Christian Standard Bible – Anglicised Edition

 

I was happy to find out that the Christian Standard Bible is going to be issued in an Anglicised edition with British spelling and usage. I understand the new edition will go on sale in June this year.

The Christian Standard Bible or CSB is a great translation. It first came out in 2017 and was a revision of the "Holman Christian Standard Bible" first published in 2004. The CSB translators claim it uses "optimal equivalence" as its translation philosophy which is to say it is more literal than the NIV but more functional than the ESV. It is a conservative evangelical committee translation produced by Holman Publishers in the USA. Often thought of as a "Baptist" translation because it was produced by a Baptist publishing house, it is not sectarian and involved scholars from 17 denominations to avoid denominational bias.

Like the NIV, the CSB is a completely fresh translation from the original languages and is not within the Tyndale/KJV/RV/ASV/RSV family tree, which means it does not necessarily follow "traditional" renderings. I believe this is a strong point in its favour, whenever a "new" rendering is more accurate to the Hebrew or Greek.

Here are a couple of sample verses from the CSB, which I think show the nature of the CSB as a translation:

Mark 9:3 - describing Jesus' appearance during the transfiguration - "and his clothes became dazzling—extremely white as no launderer on earth could whiten them."

Where the CSB has "no launderer" the NIV has "anyone" and the ESV has "no one" but the Greek has "γναφεὺς" (grapheus) - a launderer or "fuller" (KJV), thus the CSB is considerably more accurate.

Matthew 6:9 - "Our Father in heaven, your name be honoured as holy" moving away from "hallowed" in the Tyndale/KJV tradition, which few modern readers understand or use anywhere else except in the Lord's Prayer.

John 3:16 - "For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."

Here the CSB again moves from the traditional to the more accurate. "In this way" is an improvement on the traditional "so loved" which we tend to read as "loved so much" rather than "loved in this way" which is what the Greek word houtos usually means. Secondly, "everyone who believes" is better in my view than "whoever believes". 

The CSB also makes good use of footnotes where alternative translations are possible or where there are textual variants. Often the footnotes contain a more traditional or literal translation. 

For example in 1 John 2:2: "He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world" with a footnote "the propitiation."

Again in 2 Timothy 3:16a: "All Scripture is inspired by God" with a footnote "breathed out by God".

There is always a danger that the CSB will fall between two stools. It may not be literal or traditional enough for churches that favour the ESV and it may not be simple enough for churches that use the NIV or anything even more functionally equivalent like the NLT.

Yet the CSB is a very good translation and its fresh renderings in many places are helpful to contrast with the ESV/NRSV in the Tyndale tradition or with the NIV/NLT's more functional renderings.