The translation
Bible1.org uses one translation of the Bible: the Berean Standard Bible (BSB). This page explains what the BSB is, how it compares to other modern translations you may know, and why we chose it.
If you’re trying to decide whether to trust the text on this site, this page is the answer.
What the Berean Standard Bible is
The Berean Standard Bible is a modern English translation of the entire Bible — 66 books, both Old and New Testaments — produced over the past two decades by a committee of biblical scholars working in collaboration with Bible Hub, an online study tool widely used by pastors, students, and academics.
The translation was completed and dedicated to the public domain in April 2023.
The BSB translates directly from the original languages: Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old Testament, Greek for the New Testament. It uses the same critical editions of the source texts that most modern academic Bibles use — the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia for Hebrew, the Nestle-Aland (28th edition) and UBS (5th edition) for Greek. These are the same source texts behind translations like the ESV, NASB, and NRSV.
Translation philosophy
The BSB follows what translators call formal equivalence — the philosophy of translating word-for-word where possible, preserving the structure and word order of the original languages even when it makes the English slightly less natural. This is the same approach used by:
- The English Standard Version (ESV)
- The New American Standard Bible (NASB)
- The Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
- The Christian Standard Bible (CSB), partially
The contrasting approach, dynamic equivalence (translating thought-for-thought to produce smoother English), is used by translations like the New International Version (NIV), the New Living Translation (NLT), and the Good News Bible.
Neither approach is inherently better. Formal equivalence preserves more of the original’s structure, which matters for close study. Dynamic equivalence reads more naturally, which matters for general reading. The BSB lands on the formal side of the spectrum, alongside the ESV and NASB.
How the BSB compares to other translations
The BSB is most similar to the ESV in tone and approach. Both are literal-leaning, both use modern English, both come from the same source-text tradition, and both are designed for serious reading. A reader familiar with the ESV will find the BSB immediately familiar.
The BSB is slightly more readable than the NASB, which is the most literal of the major modern translations and can sometimes feel stiff. It is more literal than the NIV, which leans toward smoother English at the cost of some word-level precision.
The BSB is not a paraphrase. It is not a denominational translation. It is not aimed at a particular theological tradition or political position. It’s a mainstream, scholarly, modern English Bible from the same family as the translations most American readers are already familiar with.
How does the BSB compare to the ESV?
The Berean Standard Bible and the English Standard Version are close cousins. Both are literal, formal-equivalence translations. Both work from the same critical editions of the Hebrew and Greek source texts. Both are produced by committees of biblical scholars. Both use modern English without leaning colloquial.
In practice, most passages read nearly identically in the two translations. The differences tend to be at the level of individual word choices, occasional sentence structure, and small phrasing decisions. Where the ESV says “behold,” the BSB sometimes says “behold” and sometimes says “look” — minor stylistic calls that don’t change the meaning.
Both translations render the divine name as “the LORD” (rendering YHWH the way most modern translations do). Both render Jesus’s name as “Jesus” rather than “Yeshua.” Both use modern English grammar without the “thee” and “thou” of older translations.
If you grew up reading the ESV and want a translation in the same scholarly family with the same word-for-word translation approach, the BSB is essentially the same translation in spirit — sibling translations from the same source-text tradition, produced by separate committees following the same translation philosophy.
How does the BSB compare to the NIV?
The New International Version is the most-read translation in the United States by a wide margin. It uses dynamic equivalence — translating thought-for-thought rather than word-for-word — which produces smoother, easier-to-read English. The BSB uses formal equivalence — translating word-for-word where possible, preserving the structure of the original languages even when it makes the English slightly more deliberate.
The practical difference: the NIV reads more like a contemporary English book. The BSB reads more like a careful translation. Both are accurate, but they’re optimized for different goals.
If you grew up with the NIV and want a translation that stays closer to the original word order and structure, the BSB is in roughly the same place on the translation spectrum as the ESV — one step toward the literal end from where the NIV sits. Reading the BSB after years of the NIV may feel like the prose has more weight; some readers prefer that, others don’t.
We picked the BSB over the NIV partly because of translation philosophy (literal-leaning suits a reference site better than thought-for-thought) and partly because the NIV is copyrighted and not available for use on a free, open site like this one.
Why not the King James Version?
The King James Version (1611, with the 1769 Oxford Standard being the most widely used modern edition) is also in the public domain, also a serious translation, and historically the most important English Bible ever produced. We considered it.
We didn’t use it because it’s written in seventeenth-century English. Words like “thee,” “thou,” “wherefore,” “verily,” and “behold” weren’t archaic decorations in 1611 — they were ordinary English of the time — but they slow down reading for a modern audience. A reader without prior exposure to King James English has to work harder to follow the meaning, and our goal is to make the Bible as easy to read as possible without sacrificing accuracy.
The King James is also based on slightly different source texts than modern translations. The translators of 1611 worked from the best Greek and Hebrew manuscripts available at the time, but the standard scholarly editions used today (the Nestle-Aland for Greek, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia for Hebrew) include earlier and more accurate manuscripts that were discovered later. The BSB and other modern translations work from these updated source texts.
If you specifically want to read the King James — for liturgical, literary, or personal reasons — we’d direct you to a site that specializes in it. Bible1.org is for readers who want the Bible in clear, modern English from a serious modern translation. The BSB is that translation.
Is the Berean Standard Bible accurate?
Yes. The BSB is translated by a committee with scholarly oversight, from the same critical editions of the original languages used by the ESV, NASB, NRSV, and most academic Bibles. It follows the same formal-equivalence translation philosophy used by the most respected modern literal translations.
There is no major scholarly disagreement about the BSB’s accuracy as a translation. It is reviewed by biblical scholars on an ongoing basis and updated periodically. If you’re already comfortable trusting the ESV or NASB, the BSB sits in the same tier.
Why Bible1.org uses the BSB
We chose the BSB after evaluating it against the major modern English translations. Several factors made it the right text for this site.
It’s translated from the original languages, not from English. The BSB is rendered directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts — not from a previous English Bible. Some popular paraphrases (like The Living Bible, in its original form) are based on earlier English translations rather than the originals; the BSB is not.
It uses current critical editions of the source texts. The BSB works from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia for Hebrew and the Nestle-Aland 28th edition / UBS 5th edition for Greek — the same critical texts used by virtually all major modern English Bibles, including the ESV, NASB, and NRSV. These editions reflect the most recent manuscript discoveries and scholarly consensus on the best-attested readings.
It’s translated by a committee with scholarly oversight, not by a single person. Committee translation is the standard of modern Bible translation work. It reduces individual translator bias and brings multiple specialists to each book of the Bible. The KJV, ESV, NASB, and NIV are all committee translations; one-person translations and paraphrases sit at a different tier of reliability.
It follows formal equivalence — word-for-word translation. The same translation philosophy used by the most rigorous modern English Bibles (ESV, NASB). The BSB preserves the structure and vocabulary of the original languages where modern English allows, rather than smoothing the text into more idiomatic English at the cost of word-level precision.
It’s continuously reviewed and revised. Unlike older translations that are essentially fixed, the BSB committee publishes periodic updates as scholarship advances and reader feedback comes in. Active scholarly attention is a quality indicator.
It’s non-denominational. The BSB is not produced by or for a particular denomination, theological movement, or doctrinal tradition. It reads as a translation, not as advocacy for a specific reading of scripture.
For our purposes — running a clean, neutral Bible reading site that any reader can trust regardless of background — the BSB checks every box we’d want from a modern English Bible. It’s accurate, modern, scholarly, and free of denominational bias.
The public-domain status of the BSB is a separate matter from its quality. The translation was dedicated to the public domain in April 2023, which is what makes it legally possible for us to host the full text on a free, ad-free site. We would not have chosen the BSB if it were a poor translation, regardless of its license — accuracy is the threshold, not cost. But the combination of “modern, accurate, scholarly translation” and “freely available for any use” is what allowed this site to exist in the first place.
Who made the BSB
The Berean Standard Bible was produced over more than two decades by a translation committee of biblical scholars working in collaboration with Bible Hub, the online study tool used by pastors, students, and academics for cross-references, original-language lookups, and parallel-translation comparison. The committee translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek using the same critical editions that lie behind the ESV, NASB, and NRSV. The translation was dedicated to the public domain in April 2023.
Translations produced by committees (KJV, ESV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, BSB) sit in a different reliability tier from translations produced by a single individual. Committee work reduces individual translator bias, brings multiple specialists to each book, and produces a translation that has been argued over and refined rather than rendered through one set of preferences. The BSB is in that tier.
More about the Berean Standard Bible
The translation is maintained at berean.bible. The site there has more on the translation process, the committee, and the history of the project. We’re not affiliated with the BSB committee in any way; we just use their work, with the attribution they request.