Peter Thuesen's study focuses on the theological implications of Bible translation controversies in American Protestantism, from the origins of the Revised Version (RV) in 1870 to the start of work on the New International Version (NIV) in 1965. Although the book thus spans nearly a century of American Bible translation, Thuesen devotes three of his five chapters to a close analysis of the creation and ensuing debates concerning the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the mid-twentieth century. While this analysis is carefully contextualized (all the way back to William Tyndale), the reader should know from the outset that the book reads largely like a case study of the RSV—but in Thuesen's hands, this study yields a veritable cornucopia of insights into Protestant Bible translation in particular and nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Protestantism in general.

Three salient themes emerge from Thuesen's analysis. First, the tension between "real" history (what actually happened) and biblical history (the way the Bible chooses to relate the events) lay at the very foundation of the intense and rancorous translations debates between various Protestant factions in the United States in the period under consideration. Thuesen argues that "the detachment of biblical history and 'real' history forces interpreters to take sides on whether the two histories correspond with each other completely (fundamentalism) or loosely (liberalism)."

Second, while American Protestants may hold fast to a rhetoric of Sola Scriptura, where the Bible alone stands as their guide for all truth, such self-accrediting views of Scripture are not always that useful in practice. As Thuesen writes: "For Christians who, in theory at least, claimed the Scriptures as the final court of appeal in all doctrinal disputes, who could adjudicate disputes over the biblical text itself?" Thuesen makes a masterful argument that Protestants increasingly took on certain "Catholic" characteristics in seeking ways to gain a kind of imprimatur for various Bible translations. Whether they liked it or not—and most Protestants did not—the debates over what version of Scripture would be profitable for teaching and instruction became as much a matter of which governing body approved a given translation as of how accurately a certain passage captured the true sense of the Greek or Hebrew words it represented.

Finally, Thuesen's examination of various Protestant translation efforts and their reception reveals the depth of anti-Catholic sentiment centuries after the Reformation and the religious wars that followed—hence, for example, "many opponents of the Revised Version found sixteenth-century anti-Catholic language polemically useful, for it served the dual purpose of chastening Protestant liberals while reasserting Protestant biblicism in the face of the Romanist menace."

Thuesen begins his analysis by looking at Protestantism's great patron saint of Bible translation, William Tyndale. Thuesen chooses Tyndale rather than Luther or Wycliffe because he is interested in telling the story of how the English Bible came to replace various forms of religious authority with a virulent, iconoclastic biblicism. While Luther and Wycliffe still adhered to a certain emphasis on pictures and other religious institutions, Tyndale emphasized "God's Law" (Scripture taken in its entirety) to an extent that helped lay the foundation for the American Protestant enshrinement of the Bible.

While the English Bible may have increasingly taken a regal position in Anglo-American Protestantism, just what version of the English Bible would actually occupy the throne became a flashpoint for various American Protestant constituencies. Wycliffe's desire for a vernacular text was echoed with the appearance of the KJV in 1611, a translation for the common people, but by the 1870s the KJV was falling out of favor with certain segments of Protestantism because of new manuscript discoveries and its archaic language.

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.

First, at times Thuesen lacks a certain clarity when he uses terms such as "liberal," "conservative," "fundamentalist," and "evangelical" in his book. This, in turn, leads to some confusion. For example, there is a great spectrum of belief concerning inerrancy and infallibility in evangelical circles, so much so that certain evangelicals are loath to be called fundamentalists. Yet Thuesen occasionally elides the terms "evangelical" and "fundamentalist," so that one does not really know exactly who is being discussed.

Second, I felt that Thuesen could have said a bit more on the importance of the RSV controversies for the appearance of the NIV, the only biblical version to mount a serious threat to the popularity and wide acceptance of the KJV in American Protestantism. Such a discussion would have fleshed out the comments in his epilogue on the causes and con sequences of the proliferation of English Bible versions available to American Protestants today—more than 450 at the latest count.

But these reservations are minor. Thuesen's book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history of English Bible translation in the United States.

Paul C. Gutjahr is assistant professor of English and American Studies at Indiana University. He is the author of An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Stanford Univ. Press).

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