Out of the American Standard Version
One 1901 revision, and eight Bibles out of it going in every possible direction at once — literal, plain, amplified, paraphrased, public-domain and Catholic.
| Bible | Year | The spirit of the change |
|---|---|---|
| Revised Standard Version | 1946/52 | Plain modern English while staying inside the Tyndale–KJV tradition; among the first to use the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Isaiah. |
| New American Standard | 1971/95 | Go the other way: as literal as English allows, whatever it costs in readability. |
| Amplified Bible | 1965 | Spell out in brackets every shade a Greek or Hebrew word can carry. |
| The Living Bible | 1971 | Not a translation. One man’s free rewording of the ASV so his children could follow it. |
| New Living Translation | 1996 | Start again properly — ninety scholars, real translation from Hebrew and Greek, the Living Bible’s readability kept. |
| New Revised Standard | 1989 | Revise the RSV on the manuscripts found since, and use inclusive language where the original means both sexes. |
| English Standard Version | 2001 | Roll the RSV back toward the literal, for readers who found the NRSV went too far. |
| World English Bible | 1997 onward | Put a modern ASV into the public domain so anyone can print, quote or ship it without asking. |
| Legacy Standard Bible | 2021 | Revise the NASB 1995 and write the divine name out as “Yahweh” throughout. |
Revised Standard Version
Plain modern English while staying deliberately inside the Tyndale–King James tradition — the committee’s brief was to preserve what it could of the old wording while removing what had become unintelligible or wrong.
It was among the first English Bibles to use the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Isaiah, and it became the ancestor of more branches than anything else on the chart’s right-hand side: the NRSV, the ESV, and three separate Catholic editions.
New American Standard
The RSV’s opposite number. Where the RSV chose readable plain English, the NASB chose to be as literal as English allows, whatever it costs — and it costs a good deal. It remains the standard recommendation for readers who want to see the Greek and Hebrew structure through the English.
Amplified Bible
Spells out in brackets every shade a word can carry, so a single verse can carry three or four alternative renderings at once. Useful as a lexicon in sentence form; difficult to read continuously.
The Living Bible
Not a translation. Kenneth Taylor reworded the American Standard Version so his own children could follow the family readings, and the result sold in enormous numbers.
The arrow into it has a circle head rather than an arrowhead, because nothing was translated: an existing English text was freely rewritten.
New Living Translation
One of the chart’s two awkward cases. It hangs off the Living Bible because that is its history — the project began as a revision of it — but ninety scholars restarted the work as a real translation from Hebrew and Greek.
So the arrow describes where it came from, not what it is. See the exceptions.
New Revised Standard and English Standard Version
The RSV’s two children, pulling in opposite directions.
The NRSV (1989) revised the RSV against manuscripts found since and used inclusive language where the original means both sexes. The ESV (2001) rolled the RSV back toward the literal, explicitly for readers who judged the NRSV had gone too far. Both are revisions of the same parent, fifteen years apart, and the difference between them is almost entirely a question of that one decision.
Both went on to acquire Catholic editions — which is how a Bible in the Tyndale line ends up being read at Mass.
World English Bible
A modern revision of the ASV put deliberately into the public domain, so anyone can print, quote, or ship it in software without asking permission or paying a licence.
It inherited “Yahweh” from the ASV’s “Jehovah” in its classic edition. The WEB Updated, now the base for its newer variants, went back to “the LORD.”