The American Standard Version, Remediated into Modern English (ASVRe) was produced by Paul F. Clifford of Sydney, Australia. It is not a new translation but a remediation of the archaic Elizabethan English used in the original!

Various Bible Societies have performed revisions of either the ASV or KJV eg: the RSV, NRSV, NKJV, ESV etc. However, these are all encumbered with restrictive copyrights. This caused a problem when I was contacted to format an English-Latvian parallel edition of the New Testament and my client was unable to get permission to replicate in its entirety one of the modern English versions without encountering a restrictive financial burden.

The ASV is no longer encumbered by copyright, it is now public domain and the source files are freely available from Biola University, via their Unbound Bible project. The problem with the ASV is that it is written in archaic Elizabethan English, which is largely unintelligible to the modern reader. As remediator of the ASV I employed automation and manual processes to map the several thousand archaic words and phrases and replace all with their modern equivalents eg: thee, thou, ye, comest, doest thou knowest not etc. On manually editing the results, it was observed that the occasional verse seemed garbled and required manual remediation to convert the Elizabethan syntax to modern English grammar. This was done by reference to the original Greek and the result compared with various modern English translations readily available in parallel on the internet (non paraphrases).

This process re-enforced my long held observation that English is not always able to express the meaning of the original Greek, which partially accounts for the disparity between translations. For instance paraklētos found only in the Gospel of John (14:16,26; 15:26 & 16:17) is variously translated "Comforter" (KJV), "Helper" (NKJV), "Counselor" (NIV). The general theme throughout the gospel is that of judgement (cp. Jn 12:48), so it would seem obvious that paraklētos refers to our "Advocate", our defence attorney (cp. Rom 8:27,34) or to use a regular Americanism our "Counselor". With such words, I've made no attempt to dwell on semantics, and instead have provided the original Greek term, trusting that the conscientious Bible student will research the nuance of the word using one of the many resources now available on the internet eg: http://www.blueletterbible.org.

Weights, measures, currency and ambiguous terms are provided using the original Koine term. Often the English/Metric approximation adjoins the word in braces {…}. Sense words, not in the Greek, but required by English Grammar are rendered in italics.

Generally, the reader of this remediation will find it comparable to other modern New Testament versions. I have made a conscious attempt to retain the spirit of the ASV rendering, only as needs be reworded using modern English. Very rarely have I deviated from traditional interpretation. John 1:1 is one of these exceptions. All recent Greek grammarians affirm that the last clause "καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος" is qualitative not definite (KJV) nor indefinite (NWT). The New English Bible issued in 1970 paraphrases "and what God was, the Word was." Following the Greek I have rendered "and as God the Logos existed"

The original language of the New Testament is Koine Greek, no translation of the original into any modern language can claim absolute faithfulness to the ideas originally expressed and understood by the first recipients. With that thought in mind, I encourage the reader to explore the original Greek. These days there are many resources to assist you on the internet.

Peace to you (Mark 9:50)
Paul F. Clifford, December 10, 2009. Sydney, Australia.