Review

Title: The Literal Standard Version of the Bible
Publisher: Covenant Press, Covenant Christian Coalition
Genre: Bible
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 775 pages
ISBN: 978-0999892473
Price: $22.22

Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle for the Association for Mormon Letters

I can well remember, as a young man of 16, receiving my first New Testament. As a Jewish lad, I’d never seen such a thing. This one was given to me by a Baptist missionary to the Jews. Reading it was quite an experience. It got me started down a path that would profoundly change my life.

For the next two years, I studied with a Baptist couple until I finally decided to be baptized. They expected me to become a Baptist, but there were aspects of the faith that troubled me. I eventually found myself at the Seventh-day Adventist church, a much better option for me.

It was a great day when I received my first complete Bible. I was wonderstruck. All 66 books in one hardback volume! No notes, no cross-references, no maps, no nothing — just scripture. I enjoyed flipping through the pages, drinking in the text and learning so many new things with every perusal.

I recall shortly thereafter browsing the religion section at a local used book store and discovering Cruden’s Concordance. Wonder of wonders! This Cruden fellow actually compiled a complete listing of every word in the Bible, and showed us where to find the words. Amazing!

It didn’t take long for me to realize that Cruden’s had its limitations. I had learned Hebrew as a young boy, and so there was little problem reading the Hebrew text. Greek was, well, Greek to me. I began learning to read the Greek characters and some of the vocabulary.

And then I discovered Young’s Concordance. It took into account so much that Cruden neglected, recognizing that different Hebrew and Greek words were sometimes rendered alike in the English, and that, at times, the same Hebrew or Greek word can be rendered differently, depending on context.

When I received my copy of the Literal Standard Version, I was brought back to my beginnings — no notes in the text, just a few graphics, no cross-references, just text.

The same Robert Young who created the concordance also created a new rendering of the text, Young’s Literal Translation (YLT). For more than a century, scholars have looked to YLT for a strictly literal reading of the text. This, at times, produced a difficult rendering, not suitable for everyday Bible reading. Here’s an example, :

“In the beginning of God’s preparing the heavens and the earth — the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, and God saith, ‘Let light be;’ and light is. And God seeth the light that [it is] good, and God separateth between the light and the darkness, and God calleth to the light ‘Day,’ and to the darkness He hath called ‘Night;’ and there is an evening, and there is a morning — day one.”

Quite a mouthful! Now, without further ado, the same scripture from the volume under consideration, the Literal Standard Version:

“In [the] beginning God created the heavens and the
earth, and the earth was formless and void, and
darkness [was] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit
of God [was] fluttering on the face of the waters,
and God says, “Let light be”; and light is. And
God sees that the light [is] good, and God separates
between the light and the darkness, and God calls
the light “Day,” and the darkness He has called
“Night”; and there is an evening, and there is a
morning—[the] first day.”

Better? You bet! And, wonderfully, still a literal reading of the text, a faithful rendering of the underlying words in the best manuscripts.

The creators of the LSV state this, in part, as their goal:

“A modern, literal, word-for-word (formal equivalence) English translation of the Holy Scriptures utilizing English word rearrangement when necessitated for readability. The LSV is the most literal translation of The Holy Bible, with significant improvement over previous literal translations, including Robert Young’s excellent Young’s Literal Translation.”

And so the LSV creators compare their work with YLT. And it compares very well. Reflecting a commitment to sound scholarship and a consistent hermeneutic, the LSV emerges as a readable and approachable text, a welcome addition to the offerings of the world of biblical translations.

There are some interesting features of the LSV that should be explained.

First, similarly to the KJV’s use of italics, the LSV uses single brackets to denote words supplied to make the meaning clear.

Second, double brackets surround text that is considered spurious, and perhaps not supported by the earliest manuscripts. (Just my opinion: this can be somewhat erratic. Both the Johannine Comma and parts of the last chapter of Mark are so denoted, but John 8, the account of the woman taken in adultery, although considered spurious in modern scholarship, is not so noted.)

Third, poetic breaks are indicated with a double pipe (||). I don’t recall ever seeing this before. It can be a bit off-putting at first, but it becomes more comfortable the further you get.

Fourth, the sacred Name of God, sometimes rendered as LORD in lower caps, or Jehovah, or Yahweh, is here consistently given as YHWH, the tetragrammaton. It realizes that we don’t really know how God’s name is correctly pronounced.

Quite generously, the publishers have made the text freely available at lsvbible.com. You can download the full volume. (Of course, I’m guessing the publisher wouldn’t object if you chose to purchase a copy .)

In the Latter-day Saint community, biblical scholarship has seen something of a renaissance among researchers and teachers. BYU has seen a new rendition of the New Testament published recently, and it’s really quite good.

Lacking on most bookshelves, however, is a more literal translation that can guide the student to a deeper understanding of the message of the Bible. And while Young’s Literal Translation can so serve, I don’t think it is as accessible, and readable, as the Literal Standard Version.

Serious students of the Bible will do well to obtain a copy. You’ll find it to be insightful, clear, and eminently revealing of the meanings underlying the scriptural text.