Another Bible version option

CHRISTAN STANDARD BIBLE,
Anglicised Edition
Holman Bible Publishers
£15.99 (hardcover)
ISBN 978 1 087 762 388

The Christian Standard Bible (CSB), a significant revision of the former Holman Bible, was published in the US in 2017. Only now, though, is an Anglicised version available in the UK.

It comes in black hardback or in imitation ‘Leathertouch’, but there are no other versions available yet, e.g. Study Bibles or the like. Grace Publications Trust did the anglicisation, but it’s printed in China, size 24x16cm.

The text is printed in two columns in a reasonably easy-to-read Serif font, with some (but not over-many) textual-variant footnotes (with tiny footnote superscripts), but very few cross references. There is no red-letter text (yet), but quotations from the OT in the NT are helpfully printed in bold.

The CSB and the former Holman Bible are probably a lot less well known in the UK than others such as ESV, NIV , NKJV and NRSV, so a few remarks might be useful here. As with all these other versions, the CSB claims to be a compromise between ‘formal word-for-word equivalence’ and ‘dynamic (or functional) thought-for-thought equivalence’. It is certainly more in the dynamic direction than the more formal ESV, but perhaps less so than the NIV.

The CSB employs gender inclusive language where easily possible and appropriate, but without, it claims, endorsing modern ‘cultural ideology’.

The CSB retains traditional theological vocabulary such as ‘justification’, ‘s a n c t i f i c a t i o n’ and‘redemption’, but it doesn’t retain ‘propitiation’ except in footnotes. Regarding this word, the CSB, like the NIV, uses atonement words for the last three of the four occurrences, but rather oddly has the correct but surely somewhat technical ‘mercy seat’ term at Romans 3:25 without referencing the Pentateuch or Hebrews 9 usage. YHWH, adonay, etc., are rendered as usual in modern translations, but ‘sabaoth’ as ‘of armies’ is perhaps arguable.

After using this new version for a couple of weeks, I have come to enjoy it very much, and very little troubles me regarding the translation, with only a few jarring quirks. I have just a couple of quibbles. Is CSB’s claim, to be the ‘optimal equivalence’ (their term) between formal and dynamic equivalence, justified – they place it right at the centre of the spectrum?

Surely this is a subjective evaluation that should be left to the individual reader. And is it perhaps just too bold a step for this Bible translation to appropriate the term ‘Christian’ as no other translation has ever done, to my knowledge?