Dear Friends,
Step into my study. Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!
Over the years I have occasionally commented on Bible translations, but I rarely broadcast my opinions because they are—how do I put it?—unpopular. Moreover, the choice of a Bible translation is to a very large degree a matter of personal preference and I don’t begrudge anyone using a translation I don’t happen to prefer. Peter Williams once said that the best English translation of the Bible is “the one you read.” Very wise.
And that’s an important first thing to observe. While there is a huge number of Bible translations, they are all translating the same thing: the Word of God as written in its original languages. Now, that’s an oversimplification: there are important differences between the choice of underlying manuscripts (i.e., the Textus Receptus v. Critical Editions) and between various translation “philosophies,” but we should not exaggerate those differences. Pick up any English translation and, leaving aside something like The New World Translation of the Watchtower Society, you are not likely to be in danger of being led astray into heresy.
So now that I’ve properly relativized and “situated” this conversation as not terribly important, why not talk about my unpopular opinions? At the risk of facing a pitchfork-wielding mob, let me give what is likely my most unpopular one:
I do not think the English Standard Version is a very good translation of the Bible.
Look, I have tried. I was there at the inception, you see. It was first published in 2001 and I was a student at Westminster Theological Seminary. Some of my professors were deeply involved in the project and enthusiastically endorsed it. They gave out some of the very first copies to the students. Frankly, it was a really exciting time.
But I also remember the marketing and the hype—the wildly successful marketing and hype. It was and remains off-putting to me, and it is the sort of marketing and hype that cannot really ever be lived up to. The ESV was billed as the “most accurate” Bible translation ever. Its boosters gloried in its alleged “word-for-word” precision. It seemed always accompanied by condescending opprobrium toward the ESV’s various competitors, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly. The ESV was a real translation that doesn’t go in for all that “dynamic equivalence” alchemy. This Bible is more faithful to God’s Word than anyone else’s previous attempts.
The marketing worked. There are 250,000,000 copies of the ESV out in the wild and it has become, well, the English Standard Version for huge swaths of conservative Reformed and Evangelical churches, seminaries, publishing houses, and so forth. And that is fine with me. The Lord in his providence has seen fit to bless these efforts. I just think it doesn’t live up to its billing. It is substandard.
The ESV has many problems, some of which could be fixed and some of which are fully baked in until the Lord’s return. For the remainder of our little chat, allow me to explain a few of these problems, as I see it, and I’ll save one more for a future time.
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