In studying the English Bible versions/translations issue and its history, I have concluded that the Revised Standard Version (NT & OT, 1952) was the real game changer. The RSV could not have been possible without the ancestral RV (1885) & ASV (1901) that preceded it. However, it seems that these two were otherwise mostly blips on the translation radar. Scholars referred to them, and common folks mostly ignored them.
The RSV changed all that. The idea of a revision of the ASV was commissioned by the International Council on Religious Education. (Eventually it was turned over to the National Council of Christian Churches.). The RSV whole Bible of 1952 was rolled out with great fanfare in a well-orchestrated promotional blitz. It was quickly met by stiff conservative resistance.
Why was the RSV the game-changer? In North America at least, it seriously divided the English-speaking Christians and their Bible. First, it divided the conservative/fundamental groups from the moderate/liberal groups. Surely there were some outliers, but this seems relatively consistent among those who liked it and who didn’t. Conservative Christians, churches, and denominations that couldn’t agree on much else stood unitedly against “The biggest hoax the Devil ever tried to put over on Bible-believing Christians,” as Bob Jones Sr called it.
However, the RSV aftermath spawned a split within the conservative/fundamental circles – between those who stood for the use of the King James Version and others who began calling for a new “conservative” revision of the ASV.
We cannot well understand where we are today without understanding where we have been.
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