After several years of preliminary development, Holman Bible Publishers, the oldest Bible publisher in America, assembled an international, interdenominational team of 100 scholars, editors, stylists, and proofreaders, all of whom were committed to biblical inerrancy to produce the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Outside consultants and reviewers contributed valuable suggestions from their areas of expertise. An executive team then edited, polished, and reviewed the final manuscripts.  The goals of this translation were:

• To provide English-speaking people across the world with an accurate, readable Bible in contemporary English
• To equip serious Bible students with an accurate translation for personal study, private devotions, and memorization
• To give those who love God?s Word a text that has numerous reader helps, is visually attractive on the page, and is appealing when heard
• To affirm the authority of Scripture as God?s Word and to champion its absolute truth
  against social or cultural agendas that would compromise its accuracy

Asterisk  *: Other notes added at that time have been scrutinized and confirmation from Mr. Darby’s writings sought. Any notes which were judged to be of sufficient value to retain, but which could not be positively identified as being Mr. Darby’s (apart from those which are capable of easy verification by reference to a concordance) have been marked by an asterisk.

Italics Example: The transliteration of Hebrew and Greek letters in the notes has been retained as being more convenient to the English reader. Such words are printed in italics. The use of italics in the text indicates emphasis.

LXX: LXX in the footnotes refers to the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Keri (קרי): Keri signifies the marginal note of the Massorites, indicating their idea of how the text should be read.

Chetiv: Chetiv is the Hebrew text as it is written. Cf. stands for ‘compare’; Lit. for ‘Literally’.

Square brackets [ ] in the text indicate

(a) words added to complete the sense in English similar to those shown in italics in the Authorised Version; or

(b), words as to which there are variations in the original manuscripts.