Those following the ESV/KJV debate might be interested in this post by Suzanne McCarthy, explaining why she prefers the KJV as her literal translation. I don’t find the language of the KJV nearly as attractive as she does, but that’s a matter of taste in my view.
I always love to find the occasional comments by “anonymous”–clearly the same “anonymous” every time on Better Bibles–who has a love affair with pretending that subjective factors are actually objective beauty. Weird that . . .
While I don’t mind being seen as a critic of the ESV, I feel that lately my posting has gotten a bit out of balance because I have largely been responding to the ESV proponents, who appear to be pretty much critics of everything else. I want to comment on the “critics of everything else” position a bit later, but right now I want to look specifically at how I see the ESV in terms of value and appropriate use.
At the end of this post I will append some links to things I have said about the ESV previously and to some of my more general comments about Bible translation for those who want to look. Note that all links on the abbreviations of Bible versions are to that version’s page in the Bible Version Selection Tool.
I do not advocate a single Bible version myself. I am an advocate of the CEV as an excellent Bible for use in outreach and general ministry. I personally use a variety of Bibles in my own study time. My primary study Bibles are texts in the source languages. My first Bible to put alongside such study is the REB, followed closely by the NRSV and the JPS Tanakh. For me personally, the ESV is well down the list, though I do consult it occasionally aside from when I’m busy criticizing it.
What do I see as positive elements of the ESV?
In language, I regard it as better than the NASB, even the 1995 edition, and definitely better than the NKJV. I would be very happy to see someone move from the KJV to the ESV. Amongst generally literal versions, I prefer the NRSV to the ESV for a number of reasons, which should become clear as I list my negatives.
Here’s what I don’t like about the ESV:
Where would I recommend its use?
I do not recommend the ESV for the following:
Now these negatives and positives apply with equal and sometimes greater force to other versions in the same tradition and translation style. The only reason I’m doing this extensive of a comment on the ESV in particular is that I’ve been drawn into the debate by the proponents of the ESV who are setting themselves up as critics of all other versions. I regard this as a dangerous approach to Bible translation. Certainly we will all have positive and negative things to say about various versions. But ESV proponents have generally joined in a war against dynamic equivalence versions and any version that seeks gender accuracy in translation. This places the ESV front and center in debates in which it would otherwise simply be one of several versions used to illustrate a point.
I have not expounded much on the reasons behind each of these points. After all, this is a blog entry rather than a book, but I would like to link to some of my previous comments for those who are interested in pursuing this some more.
Have fun!
. . . who needs rationalizations? I refer to the article 7 Reasons Why (it’s title in the title bar) also titled “Key Issues Regarding Bible Translation.” This is on the domain genderneutralbibles.com, (yes, Virginia, there really is a genderneutralbibles.com!).
A while back I blogged on Mark Driscoll’s reasons for using the ESV at his church. But with highly credentialed people to feed pastors misinformation, what should we expect? I am freshly astounded at the poor quality of argumentation and even of exegesis that is used in these articles, even though I shouldn’t be, because I have read these so many times before. Much of this is warmed over KJV-Only argumentation, just used a little bit more narrowly.
Let’s look at some of the major problems with this essay.
In discussing 1 Kings 2:10, the authors wax quite eloquent about the wonders of the metaphor “slept with his fathers” as opposed to “died,” preferring the Hebrew metaphor for death to a modern understanding. One should, of course, note that the metaphor is a Hebrew metaphor, and question whether the modern English reader in fact hears all of the things the translators expect. This underlines one of the common problems with the arguments of advocates for literal translation: They speak constantly of what meaning a word, phrase, or passage “contains” without asking what an audience will hear when reading that translation. What is lacking is any testing to see precisely what people will hear and understand.
This is precisely how I was awakened out of my own apathy on the issue of translations. I was already a fan of dynamic equivalence translations, and thought the KJV was hopelessly out of date in terms of language. But I felt there was no great reason for me to argue with anyone else about this until I was invited to teach on the history of the Bible to a group of high school aged young people. A couple of the students used the KJV, and when they would read, nobody, including them, understood. Now I still see no problem with my mother using the KJV. She’s 87 years old, has read it all her life, and can understand it quite well. But those young people could not. Why should I spend my teaching time in teaching them how to understand 17th century language?
But that incident started me on learning something very important, other than the realization that many people try to use the KJV even though they don’t really understand it. It suggested to me that the right way to discover how well a Bible translation functioned was to ask people to read it or hear it, and then to explain what they had heard. This applies to the use of gender language, or in this case to the particular metaphor, “slept with his fathers.” Does this metaphor mean all those things to actual church congregations, new believers, or non-Christians? I haven’t tested that particular one, though I suspect the answer is that few people would come up with all the wonderful meanings for the metaphor that our authors find. The problem is that those authors are blithely unconcerned with what people understand. For them, communication is all about what’s “in” the text, not about what readers actually understand from it.
Thus we see the following:
Supporters of essentially literal translations would agree that the dynamic equivalence rendering “then David died” does translate the main idea into contemporary English, but they would add that it is better to translate all of the words of the Hebrew original, including the word shakab (which means, “to lie down, sleep”), and the words ‘im (which means “with”), and
