Literal Standard Version

The Literal Standard Version is a recent English Bible that stands within the long tradition of formal, word-for-word translation in English, a line running back through the King James Version to the earliest vernacular renderings. It covers the complete Bible, working from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and draws on the Masoretic Hebrew text together with critical and Majority Greek resources. Its translation philosophy is very literal, or concordant, emphasizing consistent rendering of the same term and the preservation of source-language structures such as word order and idiom, so that readers without the original languages may glimpse their shape. It is classed as a fresh translation rather than a revision of an earlier version. Among its distinctive features, it employs distinctive devices for the divine name and for conjunctions. Like other strongly literal versions, it is generally used for close study alongside more idiomatic translations.