Appreciated your thoughtful response, Chris.
I do not think the CSB is 'bad'. Certainly I would rate it significantly better than the NIV. Although I have not checked this for myself, I would assume that both the CSB and the NASB2020 have been rather cautious re the use of gender language.
I believe the LSB went back to the very literal NASB77.
The NASB has been seen as a translation for serious Bible study, not a translation for the man on the street. The CSB is more geared towards the man on the street.
The LSB started with the 95 as their base text and made a few tweaks. They may have reverted to a few 77 renderings here and there, but it is a revision of the 95. I haven’t heard that they went back to the 77 method of insisting that you have to have “And” in the text all of those times, for example, which is something that some advocates of formal equivalence used to argue was necessary for a version to be literal and word-for-word, and which may be the main change the 95 made when it comes to allegedly being a little less literal. (If you’re familiar with the 77 you’ll know what I’m referring to.)
As for the NASB being for study or the man on the street, arguably their stated aims are in conflict when it comes to that, (or at least that’s what sometimes happens with how they execute said aims) and it is increasingly geared toward the man on the street even if he (or should I say “they” lol) isn’t buying regardless. Even in the 77 they sometimes shy away from phrases like “gird up the loins of your mind,” instead rendering it in more modern English terms the way that less literal versions would. Some of us Bible geeks prefer to see “gird up the loins…” in the text if it is in the original. It is a big reason why I chose the NKJV over the NASB about 25 years ago. To me it was arguably more accurate (especially if you prefer its textual basis) and it was more enjoyable to read. I only went back to reading the NASB regularly because I got to where I couldn’t read red letters anymore and couldn’t find a NKJV that I could actually read.
For years I’ve said that the NASB is fine until you start comparing it to other versions. Before long, you start asking why they went in a certain direction. I’ve often found that I preferred the KJV or NKJV or ESV or CSB (maybe even the NIV occasionally) and most of the time they were at least as literal, if not more. I’ve subjected the NASB to more scrutiny than any other version. With other versions, I can usually figure out why they did what they did based on their stated principles. With the NASB too often either it doesn’t make sense, or it seems pretty clear it could have been done in a different way that would have made it more elegant, at least equally literal, and no less understandable for most people, especially those who are looking for a literal translation that is supposedly in the KJV tradition, however far removed. I don’t know if you are familiar with the YouTuber Grant Jones, but in one NASB review he displays a graphic he made with the heading “Mixing water with the wine?” which gave examples of some of those head scratchers. And that was regarding the 95.
All that being said, I do think all versions of the NASB are useful for study, in my totally amateur opinion.
When it comes to gender language, both the CSB and NASB 2020 occasionally do it in a way that will appear to be unnatural modern English to some because the translators think it is necessary in order to accurately convey what the original is saying with regard to plural vs singular, for example. Mark Strauss, a NIV translator, points this out in his review of the CSB. The NASB 2020 intro explains their method when it comes to pronouns.
