The ASV has long been regarded by many scholars as the most literal English translation since the King James Version—maybe the most literal translation ever. This has made the translation very popular for careful English Bible study, but not for ease of reading. While the KJV was translated entirely from "western manuscripts," the ASV 1901 was influenced also by the older "eastern manuscripts" that form the basis for most of our modern English translations. Because the ASV 1901 is very difficult to find in print, Logos is pleased to be able to preserve and distribute this significant work. This is an excellent choice for comparative English study.

English

Good Bible, the language and the scholarship are a little outdated, but it is all you need for sound doctrine and salvation through the gospel of Christ ( )

Older style English. ( )

The ASV: the American revision of the English Revised Version of 1881, itself a revision of the KJV on the basis of the manuscript evidence discovered in the intervening 270 years. The translation is very close to the original Hebrew and Greek, oftentimes replicating the exact grammatical structure of the original. To this end the English is very clumsy-- the translators intentionally maintained the "archaized" English that marked the KJV, attempting to replicate 17th century English in the late 19th century, and a native English speaker will find the language, grammar, and syntactical structure of the translation to be strange at times. On the other hand, if one wishes to get a slight feel for the nature of the Hebrew and Greek texts, the ASV is a good place to start; the ASV, on the whole, represents the most faithful word-for-word rendering of the original texts, and one can be mostly confident regarding one's conclusions and inferences from the text based on the ASV rendering. Nevertheless, the distance between the text and the modern reader provides a challenge, and one might need to consult other translations in order to more effectively understand the meaning of the text at times.

The ASV was almost relegated to the dustbin of history; Star, to my knowledge, is the only one still publishing it. Since the ASV is out of copyright, it is enjoying a renaissance online and on e-readers, and this is a good thing.

The edition: Star Bible is just replicating the original 1908 Thomas Nelson edition, including the concordance and Bible dictionary at the end, although not the maps of the original. The concordance and dictionary are quite substantial; far more so than in most Bibles today, although the information is extremely dated. The replication means that the text is sometimes difficult to read, but it does provide the pronunciation markers for the Hebrew and Greek names, which is quite beneficial.

In my estimation, the ASV is a must have in every Christian's library and should be an active part of every serious Christian's Bible study program. ( )