The New American Standard Bible (NASB), first released in 1971, evolved from the American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901. The ASV, in turn, was the American version of the Revised Version (RV) of 1885, also called the English Revised Version (ERV). While preserving the literalness of the ASV, the NASB sought to use the grammatical constructions and diction of contemporary English. Special attention was given to verb tenses to give the English reader a rendering as close as possible to the sense of the original Greek and Hebrew texts.