ESV?

Augustine Institute President Tim Gray and professor Mark Giszczak discuss the English Standard Version

Gray: "Catholics and Protestants are close to having a common Bible in English then?"

Giszczak: "The ESV, I think, gives us hope that this translation might be the common Bible for Protestant and Catholic English-speakers for the future. And that’s a really exciting prospect that we’ll be able to read the Bible together, and even pray side by side, with the same Bible translation....the RSV is a great precedent of an ecumenical Bible translation, the ESV follows in that pattern where you have a Protestant board of translators and a Catholic bishops conference agreeing on the translation of the Bible."

"The ESV came out in 2001 as an update of the RSV [Revised Standard Version]"

Giszczak: "The ESV as an update of the RSV changes about 60,000 words from the RSV to the ESV. So it’s a pretty significant change. Of course, a lot of those are changing “thou” to “you”....The RSV was famously criticized for its translation of Isaiah 7:14, where it translates the prophecy of the Virgin birth as “a young woman shall conceive”....the ESV went back to “a virgin shall conceive”.

"ATC reached out to Crossway [ESV Bible’s publisher] in 2016, and said we’d really like to do a Catholic Edition of the ESV in conjunction with the Catholic conference of the bishops"

"the major difference between the Catholic Edition of the ESV and the original ESV is that the Catholic Edition includes the deuterocanonical books, which of course weren’t there in the Protestant editions."

Giszczak: "What I find remarkable is how the evangelical translation oversight committee that produced the original translation worked together with these Catholic scholars"

"the Catholic edition....was agreed upon both by Crossway and by the bishops’ conference, and it was approved on Feb. 4, 2018."

 

The "Devil" you say?

 

I think that publishers are being forced to create their own in-house translations, because publishers of established translations started doing things that made it hard for other publishers to quote their translation. I think the ESV had a longterm plan to replace the established translations by initially making it more attractive to use their translation, but already they are starting to implement the same practices of the publishers of previous popular translations.

I think the smartest long-term goal is to pick the inhouse translation of the publisher that publishes the books that you use most.

I think the ESV will rise and fall even faster than the NKJV and NIV.

 

Crossway CEO Lane Dennis and wife Ebeth showing off their new ESV Catholic edition Bibles



Here's the scoop. Crossway is a family business. Lane Dennis's brother Jan (now an independent literary agent) made a lot of money for Crossway by 'discovering' spiritual warfare fiction author Frank Peretti. The $$$ from Peretti's bestsellers is what enabled Crossway to produce its own Bible version in 2001: the ESV, basically the National Council of Churches' RSV tweaked a bit for Evangelicals (they paid the NCC for rights to adapt its Revised Standard Version).
Jan converted to Roman Catholicism several years after they published the ESV.

1990s Chicago Tribune profile of the Dennis family

"By anyone's measure, 600,000 is a large number. But in the world of publishing, it is nothing less than phenomenal. Just ask Jan Dennis, editor-in-chief of Crossway Books, a division of Wheaton-based Good News Publishing."

"'That is the kind of number you'd get with a Stephen King novel,'' said Dennis....Peretti`s newest novel...is dedicated to Jan and Lane Dennis, whom the author calls ''True Prophets in their own right.''

"Crossway publishes romances, fantasies, mysteries, children`s literature and suspenseful books....the company also publishes non-fiction....In fact, one of the authors published by Crossway [is] Hungarian-Romanian Bishop Laszlo Tokes"

"[Jan's brother] Lane is president of the parent company, Good News Publishing."

 

I find the ESV less tolerable the longer I read from it.

Now I have been given more information on why.

thank you for this thread.

 

The NKJV and ESV are not so different from one another. They are both faithful Bible versions. And they both use awkward English. They read about the same. The point that one is from the Majority Text and the other is based on the CT makes no considerable difference.

 

Make that Textus Receptus and CT. NKJV does have Majority Text footnotes as well as CT footnotes which is a great idea.

 

Yep, chalk that up to carelessness on my part. The TR is a subset, so to speak, of the Majority Text.

 

I have never found any faults with it.

 

But have you yet to consult Van about that?

 

If the NASB was good enough for Paul…

 

ESV has been my go-to translation for over a decade.

 

Curious as to why?

 

Let me guess:
1. It's not the King JImmy.
2. It correctly translates a few passages favorable to Calvinism.

 

For about three years, I consistently read from the 1977 NASB and the ESV. At first, I thought, “Ok, this is a pretty good balanced rendering, but the more I read, the less enchanted I became. When the newness lost it’s luster, I began to rely on the NASB and took up a review of the Berean Bible.

The Berean Bible was produced by scholars gathered by Bible Hub. There is more information as to the Berean Bible found here: What is the Berean Study Bible (BSB)? | GotQuestions.org

 

The text is copyrighted and used in the for-profit Discover Bible Software and courses?

 

But free for download and online.

 

At one time, I was a NIV/NLT guy. Over time, I came to appreciate translations like the NASB/NKJV.

Since the ESV was released much later than the other two, it took a while for me to appreciate it.

My current preferences are ESV and NASB 95.

The Gender Inclusive movement has a lot to do with that.

That's just my take on it, of course.