Once upon a time, there was an English Bible translation called the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), published by Holman Bible Publishers. The translation had several interesting features, including the frequent use of "Yahweh" in Old Testament passages in place of the traditional "LORD," and more frequent use of "Messiah" instead of "Christ" to render the Greek word χριστος (Christos). The translation committee of the HCSB favored a style of translation that they called "optimal equivalence," which essentially meant that the HCSB (somewhat like the more popular NIV) was a "mediating" translation, somewhere midway between formal and dynamic equivalence.
Last year, Lifeway Christian Resources, the company who owns Holman Bible Publishers, announced that they would be releasing an updated version of the HCSB, with its title simplified to Christian Standard Bible (CSB). Lifeway is currently in the middle of releasing print editions of the CSB, but you can read the entire thing online at csbible.com. Meanwhile, the HCSB is still available for the time being on several Bible websites, including Bible Gateway and MyWSB.com.
At this time, I have only browsed through the CSB a little, so I won't attempt a complete review of the version here. A couple things that strike me right off the bat are that they eliminated the use of "Yahweh" in the OT, in favor of the more traditional "LORD." The Beatitudes (Matthew 5) are more traditional sounding in their word order: the HCSB's "The poor in spirit are blessed..." has become "Blessed are the poor in spirit..." in the CSB. Overall, the CSB seems to be pretty similar to the NIV now, which causes me to wonder what the point of the update was, if they were just going to make it more similar to versions that were already popular.
Anyway, I shall attempt to dig more deeply into the new CSB, and perhaps compare it to its predecessor, the HCSB. Meanwhile, Lifeway has published a chart that compares the CSB to other versions. Although it is admittedly biased towards the CSB, the chart gives the reader a sample of some of the CSB's distinguishing features.
At this time, I have only browsed through the CSB a little, so I won't attempt a complete review of the version here. A couple things that strike me right off the bat are that they eliminated the use of "Yahweh" in the OT, in favor of the more traditional "LORD." The Beatitudes (Matthew 5) are more traditional sounding in their word order: the HCSB's "The poor in spirit are blessed..." has become "Blessed are the poor in spirit..." in the CSB. Overall, the CSB seems to be pretty similar to the NIV now, which causes me to wonder what the point of the update was, if they were just going to make it more similar to versions that were already popular.
Anyway, I shall attempt to dig more deeply into the new CSB, and perhaps compare it to its predecessor, the HCSB. Meanwhile, Lifeway has published a chart that compares the CSB to other versions. Although it is admittedly biased towards the CSB, the chart gives the reader a sample of some of the CSB's distinguishing features.
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