by Rvaughn » Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:20 am
William, I think you are right. It is about marketing, and changing the title serves that purpose. It will be interesting to see how much the CSB has actually changed from the HCSB (i.e. in the text itself). Though you and I are unaware of any great advances in biblical scholarship, it doesn't keep that from creeping into the marketing info: "With the benefit of up-to-date manuscript discoveries and significant advances in research, these translators, reviewers, and stylists exhaustively scrutinized ancient source texts..."
In their online explanation of "Why" this Bible is needed, Lifeway/B&H notes there is a problem of people reading their Bibles less and less. To help solve the problem, enter the CSB -- "a Bible optimally translated for today’s English reader." Of course, we have a plethora of a Bibles already "optimally translated" for today’s English readers -- and we still have the problem! CSB apparently threads the needle between "clunky and hard to read" and "stray(ing) away from important precision [i.e. accurate translation, rlv]. Of course, that was what the HCSB was supposed to do a few years ago, but now here they are replacing it. My totally uneducated total guess is this is about market competition with the NIV. Maybe not.
William, with regard to Leland's question about the relationship between Lifeway and the Southern Baptist Convention, could you give us some clarity on that?