Notable Textual Changes in the NRSVue NT

Produced by the National Council of Churches, the NRSV has long been the Bible of mainline Protestant denominations, those in the ecumenical movement, and the wider academy. It has never really been popular among evangelicals to my knowledge. That unpopularity goes all the way back to the controversy over its predecessor, the RSV. But that history is for another day. What we can say is that the NRSV’s reach is still in the top ten of English translations according to data from NPD Bookscan and published by the ECPA: the NRSV was the tenth bestselling English translation last month. 

Be that as it may, readers may not remember that six years ago I shared news about a planned update to the NRSV. You may also not remember that textual criticism was front and center as a justification for the need to revise, going so far as to name the CBGM itself. So, text-critical changes have been prominent in the justification for the NRSVue since the start. Besides that, the NRSVue is also noteworthy for text-critics because the general NT editor was none other than our own ETC blog member, Michael W. Holmes. (For the full list of contributors, see here.) 

So, what were the results? According to the preface, “The NRSVue presents approximately 12,000 substantive edits and 20,000 total changes, which include alterations in grammar and punctuation.” Obviously, most of these cannot be text-critical and many are in the OT. The new preface does have a pretty detailed section on textual criticism, at least as far as translation prefaces go. It says:

For the New Testament, the team based its work on three recent editions of the Greek New Testament: (1) The Greek New Testament, 5th revised edition (United Bible Societies, 2014); (2) The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010); and, (3) for Acts and the Catholic Letters, Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2013, 2017). Occasionally these editions differ in regard to text or punctuation; in such cases the team followed the reading best supported by a combination of both traditional and more recent approaches and considerations. As in the original NRSV, double brackets are used to enclose a few passages that are generally regarded to be later additions to the text but that have been retained because of their antiquity and importance in the textual tradition. Here and there in the notes the phrase “Other ancient authorities read” identifies alternative readings preserved by Greek manuscripts and early versions. In both Testaments, other possible translations of the text are indicated by the word “Or.” 

Textual criticism continues to evolve. Not only have additional manuscripts become available, but some of the goals and methodology have changed over the last several decades. This is more the case for reconstructing the books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, but it is generally true for the entire enterprise. In the NRSVue, care was taken not to push too far ahead of the existing critical editions or to turn the translation itself and its notes into a critical edition. Nevertheless, a careful reader will notice in general a more generous use of the notes for alternative readings. The editors hope that this work will serve translators in the future.

In light of the emphasis on textual criticism, I wondered what changes I could find. This is just from my spot-checking, mind you. I haven’t found a list of changes anywhere yet.

• Matt. 19.9: “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” The longer reading was in the footnote before along with the reading of B and some others. I’m guessing this change is due to Holmes’s influence given his 1990 JBL article on the subject which you should all read and heed.
• Mark 1.1: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” To which I can only say, booooo! (The right reading is in the footnote and at least they got Mark 1.41 right.)
• Luke 10:41-42: “But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’ ” Note a gives the shorter reading that was the main text in the NRSV: “Other ancient authorities read but only one thing is needed.”
• John 1.18: “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who[f] is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Note f reads “Other ancient authorities read is the only Son who.” The former edition read “It is God the only Son, who...” with a slightly different note.
• Acts 3.13: “The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,[c] the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.” Footnote c says, “Other ancient authorities read and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” which is what the NRSV read before.
• Eph. 5.22: the paragraph break is now after 5.21 instead of before with a new footnote that says there is no verb in 5.22. That’s an interesting combination of judgments, but at least can claim the support of Vaticanus.
• 1 Pet 4.16: footnote now says, “Other ancient authorities read in this respect” (for “in this name”).
• 2 Pet 3.10: footnote now says, “Other ancient authorities read will not be found or will be burned up.” The first part of that refers to the conjecture in NA28 which has support only of a few Coptic and Syriac witnesses.
• Jude 5: “Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” The NRSV had “the Lord.”

For more on the process behind the NRSVue, see https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interview/even-better-bible

More NT Textual Criticism Guest Lecture Videos

I’m teaching NTTC again at the seminary and that means having guest lecturers visit to share their work. The first two videos are now up at the TCI YouTube channel. If you subscribe there, you’ll get new videos when they’re posted. Thanks to Mike and Edgar for letting me share these.

Ebojo on P46 and the Pastoral Epistles

 

Holmes on Editing and Translating the NT for Church and Academy

Plan to Review and Revise the New Revised Standard Version

News from the SBL annual report this week is that SBL is planning to oversee a review and revision of the NRSV translation. What really surprised me about this was how prominent textual criticism is in the explanation. From the report:

SBL to Provide a Review and Update to the New Revised Standard Version

At the 2017 SBL-AAR Annual Meeting, the National Council of Churches (NCC) announced an update of the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), an English translation of the Bible owned and licensed by the NCC. This update will be managed by the Society for Biblical Literature, following a partnership approved by Council earlier in 2017. Scholars have produced a considerable amount of work in text criticism since 1989, the year the NRSV was published. The last three decades have provided significant new discoveries, including new manuscript witnesses, developments in textcritical methodology, and philological insights. A thirty-year review is not only necessary in the light of this scholarly work but will result in an English translation that is based, without exception, on the most up-to-date textual analysis. The update will focus on three areas:

• Text-Critical and Philological Advances: The primary focus of the thirty-year review is on new text-critical and philological considerations that affect the English translation. The philological review will draw upon the fruits of historical-critical scholarship that affect expressions in English. For the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, text-critical developments in the last thirty years have been especially significant. The publication of the Judean Desert biblical texts and fragments has revealed a number of readings that differ from the medieval Hebrew traditions in the Masoretic Text, which was the basis of the NRSV.
• Textual Notes: SBL’s initial review of the NRSV suggested that the current text-critical footnotes are neither complete nor consistent. There are cases when the translation silently adds words not conspicuously in the sources or does not indicate when a reading is not following the sources. To address this deficiency, reviewers will be asked to identify text-critical issues that should have been documented in the notes but were not.
• Style and Rendering: The translation philosophy of the NRSV will be maintained, including its overarching commitment to being “‘as literal as possible’ in adhering to the ancient texts and only ‘as free as necessary’ to make the meaning clear in graceful, understandable English.” That being said, when a reviewer judges a particular translation awkward, inaccurate, or difficult for general readers to understand, the reviewer may suggest a more elegant rendering.

The SBL editorial board includes Sidnie White Crawford (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Ronald Hendel (University of California-Berkeley), Michael W. Holmes (Bethel University), Robert S. Kawashima (University of Florida), Jennifer W. Knust (Boston University), Judith H. Newman (University of Toronto), and Eugene Ulrich (University of Notre Dame). In addition to the editorial board, more than fifty scholars will contribute to the review, which will be conducted over the next three years.

Participants will draw upon new tools developed after the NRSV was published, including The SBL Greek New Testament, edited by Michael W. Holmes (2010); SBL Press’s The Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition, edited by Ronald Hendel (2015–); and the German Bible Society’s Biblia Hebraica Quinta (2004–), The Greek New Testament, Fifth Revised Edition (2014), and twenty-eighth edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece, as well as volumes from GBS’s Editio Critica Minor [sic] produced by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung and based on recent New Testament methodological developments reflected in the INTF’s Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (see Tommy Wasserman and Peter J. Gurry, A New Approach to Textual Criticism: An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method [SBL Press, 2017]).

Question from Mike Holmes on the NRSV and UBS3

Mike Holmes sends this note for readers of the blog:

In the preface to the NRSV, the Committee states that the NRSV is based on UBS3, and that “Only in very rare instances have we replaced the text ... by an alternative.” I know of two, at Luke 11:33 and Acts 16:12, but am wondering if there is a comprehensive list. So, here’s my question: does anyone on the ETC Blog have or know of a list of UBS3—NRSV textual differences?

Any help for Mike?