Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition - Background

Background

The Revised Standard Version stands within the tradition of the Authorized King James Version, which was updated in 1885 in the UK as the Revised Version, with an American edition known as the American Standard Version published in 1901. The latter version was revised in 1952 by a Standard Bible Committee authorized by the National Council of Churches; this was known as the Revised Standard Version. A revision of the Apocrypha was authorized in December of that year, and would be completed in 1957.

In 1954, after a year of negotiations, the Standard Bible Committee granted the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain permission to print a Catholic RSV Bible. Originally, the RSV-CE New Testament was to have been issued as early as 1956, but Cardinal Griffin, who had approved the plan, died before he could give it an imprimatur. A delay of nearly a decade ensued before Archbishop Gray of St. Andrews and Edinburgh gave the RSV-CE New Testament the necessary imprimatur. And so at last, in 1965, the RSV-CE New Testament was published. In the following year, 1966, the full RSV-CE Bible was published, with the deuterocanonical works incorporated into the Old Testament text. The Prayer of Manasseh, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151 were omitted from the RSV-CE, as they are not part of Catholic canon.

Although a New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition was published in 1989, the mechanical use of inclusive language did not find favour amongst many scholars, and the use of such language for Bible translations was specifically rejected by the Catholic hierarchy. A Second Edition of the RSV-CE was negotiated with the National Council of Churches, and issued by Ignatius Press in 2006.