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Thuesen's second chapter confronts the appearance of the RV (1881-1885), which, he convincingly argues, gave British and American Protestants a serious alternative to the King James Version for the first time in over two hundred years. This was a momentous event. With the appearance of the RV, the door had been cracked open to new Bible translations, a door that would swing ever wider in the decades to come.
Thuesen's last three chapters examine the development and reception of the RSV (1946-1952). The committee which worked on the RSV had hoped that it would be a great unifying tool for American Protestants who so venerated the English Bible. It stood as a direct descendant of the KJV and the RV but once again took into account new manuscripts and changes in English vernacular. These three chapters recount just how this ecumenical dream of a single new Protestant Bible ended in both creating and exposing ideological differences among American Protestants.
Several things contributed to the discontent of various Protestant factions with the RSV. First, the National Council of Churches (NCC) endorsed the volume. Such an endorsement looked ominously papal to many observers, who regarded the English Bible as self-accrediting; it needed no Protestant pope-like authority to grant it power.
These papal overtones were complicated by charges that there was a "Red" taint upon the RSV project— an outlandish charge which, given the anti-Communist fervor of the early 1950s, would nevertheless significantly hurt the version's reputation. Some considered that the NCC had been infiltrated and was being used by Communists, while others wrote that the 39 translators of the RSV were "affiliated with Communist and pro-Communist fronts."
More important, however, was the RSV's choice to change Isaiah 7:14 to read that a baby would be born to a "young woman" instead of a "virgin" (the latter term had been used for centuries in English Bibles; both the KJV and the RV, for instance, used the term "virgin" in translating this verse.) Although other RSV translation choices were also controversial, this single verse became the most frequent reference used to discredit the RSV. Protestants who were most committed to a literal understanding of the correlation between the biblical narrative and historical fact and to viewing the Old Testament through a Christological lens found the largest fault with the RSV's rendering of Isaiah 7:14. It did not matter that the Hebrew word almah was more accurately translated "young woman." It mattered that Isaiah 7:14 was a key prophecy in terms of Christ's birth. To miss this point was to seriously undermine the true meaning of the Scriptures.
Ultimately, the debates surrounding the RSV would move certain Protestants in 1965 to begin work on what would become the NIV. No mistakes would be made this time as those sponsoring this version made certain that all of the translators signed an unambiguous statement of faith concerning their view of Scripture, declaring that the Scriptures were "inerrant in the autographs."
Thuesen's work is so rich in bibliographic resources, historical material (he makes great use of the hitherto unexplored working papers of the RSV translation committee housed at the Princeton Seminary library), and insightful uses of analytical methodologies that my criticisms are few.
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