As religion writers (and historians) know, the 1611 King James Version of the Bible begat the 1952 Revised Standard Version, which begat the 1989 New Revised Standard Version which now begets the new "Updated Edition" of the NRSV.
It’s the "NRSVue" — a surefire news topic. This Bible will be available in ebook format by Christmas and in print around next May 1.
Media might issue advance articles about this production or wait for reactions to the complete text from reviewers or local clergy and parishioners. A 36-page media memo provides an advance look, accessible here. For further queries contact Friendship Press at info@friendshippress.org or CEO Joseph Crockett at joseph@frienshippress.org.
The NRSV copyright is held by the National Council of Churches, a cooperative body of the “Mainline” Protestant and Orthodox denominations. It assigned this rewrite to the Society of Biblical Literature, a professional guild of university and seminary scholars, whose 63-member team made approximately 12,000 "substantive" changes and thousands more that are trivial. The team consulted African-American church leaders, a group said to be "historically excluded" from prior Bible translation projects.
The result "improves" upon the original NRSV policy "to eliminate masculine-oriented language when it can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture." The church council says both of its versions seek to be "as free as possible from the gender bias inherent in the English language."
A typical example is saying "brothers and sisters" when the original Greek literally said only "brothers" but was referring generally to people of both genders. The update omits footnotes that specify what the Greek said. Plural pronouns will abound, which depending on the translation can occasionally make the antecedent unclear or miss the direct force of a singular pronoun. In the rewrite, the Bethlehem "wise men" are now "magi."
Both the 1989 and 2021 renditions leave language about God undisturbed. "He" is still permitted and He remains the "Lord" and "Father."
That contrasts with the politically correct pressures of the day as scanned in this Religion News Service article: “What are God’s pronouns? How the church today is (or isn’t) gendering God.” RNS's own columnist Mark Silk asserts that God should no longer be "he" but "they," despite the implied departure from belief in the one God, because the Deity is not a gendered male in Jewish or Christian theology.
An older gambit replaced prayers to "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" with "Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier," which the Catholic Church has outlawed, along with the churches of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Other neologisms in the air say God should no longer be "himself" but the potentially amusing "Godself." A Presbyterian Church (USA) advisory recommends some use of "I am," "Mother" or "Her" in divine references, while the Episcopal Church hopes to downplay "He" and "Him" in the pending revision of its Book of Common Prayer. These issues, plus the campaign for "non-binary" language, will raise interest in the changes expected in the next edition of the standard Associated Press Stylebook, now in preparation.
The updated NRSV works around terms that are seen as offensive. "Epileptics" becomes people "having epilepsy," and "paralytics" becomes those "afflicted with paralysis." "Whoredom" is now "prostitution," "servant girl" is replaced by "female servant," and "slave women" by "enslaved women," which underscores victimhood. Jewish holidays' names are now upper-cased. And for accuracy's sake, leprosy is now "skin disease" because the Bible was not referring to that malady as known today.
There are also alterations based upon earlier or better ancient manuscripts of the biblical books that have been unearthed. For example, 30 words are added in 1 Kings 8:16 due to a text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which repeats language but does not change the meaning. The updated Bible adds more alternative readings listed in footnotes. For example, Acts 9:8 says Saul could see "nothing" but a footnote notes other ancient texts have "no one."
A tiny point but, oddly, the official logo for the updated NRSV is "nRSV," combining a lower-case "n" with the three upper-case letters.
Go figure.
FIRST IMAGE: Illustration from the Britannica.com discussion of 1611 King James Version.