What's the difference between the New King James Version and American Standard Version bibles?

What's the difference and which is better?|||They are different translations of the Bible. Different people prefer different Bibles.|||The New King James Version commissioned in 1975 by Thomas Nelson Publishers, 130 respected Bible scholars, church leaders, and lay Christians worked for seven years to create a completely new, modern translation of Scripture, yet one that would retain the purity and stylistic beauty of the original King James. With unyielding faithfulness to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts, the translatiors applies the most recent research in archaelology, linguistics, and textual studies.





The problem is they used the same Hebrew and Greek manuscripts which had been the basis of the original KJV.





The American Standard Version, 1901 used as its basis the Westcott and Hort.





http://www.bible-researcher.com/kutilek1鈥?/a>





Both are high quality translations, however they are based on different Greek texts.





To know which is better you have to figure out which manuscript is better and both are not as good as the manuscripts used for the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version and the English Standard Version.|||I'm guessing you mean the New King James Version (NKJV) and the New American Standard Bible (NASB).



The primary difference from the scholarly viewpoint is that the NASB used the best available source texts for the New Testament, the NA critical text. The NKJV, on the other hand, uses the Textus Receptus, a late source text of very questionable quality in comparison to the NA.

http://www.bible-reviews.com/charts_accu鈥?/a>



The NKJV strives as much as possible to retain the wording of the KJV, using modernized wording in cases where the KJV wording was too archaic. In my amateur opinion, they retained many words whose common modern meanings do not reflect the actual (archaic) meaning intended by the original KJV translators. The NASB by comparison makes little effort to retain archaic wording and simply strives for an extremely word-for-word literal translation.



Both Bibles are extremely word-for-word literal. In my amateur opinion, the NASB is definitely the better of the two. Even so, the NKJV isn't bad, and for those who want a KJV that can be understood by a modern reader the NKJV is the best choice.





**IF** by some chance you are referring to the American Standard Version (ASV), it has many features in common with the NASB. The ASV is the most word-for-word literal scholarly translation around (more than the KJV, NKJV and NASB).

http://www.bibleselector.com/literalness鈥?/a>

It's over 100 years old, but still made use of the critical source texts of its time as does its successor, the NASB. It has the additional advantage of rendering the tetragrammaton as "Jehovah".

http://www.bible-reviews.com/topics_accu鈥?/a>

The ASV retains some archaic wording (particularly "thou", etc.), but has mostly modern word usage and meanings.



It's a tougher call choosing between the NKJV and ASV. The ASV's primary fault is its age. On the other hand, it does not attempt to slavishly duplicate the archaic wording of the KJV and has the great advantage of using "Jehovah". I'd probably favor the ASV - but only slightly.





Jim, http://www.BibleSelector.com/|||One says "Made in China" and the other says "Made in Japan".|||They both reword the same myths and fairy tales. Neither is the better for obvious reasons.|||I believe the American Standard Version is the most accurate version out there