This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net.
24 July 2022
The NASB is a conservative Protestant update for the ASV, and first appeared in 1971, though it has been revised to some degree since. We might see it as a sort of conservative counterpart to the RSV, whose last edition appeared in 1971, before it was superseded by the NRSV in 1989.
It is known for a high degree of literalism, and for this reason sometimes conservative evangelicals will be under the impression that it is "the most accurate" translation of the Bible. Interestingly, the Lockman foundation, which produced the NASB, also had a hand in the production of the Amplified Bible, which takes non-literalness to cartoonish extremes.
Like many Bibles that cater to conservative evangelicals, it is not the sort of Bible widely accepted in academia, in part because of the way it allows its theology to slant the Hebrew text, as one can see with the Christological manipulations in Isaiah 7:14-15, for example.
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