Christian Standard Bible


The Christian Standard Bible is a modern English Bible translation of the Christian Bible. Work on the translation was completed in June 2016, with the first full edition released in March 2017.

History

The Christian Standard Bible is a major revision of the 2009 edition of the Holman Christian Standard Bible. The CSB incorporates advances in biblical scholarship to improve upon translation decisions, word choice, and style. It also removes some of the novel features of the HCSB, such as consistently translating the tetragrammaton as "Lord" rather than "Yahweh" and using "brothers and sisters" for the plural term "brothers" in Greek.
The HCSB was translated by an international team of 100 scholars from 17 denominations. The HCSB New Testament was released in 1999, and the entire translation was released in 2004.
Work on the CSB revision was undertaken by the Translation and Review Team, a trans-denominational group of 21 conservative Evangelical Christian biblical scholars. Backgrounds represented include Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, conservative Anglican, and non-denominational Evangelical churches.
Ongoing translation decisions are governed by the ten member CSB Translation Oversight Committee, co-chaired by Dr. Thomas R. Schreiner and Dr. David L. Allen.

Translation philosophy

The CSB translators used a methodology they termed "Optimal Equivalence." Optimal Equivalence draws from both formal and dynamic translation philosophies, balancing contemporary English readability with linguistic precision to the original languages.
Based upon criteria from a quantitative linguistic comparison of eight popular English Bible translations, the CSB was found to hold the most optimal balance of Readable vs. Literal scores.

Textual basis

The CSB Translation and Review Team used the latest available Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia 5th Edition was used for the Old Testament and the Novum Testamentum Graece 28th Edition and United Bible Societies 5th Edition was used for the New Testament.