 5:4

So the NASB committee decided to leave it in……with a bracket around it.

As Biblical archaeology unearthed more and more ancient manuscripts throughout the 20th century, culminating with the astonishing finds contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were unearthed in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert between 1946 and 1956, many Bible scholars felt it was high time that a new translation of the original Hebrew and Greek tongues be constructed which benefited from these new insights. Thus, in 1959 work began on a new translation which honoured both the ASV and KJV under the aegis of the Lockman Foundation, which called upon an international team of Bible scholars and pastors from a broad cross-section of denominations to create the New American Standard Bible (NASB), which say first light as a complete work in 1971. Another revised NASB appeared in 1977(still with the old ‘thees’ and ‘thous’)  Still, as good as the original NASB was, an updated and improved version of the NASB appeared in 1995(with the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ were modernised). This is the version I wish to discuss in this blog, though it is understood that the Lockman Foundation is currently at work producing yet another updated version of the NASB, which will appear in print in 2020.

Some Unique Attributes of the NASB

One of the first things you will notice when you start to read the New Testament in the NASB is that it highlights quotations or citations from the Old Testament in small caps. Consider 1 Peter 3:14-15