The New American Standard Bible, known as the NASB, is one of the most carefully literal modern English translations of Scripture. Produced by the Lockman Foundation and first published in full in 1971, it has long been favoured by students, teachers, and preachers who want to follow the Hebrew and Greek as closely as English will permit.

Origins

The translation grew out of an earlier effort to update the American Standard Version of 1901. The ASV was a careful, highly literal American revision of the King James tradition, but by the middle of the twentieth century its English had grown dated and its sales had thinned almost to nothing. The Revised Standard Version of 1952 had taken its place as the mainstream revision, but RSV translation choices on a handful of disputed passages — particularly Isaiah 7:14 — had alienated much of the evangelical world. A different revision was wanted.

The Lockman Foundation, a non-profit evangelical body in La Habra, California, took up the project in the late 1950s. Its goal was to produce a fresh translation that would keep the ASV’s rigorous fidelity to the original languages while replacing its archaic English with modern usage — preserving, in effect, the ASV’s textual conservatism without its “thee” and “thou.”

An anonymous committee of biblical and language scholars worked through the text in stages. The Gospel of John appeared first in 1960, followed by the rest of the New Testament in 1963 and the complete Bible in 1971. A significant revision in 1995 reduced some of the awkwardness of the original NASB English without abandoning the literal approach. A further major update — the NASB 2020 — addressed inclusive-language questions and incorporated more recent textual scholarship, while preserving the translation’s formal philosophy. Both the 1995 and 2020 editions remain in print.

Translation philosophy

The NASB is widely regarded as the most literal of the popular modern English Bibles. Its translators aimed for what they describe as a transparent rendering: word order and grammatical structure follow the original as closely as English allows, technical Hebrew and Greek terms are rendered consistently from one passage to another so that thematic links remain visible, verb tenses are reflected with unusual care, and added words supplied for English sense are printed in italics so the reader can see exactly where the translators had to interpret.

The result is a version that reads more stiffly than the dynamic translations of its era but that is uniquely useful for close work with the original. A pastor preparing a verse-by-verse sermon, a student comparing the English with a Greek New Testament, a writer working on a commentary — all of these can trust the NASB to show what the original actually says, even where that costs the English some smoothness.

The textual base is mainstream critical scholarship. For the Old Testament, the committee works from the Masoretic Hebrew with reference to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint. For the New Testament, the base is the Nestle-Aland / United Bible Societies Greek text. The NASB pioneered some now-standard typographical conventions, including the use of small caps for Old Testament quotations within the New Testament — which lets a reader see at a glance when Paul or Hebrews is quoting Scripture.

A sample passage

The NASB’s closeness to the original is easiest to see beside a more dynamic translation. Here is John 3:16 in both:

NASB: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

NLT: For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

The NASB’s “God so loved the world, that He gave” preserves the Greek participial structure — the “so” describes the manner of loving, not merely the intensity. (Generations of preachers have stressed that “so” here means “in this way,” not “to this degree”; the NASB lets that distinction come through.) The capitalised divine pronouns (“He,” “His”) are a NASB convention that signals reverence and clarifies references to God in passages where the antecedent is ambiguous.

Adoption and influence

The NASB has never reached the popular sales of the NIV, but its constituency is loyal and substantial. It became the standard text of the MacArthur Study Bible (1997), the most influential evangelical study Bible of the 1990s, and remained so for decades before later editions added an ESV option. It was the preferred translation of John MacArthur, Charles Stanley, and Charles Ryrie, and was the base text of the original Ryrie Study Bible — a Bible used by generations of dispensationalist Baptists and Bible-church members.

In academic settings, the NASB has long been a favourite of expository preachers and seminary teachers who want their students to see Hebrew and Greek structures through the English. It is one of the most-recommended Bibles for inductive study methods (Precept Ministries, Bible Study Fellowship) where careful word-by-word observation is the point.

Who reads the NASB

The NASB has several distinct readerships:

  • Expository preachers and serious lay students. Anyone who wants to study a passage at the level of individual words and clauses finds the NASB more transparent than smoother translations. Its consistency in rendering key Greek and Hebrew terms makes word-studies and cross-references hold up across the Bible.
  • Independent Baptist and Bible-church congregations. The NASB found its strongest denominational home in conservative dispensationalist Baptist and Bible-church settings, often paired with The MacArthur Study Bible or the Ryrie Study Bible.
  • Seminary classrooms. Many evangelical seminaries assign the NASB as the parallel English text for Greek and Hebrew exegesis courses, precisely because its closeness to the originals makes the comparison work.
  • Readers who want maximum reliability. For believers who treat their English Bible as the closest possible window onto the inspired text, the NASB has a particular gravity. The trade-off of slightly stiff English is, for them, a fair price.

How the NASB compares

Within the spectrum of modern English Bibles:

  • The English Standard Version (2001) is the NASB’s nearest neighbour. Both are formal-equivalence Bibles; the ESV makes a few more concessions to readable English, the NASB stays a step closer to the original. Many readers compare them verse by verse and pick the one whose tone they prefer.
  • The New International Version (1978) is the NASB’s contrast translation. The NIV aims for natural English and pays for it with some distance from the originals; the NASB aims for the originals and pays for it with some stiffness in the English.
  • The King James Version (1611) and the American Standard Version (1901) are the NASB’s ancestors in the literal-translation tradition. The NASB is the ASV in modern English; the ASV was the King James in stricter language; all three belong to the same family.
  • The New Living Translation (1996) is at the opposite end of the philosophy spectrum. A reader who finds the NASB unreadable will probably love the NLT; a reader who finds the NLT too loose will probably love the NASB.

Frequently asked questions

Is the NASB really the most literal English Bible?

Among the popular modern translations, yes — though strict literalism is impossible across languages as different as Hebrew, Greek, and English. The NASB stays closer to the originals than the ESV, NIV, NLT, or NRSV by most measures: word order, consistent rendering of key terms, marked italics for added English. There are even more literal translations (the Lexham English Bible, Young’s Literal Translation), but they have never achieved the NASB’s wide use.

Why is the NASB sometimes hard to read?

Because Hebrew and Greek do not naturally fit English. Sentences in the originals can run long, with subordinate clauses stacked in ways that English does not handle smoothly; verb tenses do not map cleanly between the languages; word order in Greek can carry emphasis that English communicates differently. A translation that follows the originals closely will pay for that fidelity in readability. The NASB makes that trade-off deliberately.

What is the difference between the NASB 1995 and the NASB 2020?

The 2020 update modernises some of the language of the 1995, adopts careful inclusive language where the underlying Hebrew or Greek is itself inclusive (in much the same way the 2011 NIV does), and incorporates the textual research of the intervening twenty-five years. Both editions remain in print, and some readers prefer the 1995. The 2020 is the edition the Lockman Foundation now markets as the current NASB.

Is the NASB good for new believers?

Probably not as a first Bible. Its English is more demanding than the NIV or NLT, and a reader new to Scripture may find its careful phrasing more an obstacle than an aid. Most pastors who recommend the NASB do so for readers who already have some familiarity with the Bible and want to go deeper. For first reading, the NIV or NLT is usually a friendlier landing place; the NASB rewards readers who come back to it as their reading matures.

Is the NASB copyrighted?

Yes. The NASB is owned by the Lockman Foundation. Permission to quote the NASB in books, sermons, and other works is granted under terms set out in the front matter of each printed edition. Modest quotation does not require special permission; longer or commercial use requires a licence.