By The postman recently gave me a parcel, containing a very handsome new bible: the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), church edition and Anglicised. It was a gift from the publishers, together with a matching notebook and pen, so full disclosure, I didn’t buy this.
It’s leather bound, and gilt edged, with a couple of marker ribbons. The typeface is clean and legible, and there’s a suggestion of passages to turn to when you’re in trouble, a table of weights and measures, and some maps. The box it came in was dark brown and burnt orange, with a simple embossed logo: my expectation from the outside was that it was going to look and feel contemporary. I was actually quite excited! The reality inside was a little bit trad. I think it’s one of those moments where you realise that a US Christian expectation of what is appropriate in church is a tad more formal and expensive-feeling than here in the UK. ‘Classy’ rather than ‘cheap as chips’.
So first, a bit of background. The publishers, Holman, first produced their complete Bible translation in 2004: The Holman Christian Standard Bible. A second edition came out in 2010, and some friends then kindly gave me a version. My standard reading bible was an ESV at the time, and so for a year I transferred over. It read smoothly and easily, but it was very obviously an American edition – the spellings were all that way inclined.
Full disclosure, therefore: the edition I’ve read all through is the HCSB, not this one.
In 2017 a further edition was published, renamed the Christian Standard Bible, and it is that edition that has now been Anglicised, and made available in church editions rather than just for individual use.
Revisions
Such revision is the mark of a competent editorial and translation team. The decision which grabbed a few headlines was whether to translate the tetragrammaton as ‘LORD’ or ‘Yahweh’, but I personally have no preference either way, since the word behind is always clearly identifiable. Likewise ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’, where I tend to agree with them that ‘Messiah’ emphasises the Jewish roots, and that it is a title rather than a surname. These days I usually turn to Jude 5, where manuscript choices have shifted on one word, and the translation team has made (I think) the right choice. Back in 2010 it read ‘The Lord first saved a people out of Egypt…’ with a footnote saying ‘Other mss read Jesus/Joshua’. Now it reads Jesus saved a people… which is a striking change, but one matched by the ESV, and defended by the text published by Tyndale House Greek New Testament.
So a world-class team that revises well shows that this is a living work. The same would be true of both ESV and NIV, of which more later. The CSB website carries an explanation of their revision decisions, here.
English English
This is the big selling point, of course. American spellings stick out in the UK, Australia, India, many African countries and so on, and even to some extent in Canada. If I were a pastor considering church bibles, it would be one of the two things that would rule an edition out from the start. The other is red letter, which is also a killer. Thankfully not here.
There’s one very minor twist here that I’ve spotted. And it’s in the measurements.
Take for instance, quite at random, the opening measurements of the tabernacle in Exodus 27:1 You are to construct the altar of acacia wood. The altar must be square, 2.25 metres long, and 2.25 metres wide;it must be 1.35 metres high. Now translators have two jobs to do here. They have to give us the size in terms we can understand, and they also have to communicate meaning. By which I mean that as all the sizes of tabernacle and temple unfold, it becomes clear that there is often a symbolism in the number of cubits which is not matched by merely giving us the size. By choice, then, I’d prefer keeping the odd translation with the significant in the main text (five cubits) and keep the contemporary explanation to a footnote, not the other way round.
That is exactly what the NIV does. A minor thing, but slightly better to my eye.
Grateful
So we must once again be grateful that we live in such a time of scholarly expertise and publishing drive. I’m reviewing a luxury – not the edition, printing or binding, but that we have a choice of contemporary translations.
But why?
Here’s my problem with the CSB – and I repeat, it is a lovely version, and a pleasure to read and hold. I am grateful for the gift. But why does it exist?
I’ve written before about why our church chose the NIV over the ESV, and over the years my feelings have only intensified. When the NIV first came out it was easy, accurate, and fresh, but it quickly became clear that that came at a price. Notoriously, commentators and preachers picked up its inability to maintain the logical connectives like for and therefore. And it is massively to the credit of the NIV translation teams that repeated editions have worked on this and improved it. The NIV we can buy now is a much better translation than the one I first held as an undergraduate.
The ESV, by contrast, doesn’t seem to have shifted. I’ve repeatedly noted that the opening verses of Luke’s
Given that the New Living Translation (which I also rate highly) is too loose a translation for many, the choice for a good, contemporary translation which is easy to use for people with average language has now broadened to two.
And here’s the rub of it. If you put the NIV on your desk, with the ESV to your left as maybe a touch too formal and stiff, and NLT to your right as a bit too loose, where are you going to put the CSB?
And I’m going to plonk it down firmly on the NIV, and carefully line up the edges so there’s no overlap. Because I’ve run dozens of comparisons with the two versions open in front of me, and sometimes they’re all-but-identical, sometimes there’s a variation but without a difference. I might on occasion prefer one translation over the other, but as I’ve kept score it’s pretty even.
So, really, why does this translation exist? What was the flaw in the NIV that meant that the brilliant Thomas Schreiner and his excellent team put all that time and effort into a new translation from the originals, using the best modern editions of those, knowing that the NIV had already made that journey forty plus years ago, and over the intervening time had only sharpened its act?
I’ll tell you what I guess, and you can mark me down as a cynic. Market share. The NIV dominates the contemporary translation sales, and even outsells the KJV, and I suspect Holman wants a slice of the very juicy pie. Their brand is home to Southern Baptists, and so this would feel like a natural choice to any such church looking to switch. Safe, contemporary, and one of ours.
Told you you’d think I as a cynic
My verdict
If you’re starting from scratch to buy some new bibles for church, or even for yourself, and you’re looking to replace the NIV, here’s a good contender. It is, to underline, the point, an excellent piece of work. But the rub is all in that ‘replace the NIV’ phrase. Because, really, the CSB won’t do anything that the NIV can do already. The NIV is also an excellent piece of work, with seemingly identical editorial choices in play. Maybe you’ve got good economic reasons to make the switch, or you’re getting too familiar with the phrasing and would like to move to something else just to freshen things up. That’s fine. But just remember that the difference between the two is so tiny, you won’t notice what you’ve done.
Oops!
What have I missed? Is there some dramatic flaw in the NIV that’s been overcome, or a leap forward in translation philosophy that makes the CSB the front of the pack? Have I missed its inherent genius?
Pile in!
ministrynutsandbolts.com 
Appreciate your review, Chris. If I may add a few comments of my own, having read a reasonable chunk of it: the poetry doesn’t feel very poetic and the translation overall is not hugely literate, at least to my taste. The translation in the OT of ’emet’ as ‘truth’ when it most often means ‘truthfulness’ etc is likely to mislead British evangelical ears – it’s far more likely to be heard as revealed truth and not as an aspect of character (of God and his people). More generally, the closer one translation is to another (and I agree it’s very close to the NIV) then there is more pressure to come up with slightly different renderings, just to show you’re different, which are then almost always slightly off and that feel faintly odd as translation choices. I think it falls into that trap.
Could you say which translation you prefer? Which you’d recommend to others?
thanks
Yep – as I’ve said, for our church we went with NIV. Personally, I use an ESV because English is my first language and I don’t have problem with words like ‘Inasmuch’. I like that extra bit of translation clarity, even if I have to work. For new believers I’d go for NIV or New Living Translation. CSB hasn’t added anything fresh to the mix for me. There is plausibility in using a bible in church that an enquirer can by off the shelf at a local secular bookshop – it makes us look less like a cult with ‘our own’ bible translation. And to steer them away from KJV for reasons of comprehensibility in C21. So, NIV wins as the default.
I’m not a pastor, just a layman. I read through the ESV 10 years ago and decided I liked the NIV2011 better, so stuck with that. I bought a CSB about 18 months ago and have been reading that just for a change. I find it much more readable than the ESV. I do like it, but not enough to give up the NIV. I agree with you. I don’t think we really needed another translation.
Having said that, the quality of the American editions is far superior to Hodder and Stoughton’s efforts.
Thanks for this Chris. I think I broadly agree with your conclusions. We use NIV 2011 in church. I am using the Anglicised CSB for my devotional use this year and I would say that I more often than not like where they land. To highlight one particular pet peeve about NIV 2011 I do not understand why they go for ‘pole’ in Gal 3:13 – where CSB translates ‘tree’ as you would expect for dendros. But this is picky picky – and I would be pretty happy with either in church. I do find CSB slightly easier on the eye – which is becoming more of an issue as my eyesight catches up with my middle age…
In general, I like most of our evangelical Bible translations – the ESV, the NIV, the NASB (including the NASB 2020 which is surprisingly far more readable than previous NASB incarnations as well as more than the LSB, yet still very much maintains its formal equivalence credentials), and the CSB too.
But no translation is perfect, and every translation has its flaws. Here are some things I don’t like about the CSB.
* Bolded OT quotes in the NT. I prefer to leave the quotations as regular text. Mainly so I can realize it’s an OT quotation on my own. I guess bolding is better than the NASB capitalizing the OT quotations, but again I’d prefer no special call-out at all. The Thomas Williams translation of Augustine’s Confessions may be instructive inasmuch as (unlike most other translations of Confessions) it intentionally foregoes noting Augustine’s biblical quotations and allusions. Williams explains his rationale in his introduction, which is well worth reading in relation to this very issue.
* Inspired, not God-breathed. I think God-breathed or breathed out by God better suits 2 Tim 3:16. Of course, what Warfield argues is behind this. Granted, nothing necessarily wrong with “inspired” as a translation, per se, but in English inspiration is in tension with expiration inasmuch as the former is about breathing in and the latter about breathing out.
* Resident alien, not stranger or foreigner. Doubtless “resident alien” is technically accurate, but it’s so clunky in Exodus. It is tone deaf to the narrative. Or to put it another way, there’s something that’s pitch perfectly evocative about the KJV’s “stranger in a strange land” that captures Moses’ forlorn situation more faithfully than the CSB’s technically accurate rendering. I realize there are two different Hebrew terms, but I’d prefer a translation like “stranger in a strange land” or “foreigner in a foreign land” with a footnote to indicate the two different terms over “resident alien”. At the very least, surely there must be a better English term than “resident alien” to reflect the underlying Hebrew without losing the plot, as it were?
* Instruction, not law. I don’t mind instruction too much, and I know instruction is an accurate general definition for torah in many cases, but still it isn’t entirely pleasing to the ear. I’d prefer something else. Perhaps “teaching” (Alter)? Or perhaps simply using “torah” would be best? For one thing, the word torah does seem to have a foothold in English. It’s not a wholly foreign word. However, torah might suggest Jewish law to many people or be too “theological” for many people. In these respects, using torah might be like using Yahweh for LORD.
On the other hand, while translators need to be sensitive to our ever-changing English language and translate in a way that most people can understand, at the same time I don’t see why translators can’t coin new words? For example, like Dickens or Rowling or Tyndale. Didn’t Tyndale coin many new words (e.g. atonement) and turns of phrases in English when he translated from the biblical Hebrew and Greek (e.g. The Reformation of English: How Tyndale’s Bible Transformed Our Language)? Same with others (like Luther) in their respective languages. If we used “torah”, then it wouldn’t quite be coining a new word, but trying to make a somewhat familiar-ish word more widely accepted and palatable to English speakers in general.
* Atoning sacrifice, not propitiation. I tend to prefer propitiation since it’s more theologically accurate, but to be fair atoning sacrifice is accurate enough and clearer for the common person. And I love “mercy seat” in Rom 3:25.
* Happy, not blessed. It’s good to see ashre distinguished from barak in English. Especially in the Psalms. That said, I think Waltke argues happy isn’t the best translation in Psalm 1. As I recall, Waltke prefers “fortunate”, though he recognizes its limitations too. Despite its limitations, I think I’d prefer “fortunate” over “happy” in part because I suspect “happy” would be misconstrued by the majority of English speakers as merely a subjective emotional feeling, whereas there seems to be more substance to “fortunate”. Or perhaps something else like joy or joyful and its cognates.
* Inexperienced, not simple. In Proverbs, inexperienced sounds clunky to my ears. Waltke argues for naive or uncommitted. The NASB 2020 uses naive. Uncommitted is also a bit clunky to my ears but less so than inexperienced. Plus, it seems possible to be experienced in life, but still uncommitted or naive. If so, it’s not so much about gaining experience to gain wisdom.
* Power, not hand. Such as: “My times are in your hand.” I think most people would not have a significant problem understanding “hand” in these contexts. And leaving “hand” as “hand” is more colorful and preserves the word-picture.
* Mt 11:29 “lowly and humble” seems a bit redundant. Besides, isn’t it more faithful to the Koine Greek to say “gentle and humble”?
* Isa 66:2. I suppose I’m too accustomed to the traditional “contrite in spirit” to appreciate “submissive in spirit”. But I understand submissiveness is what a contrite spirit would result in. A teachable spirit, as John Calvin said of his own conversion.
* Overall I guess my main nitpick with the CSB is a lack of literary style. Granted, much if not most of the Bible is fairly prosaic in style. The NT is written in Koine or common Greek, as scholars like Decker and Plummer and Merkle have pointed out, not to mention CS Lewis in his excellent introduction to the JB Phillips translation. Some parts of the NT are written in a higher register (e.g. Hebrews, the Lukan prologue), but most of the NT is not. However, I’m not referring to register, per se. Rather I’m referring to literary beauty. Beautiful words, beautifully saying so. That is, translation can use a lower register in general, but still be beautifully written. I have in mind people like Ernest Hemingway, EB White, CS Lewis. Such as the Narnia series which was written in a lower register, indeed it was written primarily for children, yet I believe certain passages contain some of the most beautiful words in modern English literature (e.g. the ending of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as the ship approaches Aslan’s country). And there’s something to be said for translating in such a way as to make it a pleasure to read rather than a chore (at least as much as possible). There’s such a thing as euphony in writing; one can often say the same thing in different ways, some better than others. In this respect, a translation is like a symphony or an orchestra. Different symphonies or orchestras can each play the same Bach or Handle or Vivaldi or Mozart or Beethoven or Mendelssohn, but some will play it finer than others. Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage aren’t always exact in following the structure and syntax of Beowulf and Sir Gawain, but in most respects they are better than Tolkien for both works. As much as I love Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and as much as I appreciate his pioneering scholarship on Beowulf and Sir Gawain, I don’t think Tolkien was a fine stylist. As well, accuracy and readability are certainly central in translation, but I hope not to neglect beauty even if we wish to make beauty less central than the others. Truth, goodness, and beauty are a classic triad, but even if we value truth and goodness more than beauty, we shouldn’t forget beauty.To my knowledge, the major modern translations that (mostly) don’t lack style are those that stand in the KJV/AV tradition like the RSV, the ESV, to a lesser degree the NRSV, and the NASB 2020 reads very smoothly (far more than the NASB95 and NASB77) and has a bit more literary style than the CSB – doubtless owing to its KJV lineage. The NEB/REB is also good but more inaccurate, more tilted toward liberal Christianity. Alter is wonderful, but of course he’s only the OT, not the NT. Perhaps Alter’s Hebrew Bible would pair well with another single translator NT (e.g. JB Phillips, FF Bruce, Richmond Lattimore, NT Wright, David Bentley Hart, Sarah Ruden). However, the tradeoff with the ESV is it’s a hybrid between modern English and archaic Elizabethan English, which sometimes or oftentimes works about as well as a city blending modern architecture with medieval or other ancient architecture. Note I’m not saying it doesn’t work (it often does work and sometimes works beautifully) but that it’s something of a compromise. Or perhaps I should say it’s more like old wine in new wineskins. Whereas the tradeoff with the NEB/REB is reliability. The NEB/REB excel in literary beauty in modern English but they are unreliable (e.g. too liberal) for conservative evangelicals and Reformed Christians. Perhaps a Christian publisher can consider obtaining the copyright to the NEB/REB and make a more reliable translation, like Crossway did with the RSV, turning it into the ESV. Ideally I’d want to translate a book like Hebrews in an elevated sermonic or homiletic style, while a more prosaic style would likely best suit most of the Pauline epistles. As a friend once put it: “If I was translating Ecclesiastes, the Psalter, or poetic sections in Isaiah, I’d use literary English. At the opposite extreme, if I was translating Ezk 18 & 23, I’d use street English or slang. Because that’s how Ezekiel would talk if he was speaking English.” Modern translations by and large seem to flatten the entire Bible into the same or similar mundane style. This is one of my gripes against the NIV, though I still appreciate the NIV overall. It looks like Michael Card was the primary stylist for the CSB. I don’t know a lot about Card apart from what I can find on Wikipedia. Apparently he is a gifted songwriter. But does fine songwriting translate well into fine English prose, poetry, and other literary forms (e.g. Andrew Peterson)? The Psalms would seem like a more natural fit for a songwriter, yet the Psalms in the CSB don’t “sing” to me. For that matter, different stylists with different strengths could work on different parts of Scripture. Perhaps a bard or poet on the Psalms, a writer of epics on historical narrative, someone like (a godly) Cormac McCarthy for Judges, a short essayist or letter writer on the epistles, and so on. We don’t necessarily need a single or primary stylist for the entire Bible. Maybe it’s already the case that different stylists worked on the CSB, but if so I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to come across. I don’t think the fault is in my ears, is it?I wonder why Bible translation teams can’t seem to employ a stylist with talent on par with, say, Seamus Heaney (Beowulf), CS Lewis (didn’t Lewis consult on the NEB?), John Ciardi or Allen Mandelbaum (Divine Comedy), perhaps Robert Fagles or Robert Fitzgerald for the Homeric epics and Virgil? I don’t know how orthodox they are, but modern Christian writers like Wendell Berry, Marilyn Robinson, Frederick Buechner, and others might serve as consultants. Too bad Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Walter Wangerin have passed on.In short, I hope Christian poet laureates, storytellers, and other wordsmiths can help turn a reliable translation (presumably first done by experts in biblical Hebrew and Greek) into a translation that sings and soars in places where it should sing and soar. It’d be wonderful if translation committees could hire a team of Bezalels well attuned to and able to convey literary beauty in the English language. Or (God forbid) is there a dearth of literary talent in Christian circles today? I hope not!
Al Mohler, the president of one of the largest seminaries aka Bible colleges aka theological colleges in the USA, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), once said with regard to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) producing their own Bible translation, that it is “an important thing for the Southern Baptists to do, if for no other reason than that we will have a major translation we can control.”
The main impetus behind this and similar statements was, in fact, to move the SBC away from dependence on the NIV. First, the SBC wanted to move away from the NIV due to the controversies around the TNIV and later NIV 2011 in SBC circles, especially over gender-inclusive language. I believe the SBC even made a public statement saying they do not recommend SBC churches use the NIV 2011 shortly after the NIV 2011 came out. Second, the SBC wanted to move away from dependence on the NIV because they were paying a tremendous amount of money each year in licensing fees to use the NIV. This was especially the case in their enormous educational curriculum which was using the NIV as its base text (e.g. Vacation Bible School).
All this may explain why the CSB as a translation seems so similar to the NIV as to be almost redundant. Except in gender-inclusive language where the CSB is closer to the NIV 1984 than the NIV 2011. In fact, I’ve heard some evangelicals who love the NIV 1984 say the CSB is what the NIV 2011 should’ve been if they had properly updated the NIV 1984. I don’t necessarily agree, but that’s what I’ve heard said and expressed.
Likewise, this is consistent with your “cynical” statement (and I’m a cynic too!) about the CSB produced for market share. The SBC is the single biggest Protestant denomination in the USA. It has a vast market across the USA and a fairly lengthy reach around the world through its missionary and other organizations. The CSB isn’t that popular outside the SBC. From what I can tell, it looks like the SBC’s strategy is to focus on making the CSB the standard across SBC churches and organizations first and foremost, while reaching out elsewhere now and again (as it seems they have done with you by sending you a nice edition of the CSB), and once they have established a firm foothold for the CSB in the SBC, then they’ll make more concentrated efforts outside the SBC. I suppose that’s a sensible enough strategy inasmuch as the SBC alone is so huge, with so many churches, with scores and scores of evangelical Christians, with a lot of cultural and other influence, with a long reach in the US, especially in the South and the Midwest, and beyond.
Personally I think I still prefer to read the NIV in any of its incarnations including the 2011. I think the gender language issues are a tempest in a teapot with regard to the NIV 2011. The NIV 2011 is a sufficiently reliable Bible for evangelicals. Admittedly the NIV holds a soft spot in my heart since it was really the first Bible I read and understood and which the Lord used to save me. But I also really like the CSB. Both are solid translations. Honestly we’re spoiled for choice for Bible translations in the English speaking world.
I pproperly discovered the CSB when I was looking for inexpensive outreach/economy Bibles to give away at Christian Network events at work. I initially was able to buy the ESV in bulk for £2 each but have always preferred to use something in more natural English for outreach. When I found the CSB at the same price I got a box and started using one and liked it so bought the CSB Study Bible and use daily. I’ve used the NIV and NKJV for decades and the CSB reads as well as the NIV but in some cases is thankfully less scared of translating verses accurately rather than in line with the traditional rendering, e.g. John 3:16. I just discovered that the NIV economy outreach edition is coming out in September 2025 at £2 each for bulk orders so will get those next. I like the CSB, but I’m not loyal to it!