I've been keeping an eye out for a new Bible for a while now. My main "carrying Bible" is a little Darby Translation I bought in 1992 from Kingston Bible Trust. So it's just a shade over thirty years now that I've been carrying that Darby.
I picked up an ESV sometime around 2006 and read it through, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I enjoyed reading that translation, but there were just a few quirks that made me decide to keep looking. I posted a review on my blog: "ESV Review". When I first picked up that Bible, I didn't know anyone who used ESV. Now it's hard to find a group of Christians where there's not at least one ESV.
And honestly, the ESV is a solid translation. I'm delighted to see more and more ESVs, and fewer and fewer NIVs.
Not long after that someone gave me a hand-me-down NASB (1995). NASB was a lot closer to Darby's translation than ESV, so I felt a little bit like I had come home. My wife uses an NASB as her main Bible, and I commented once that if you took an NASB, looked at every place there's a footnote that contains a literal reading, and put that literal reading into the text, you'd pretty much have a Darby Translation. There are a few differences, but the NASB is pretty close to a less literal Darby Translation.
My NASB is a hand-me-down, and it has a lot of notes written in it. And I find them annoying. I felt for a long time like NASB is the closest thing to what I was looking for, but I couldn't quite pull the trigger and buy one.
So I had carried my little Darby for about 14 or 15 years, then I carried that ESV for about a year, then I carried that NASB for about a year, then I switched back to my Darby Translation.
I should mention I have about four Darby Translations at this point: the oldest is a 1973 Stow Hill edition, which is actually quite a nice printing. My original KBT edition is by far my most well-worn, and pages are falling out of it. Then I have two of those KJV-Darby Parallel Bibles that Bible Truth Publishers sells. I carried one to meeting for a couple years, and it's a useful edition, but it's not very well made. The older one has begun to split at the spine, and I have taken good care of it.
Earlier this year a friend of mine showed me his new Legacy Standard Bible, and I decided this is the Bible I've been waiting for. I liked his so much, I went ahead and ordered one myself: I got one of the goatskin editions printed in Korea.
I've made a point of not rushing to judgment on a Bible until I've read it cover-to-cover, so I've been trying not to jump to conclusions until I finished it. But now that I've read it cover-to-cover, I can say I like it.
LSB is essentially an attempt to make the NASB 1995 a little more literal. If you brought the NASB 1995 to a boil and stirred in a Darby Translation, then baked for an hour in a glass dish at 350°F, you'd get the LSB.
And I have to say I like it a lot. It's not exactly the Darby Translation I've used as my main Bible for 30 years, but it's really very similar.
So that's just a personal update: I've been looking for a nice Bible for the last 15 years or more, and I've been willing to spend some money, but I haven't quite found what I wanted. Well, I finally bought a nice Bible in a translation that was promising, and I'm very pleased.
A final note: I bought the Korean goatskin LSB. The Dutch goatskin LSB costs about $50 (US) more. My buddy has the Dutch one, and it's noticeably higher quality. I'm pleased as punch with my LSB, so I'm not saying it's not worth what I paid, but now that I've seen both, I think I'd pay a little bit more and get the Dutch printing.
Just my opinion, and probably worth exactly what you're paying for it.
