The Bible market is saturated by Bibles which have not yet earned their names “legacy” and “standard” and many “new” bibles are not so new anymore. It would have been better to have called Bibles by their publisher names, calling them names like the Lockman Bible instead of the NIV, the Zondervan Bible instead of the NASB, and the Crossway Bible instead of the ESV, until these Bibles could have earned their names.

As we stand back and observe the Bible publishing industry, we cannot help but be perplexed by the names publishing companies give bibles. I shall limit myself only to the most popular Bibles in this observation. The explosion of modern Bible versions began with the “New” American “Standard” Bible (NASB) in 1971 and later the “New” International Version (NIV) in 1978, and it seems that after this, Bible publishers followed the trend of using the word “Standard” on their Bibles, and most Bibles cannot help but use the terms “new” or “standard” for their versions. The most popular Bibles are the English Standard Bible (ESV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), the New Living Translation (NLT), the New King James Version (NKJV), the Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), Christian Standard Bible (CSB), New Revised Standard Version, updated edition (NRSVue) and the only one that seems to buck the trend, the Common English Bible (CEB).

My Thesis Is That the Bible Market Is Filled with Poorly Named, Even Absurd, Names for Bible Versions, Which Are Participation Trophies

“New” is a relative term. A new song is only new for a few weeks or months. A new car is not new for long; however, if it gets old and you sell it because it is old for you, and it becomes new for someone else, though it is old. The NIV was first published in 1978, but I don’t think anyone who bought a house in 1978 still calls his house new. The NIV had updates in 1984 and 2011, making the 1978 old, though retaining the name “new.” If you bought a house in 1984 or 2011, it is hardly new in 2025.

Using “Standard” in Bible titles began in 1901 with the American Standard Version and then the Revised Standard Version of 1952.

The NASB uses both New and Standard in its title, and it was new in 1971, and possibly 1972, but it is definitely not new in 2025; there have been updates along the way, like in 1995. The NASB also calls itself a “standard,” which is strange because a standard is a tool for measuring. The NASB, as it has aged, has never been the standard by which other versions were measured.

The word “New,” as an adjective leaves us scratching our heads. The NIV is a “new version,” says the title, and it once was, but it no longer is a new version. NASB makes us wonder what “new” is qualifying; is this a “new Bible,” or a “new Standard;” likely it is not for a “new America,” since NASBs are not handed out to recent citizens of the American Republic. Likely, NASB was a “new Bible” with two other qualifiers (American and Standard) crowding up the middle of the name.

The NIV and NASB, when put together, seem to be opposite sides of a coin, since one is “International” and one is “American.” Taken together, the NASB must be domestic, for North Americans, since central and south Americans speak Spanish and Portuguese, and the NIV must be for nations abroad, that is to say, outside of North America, yet the NIV seems to be marketed most to Americans, oddly enough. Maybe the NASB should be the NNASB, the New North American Standard Bible. If so, then America gets a Standard Bible, while the other nations get a Version of the Bible, which apparently is not standard, just a version of the standard. This would make sense, since the United States uses a different standard of measurement than the other nations, which use the metric system.

The United States often sees itself as the standard; note how the United States invented a sport, American Football, which is played by teams within the United States, and then whatever team wins the Super Bowl proclaims itself “world champions” in a sport that nobody plays outside the United States; talk about seeing yourselves as the standard!

The contemporary liberal overuse of the word “standard” is strange indeed. One cannot announce that he is the standard at the outset in any other place, besides Bible marketing; being thought of as the standard comes by testing over time. A boxer who announces before his first professional fight that he is the standard by which future fighters will be measured will rightly be laughed at, because he has proven nothing and he has announced everything; Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather could be considered standards in boxing, they are measuring rods, by which other boxers are compared. If such a boxer can show that he has staying power and ability to go undefeated for most of his career, then he might be a standard someday.

While we laugh when a bombastic athlete declares himself the standard at the beginning of his career, we do not laugh when an untested Bible that has recently been published declares itself the standard. Though we probably should laugh at this. If it would be the standard, time would tell, but not yet, and certainly not at publishing time.

The Bibles that call themselves “standard” periodically have updates, which shows that there is another standard to which they are still attaining. A standard does not often, if ever change, and if it does, it is not a standard; then something else becomes the standard.

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