American Standard Version

The American Standard Version, published in 1901, is the foundational American revision of the Revised Version, the British undertaking that had issued its New Testament in 1881 and its Old Testament in 1885. American scholars had cooperated in that project, and the ASV represents their own preferences carried into the text: it covers the complete Bible, translated from Hebrew and Greek, and rests on the textual base of the Revised Version with those American readings incorporated. Its translation philosophy is one of formal equivalence, and it is classified as a substantial revision, taking the English Revised Version as its predecessor and base translation. Among its distinctive features, it is noted for its use of 'Jehovah' in the Old Testament and for its formal syntax. It became a major source-text ancestor of several later English Bibles, among them the Revised Standard Version and the New American Standard Bible.