Lockman Foundation

The Lockman Foundation was established in 1942 by F. Dewey Lockman (1898 in St. Jacob, Illinois – 1974) and his wife Minna. It is a nonprofit, interdenominational Christian ministry dedicated to the translation, publication, and distribution of literally accurate biblical translations including the New American Standard Bible (NASB), Amplified Bible, Amplified Bible 2015, La Biblia de las Américas (Bible of the Americas - Vosotros), Nueva Biblia Latinoamericana (New Latin-American Bible - Ustedes), and other biblical resources and translations (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hindi).

History

On December 3, 1942, Mr. and Mrs. Lockman donated a substantial part of their citrus acreage, the Imperial Ranch in La Habra, California, to establish The Lockman Foundation. Imperial Highway was so named after the Lockmans granted an easement through their property for the development of the major highway between Orange County and Los Angeles.

At the time the Foundation was established Mr. and Mrs. Lockman and the Board of Directors set forth the Four-fold Aim which continues to guide the development of all Lockman biblical translations. The Lockman translations are highly regarded and recognized by scholars and others as the finest, most literally accurate, readable translations of the Bible available.

The Four-fold Aim requires that the translations should be true to the original languages, minimizing theological bias and personal interpretation by the biblical scholar/translators in order to allow the reader closer access to the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts; the translations should be grammatically correct, allowing the biblical scholar/translators latitude in the arrangement of text while maintaining as literally accurate a translation of the original languages as possible; the translations should be understandable to the masses, requiring the biblical scholar/translators to focus on the readability as well as the accuracy of the literal translation; and the translations should give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place in Scripture that place which God's Word gives Him.

Leadership

Following Dewey Lockman's death in 1974, Dr. Samuel H. Sutherland (1900-1994), President Emeritus of Biola University, became President of The Lockman Foundation, and the Foundation continued its work in foreign language translation. Based on the guiding principles of the Four-fold Aim, work progressed on the Korean Standard Bible, the New Chinese Version (NCV), the New Hindi Bible (India), and La Biblia de las Américas. After leading the Foundation through several projects, Dr. Sutherland retired in the spring of 1979.

Following Dr. Sutherland's retirement in 1979, Dr. Robert G. (Bobby) Lambeth (1936-2017), B.S. Accounting (University of Southern California), CPA, LL.D. (honorific), began his tenure as President. Until his death in 2017, Dr. Lambeth worked closely with Dr. W. Don Wilkins, Lockman's Scholar-in-Residence, to monitor and direct the Foundation's translation and biblical resource projects. However, his special interest was to expand Lockman's Bible distribution ministry, as well as, expand the Foundation's support of Christian universities and seminaries.

Before Dr. Lambeth joined the Board of Directors, The Lockman Foundation had produced Bible translations in Japanese, Korean, Hindi, and Chinese, as well as, two translations in English: the Amplified Bible (1956, updated 2015), and the New American Standard Bible (1971, updated 1995) which is recognized as the most literally accurate translation of the Bible into English. One of Dr. Lambeth's first goals after assuming leadership was to oversee the development of the New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance.

This resource was the first exhaustive concordance of its kind to be published in nearly one hundred years. It contains over 400,000 entries listing every word (except articles such as a, the, an, etc.) in the New American Standard Bible and connects each word to its Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic equivalent. Every word in the ancient text is represented in the text of the NASB. Dr. Lambeth led the translation team to completion Lockman's three Spanish language translations: La Biblia de las Americas (Bible of the Americas - Vosotros), Nueva Biblia Latinoamericana New Latin-American Bible - Ustedes), and Biblia Amplificada (Amplified Bible 2015).

Under Dr. Lambeth's leadership The Lockman Foundation has distributed millions of gift Bibles, New Testaments and Gospels of John. He established Lockman's "New Standard for Living" radio ministry with Drs. Charles Feinberg and Charles Swindoll, he also guided the development of a monthly devotional guide, Reflections in My Mirror, various Bible study outlines, the Lockman Exhaustive Topical Biblical Index, the Plan of Life Gospel of John, and other related materials. All Lockman translations are conservative translations that honor Christ as the only begotten Son of God and reflect the strong belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures that has always characterized the projects of The Lockman Foundation.

Computer Innovation

Dr. Lambeth's engineering, accounting, and organizational skills were vital in bring the work of The Lockman Foundation into the computer age. In the 1950s, Lockman's first Amplified Bible was set in hot metal in the print shop in Santa Ana, California.

In the 1960s, phototypesetting advanced, but when Dr. Lambeth entered the world of Bible production in the 1970s, computerized typesetting was becoming a reality, but only one company in the United States (Rocappi, New Jersey) had the room-sized computers capable of handling the complexities of typesetting a text as complicated as that of the New American Standard Bible. Dr. Lambeth's engineering, accounting, and organizational skills were vital in bringing the work of The Lockman Foundation into the age of computerized typesetting.

Nuances of translation in the Lockman Bibles are reflected in the typesetting, e.g., personal pronouns referring to Deity are capitalized, so that the reader knows immediately to whom the text is referring; large and small capital letters in the New Testament are used to indicate Old Testament quotations; a star (*) is used to mark verbs that are historical presents in the Greek which have been translated with an English past tense in order to conform to modern usage; italics are used in the text to indicate words which are not found in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek but implied by it; paragraphs are designated by bold face verse numbers or letters, so paragraphs are clearly identified, but individual verses remain easily accessible.

Publishers

The following is a partial list of publishers of the Lockman Bibles and biblical resources:

Zondervan Corporation

Moody Publishers

Harvest House Publishers

Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Harper & Row

Oxford University Press

Precept Ministries International

AMG Publishers

B.B. Kirkbride, Inc

Hachette Book Group

Foundation Publications, Inc.

References

• Lockman Foundation website