R. V. G. Tasker (1895–1976)

The New English Bible is kind of like a bad romance: People loved it for all the wrong reasons.

The NEB was popular because it was one of the first Bible translations to really pay attention to style. It was genuinely easy to read and understand -- no small thing in an Anglican church that still used liturgical texts that predated even the King James Bible.

But while the NEB was in many ways the best translation-for-understanding produced to this time, so much energy had gone into the translation that there was little left over for textual issues. The translation was formally done by committee -- but usually some scholar brought in a rough draft. And that scholar would decide the Greek text himself. Often, this would go unquestioned in the back-and-forth of getting the wording right.

The result is that the NEB has a very erratic text -- very close to Westcott and Hort at some points, at others strongly influenced by the "Western" text, and at others following the then-current Nestle edition. But, because it translation was so popular, some editor conceived the idea of publishing the underlying Greek text. This volume is the result: R. V. G. Tasker set out to figure out just what the committee had translated (they never fixed a text for themselves), and this is the result.

The result is one of the most beautiful Greek books I have ever seen -- but it seems kind of pointless. It's a Greek retrojection of an English translation that didn't have much of a textual theory anyway. Tasker did what he could -- including explaining why the committee chose the readings it did at some disputed points. But the text simply is not consistent, and there aren't enough variants to make the apparatus worth much. If you want a first Greek text, get the United Bible Societies or Nestle-Aland edition. Or both. Then get Merk, for the apparatus. Maybe, after you get two or three more, you can pick up this one. But, with the New English Bible now largely replaced by the Revised English Bible, there is even less reason to seek this Greek edition today.… (more)