[Update #2 - 4.28.09] There’s a rumor floating around that the 2nd edition of the Holman Christian Standard Bible will be coming out in September of this year. However, I got an email from Jim Baird, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, informing me that it won’t be coming out until 2010.

[Update #1 3.31.09] I recently wrote a post about why I love the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. Will at Anwoth tipped me off to the updated data that the HCSB has now surpassed the English Standard Version on the Christian Bookseller’s Association Best Seller List. You can find their bestseller lists here.

Last month when I wrote my previous post about the HCSB and the ESV, the NIV was #1, the ESV was #5, and the HCSB was #6. Now, the NIV is #1, the HCSB is #2, and the ESV takes sixth place. I predict that we will see the HCSB as the #1 Bible translation of choice within the next year.

Will does a great job of attributing the success of the HCSB to 3 factors:

1. It is readable and appeals to all English speaking Christians.

2. But it is very accurate, not willing to succumb to tradition or doctrinal biases in the translational choices. This appeals to the scholars.

3. Finally, though the marketing from the publisher hasn’t been particularly effective, the viral marketing has been very effective.

I think the ESV appeals to a lot of extremely reformed individuals and has been talked about by their champions (Piper, Driscoll, etc.) But, the HCSB is far superior as a translation because it seems to supercede the calvinism vs. arminianism debate. All translations have a slight bias but the HCSB may be the most unbiased translation ever to be produced in the history of Bible translations. So when I say that I really like it as a translation, I don’t think that’s a biased opinion.

You can buy the new Holman Christian Standard Bible here.