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Versión Reina-Valera 1995

Read Versión Reina-Valera 1995

Version Information

Always the jewel, now more brilliant than ever.

Considered a classic of the Spanish language, the Reina-Valera revision has become the one most often used in the Spanish-American protestant world. Its language forms part of the speech of evangelical Christians, who have memorized phrases, verses and entire passages.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, motivated by the changes and advances in grammar, lexicon and style of the language, the United Bible Societies did a revision of the Bible text, maintaining the clarity, authority, literary beauty and faithfulness to the manuscripts used by Casiodoro de Reina and Cipriano de Valera. Its various stages of research, review and production have been in the hands of prominent and veteran biblical scholars and specialists in the field, who have watched over the Bible text with zeal, good taste and precision. This revision is known as Reina-Valera 95.

The dynamic nature of the language means that words that are much used and well known at one moment, cease to be used and even sometimes acquire new meanings. Therefore words have been eliminated or substituted in the case of those that today are unknown by the majority of people, the same as others that might, for phonetic reasons, lend themselves to mistaken interpretation. In its pages, poetry and narration acquire a refreshing beauty and its message is easier to understand. The presence of dialogs and quotes has been improved, and contemporary practices in spelling have been incorporated.

The Bible, the most widely-read book in the world, is brought up to date so that its current and immutable message might remain clear for the new generations.

The revised Reina-Valera 95, combines both classic and modern style, gives greater brilliance to a jewel profoundly appreciated by Christians.

Characteristics and benefits

  1. Lexical issues
    • All the changes were made within the strictest faithfulness to the source texts and are limited to those cases in which the translation of Reina-Valera was confusing or difficult to understand.
    • Words that are no longer used have been replaced.
      Examples:
      RVR 1960RVR 95
      «arquilla de juncos»«canasta»
      «áspid»«víbora»
      «grosura»«grasa»
      «saeta»«flecha»
      «sajarse»«hacerse incisiones»
    • The word «Jehová» is kept where it is proper, to designate God’s name in the Old Testament. This has been one of the distinctive elements of the Reina-Valera throughout its history.
    • It keeps the term «Verbo» in the texts corresponding to John’s authorship.
  2. Spelling
    • Punctuation: Use of the comma
      Without changing in any way the meaning of the text, the excessive use of commas has been eliminated in very long paragraphs, in which the phrases were separated only with commas. This helps the reading to be more fluid and gives clarity to the text.
    • Capital letters
      Some practical norms have been established so that the use of capital letters might be congruent throughout the Bible text.
  3. Style
    • Paragraphs
      This revision has incorporated the division of the text into paragraphs. Thus the reader can immediately perceive where the Bible passages that are unified begin and end.
    • Numbering of verses
      It is a characteristic of the Reina-Valera that the initiation of each verse be on a new line, at the left margin of the column, even when the former verse does not conclude with a period and end the paragraph. This breaks up the natural cadence of the text. In the Reina-Valera 95, by organizing the material in paragraphs to help in the comprehension of the text, the verses are presented in a consecutive manner if they belong to the same paragraph.
    • Poetic texts
      The poetic structure remains intact where the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts require it, to facilitate reading and comprehension.
    • Quotation marks
      In the Bible there are not only quotations; we also find quotations within quotations, even to the third level. For the purpose of facilitating the reading of these texts, the following system is used: Quotations of the first level are included within quotation marks known as Spanish or angular («»); the second level is indicated by regular or English quotation marks (" "); and the third, with singular marks (‘’).
    • Dialogs
      The long dash is used to distinguish those who are speaking in a dialog, or to indicate the beginning of a discourse.
  4. Questions of syntax (grammatical)
    • Modifications in the grammatical structure (syntax) are used to facilitate comprehension of the text, which have been incorporated without affecting the meaning of the text.

Positioning

The Bible for evangelical churches and especially for use in public worship.

For further information on this translation please visit: www.labibliaweb.com

Permission Contact igalliani@sbu.org.

Copyright Information

Reina-Valera 95 ® © Sociedades Biblicas Unidas, 1995.
www.labibliaweb.com