It was first published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches,[5] the NRSV was created by an ecumenical committee of scholars "comprising about thirty members".

[1]: vii  The NRSV relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.

[5] In the preface to the NRSV Bruce Metzger wrote for the committee that "many in the churches have become sensitive to the danger of linguistic sexism arising from the inherent bias of the English language towards the masculine gender, a bias that in the case of the Bible has often restricted or obscured the meaning of the original text".

[5] According to Metzger, "The mandates from the Division specified that, in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language should be eliminated as far as this can be done without altering passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.

For public worship, such as at weekly Mass, most Catholic Bishops' Conferences in English-speaking countries require the use of other translations, either the adapted New American Bible in the dioceses of the United States and the Philippines or the English Standard Version and Revised New Jerusalem Bible in most of the rest of the English-speaking world.

[13]: x An Anglicized Text form of the NRSV-CE, embodying the preferences of users of British English, is also available from various publishers.

[18] The NRSV-CE, along with the Revised Standard Version (RSV), is also one of the texts adapted and quoted in the English-language edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

A three-year process of reviewing and updating the text of the NRSV was announced at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

[22] As of July 2024, the NCC has submitted the NRSVue for review by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops with a request for an imprimatur.