The Christian Standard Bible (CSB) is a modern English Bible translation of the

Christian Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a v ...

. Work on the translation was completed in June 2016, with the first full edition released in March 2017. The translation was updated in February 2020.

History

The Christian Standard Bible (CSB) is a major revision of the 2009 edition of the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). The CSB incorporates advances in biblical scholarship to improve upon translation decisions, word choice, and style. It also removes some of the novel features of the HCSB, such as consistently translating the tetragrammaton as "Lord" rather than "Yahweh" and using "brothers and sisters" for the plural term "brothers" in Greek. The HCSB was translated by an international team of 100 scholars from 17 denominations. The HCSB New Testament was released in 1999, and the entire translation was released in 2004. Work on the CSB revision was undertaken by the Translation and Review Team, a trans-denominational group of 21 conservative Evangelical Christian biblical scholars. Backgrounds represented include Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, conservative Anglican, and non-denominational Evangelical churches. Ongoing translation decisions are governed by the ten member CSB Translation Oversight Committee, co-chaired by

Thomas R. Schreiner Thomas R. Schreiner (born April 24, 1954) is an American Reformed New Testament scholar. He is the James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He previously taught at Bethel U ...

and David L. Allen. In February 2020, an update to the translation (CSB Text Edition: 2020) was released. Adjustments affected less than 1% of the 2017 text, and focused on edits to footnotes, cross references, punctuation, and word/phrase choices. The Translation Oversight Committee provided specific explanation about their decision to translate ''hilasterion'' in Romans 3:25 as "mercy seat" rather than the 2017 rendering of "atoning sacrifice" or the traditional rendering in English Bibles, "propitiation."

Translation philosophy

The CSB (and original HCSB) translators used a methodology they termed "Optimal Equivalence." Optimal Equivalence draws from both formal and dynamic translation philosophies, balancing contemporary English readability with linguistic precision to the original languages. Based upon criteria from a quantitative linguistic comparison of eight popular English Bible translations, the CSB was found, according to Andi Wu of the Global Bible Initiative, to hold the most optimal balance of Readable vs. Literal scores.

Textual basis

The CSB Translation and Review Team used the latest available Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. The

Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, abbreviated as BHS or rarely BH4, is an edition of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible as preserved in the Leningrad Codex, and supplemented by masoretic and text-critical notes. It is the fourth edition in ...

5th Edition (BHS5) was used for the Old Testament and the Novum Testamentum Graece 28th Edition (NA28; i.e., the

Nestle-Aland (''The New Testament in Greek'') is a critical edition of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek, forming the basis of most modern Bible translations and biblical criticism. It is also known as the Nestle–Aland edition after its mo ...

28th edition) and United Bible Societies 5th Edition (UBS5) was used for the New Testament (the HCSB used BHS4 and NA27/UBS4).

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2017 books 2017 in Christianity Bible translations into English