Harper Collins Study Bible - NRSV

Most of the readings I'll be doing will come from the Harper Collins Study Bible. It makes use of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, or the NRSV, which is widely considered the most accurate English translation of the Bible, especially in scholarly circles.

There has been some controversy over the NRSV's elimination of many instances of gender-specific language. For instance, many places where the original text might specify "brothers" or "man," the NRSV translates as "siblings" or "adult."

I do not entirely understand the problem here. Even in the King James Version, "b'nei Yisrael" is translated as "children of Israel," though "b'nei" translates directly to "sons of." Even the English Standard Version (ESV) which was created almost directly in response to the NRSV's use of gender-neutral language translates this as "children" instead of "sons."

Some accuse the NRSV of pandering to modern feminism, but I think it's much more like it's looking through ancient sexism. It's not at all clear that the ancient texts were even specifically sexist in these cases; when Tolkien writes of the race of Man in The Lord of the Rings, do people assume that he is indicating only the males?

In any event, using the very little Hebrew that I do know, the NRSV seems to match up to my Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia much more closely than the other translations I've used. As I advance in my Hebrew, I'll try to look at more text and see how it compares.