Revised English Bible - Definition and Overview

The Revised English Bible (REB) is a 1989 update of the New English Bible of 1970. Like its predecessor, it is published by the University publishing houses of Oxford and Cambridge.

The churches and other Christian groups that sponsored the REB were:

• Baptist Union of Great Britain
• Church of England
• Church of Scotland
• Council of Churches for Wales
• Irish Council of Churches
• The London Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Methodist Church of Great Britain
• Moravian Church in Great Britain and Ireland
• Roman Catholic Church (in England & Wales)
• Roman Catholic Church (in Ireland)
• Roman Catholic Church (in Scotland)
• Salvation Army
• United Reformed Church
• Bible Society
• National Bible Society of Scotland

The REB is the result of both advances in scholarship and translation made since the 1960s and also a desire to correct what have been seen as some of the NEB's more egregious errors, notably its alleged sexism, which is manifested by the use of masculine pronouns where the word being translated is clearly neuter. Conservative critics especially of the REB say that it has vastly overcompensated for this problem in the original in a bow to political correctness and feminist theology. It has also been criticised for its prose style as being flat and uninspiring. It has also been widely praised by others as a needful corrective to centuries of church-inspired paternalism. Like the NEB, it is primarily presented to the British and British-educated publics although it certainly has some American users and admirers.

Example Usage of Revised