I REALLY Don’t Like the ESV
When it comes to English translations of the Bible, I can be pretty broad-minded. I can appreciate the historical treasures that are the King James 1611 and the Geneva 1599… even though I would rarely use them (since I don’t speak that language). I can appreciate the likes of The Message, The Amplified Bible, or The Living Bible. Of course I am bothered somewhat that they essentially combine commentary with Scripture in a way that really confuses which is which. At least they don’t pretend to be otherwise. I am okay with a certain amount of paraphrasing, dynamic equivalence, and more “literal” translations.
I am not so happy when a translation pretends to be something it is not. When that happens, I get that feeling I got with Dan Brown’s ” The Davinci Code.” The book is a fun read— quite enjoyable. But the beginning of the book claims that ALMOST all of the history in the book is accurate. I knew people who embraced that most doubtful claim. I had a friend who told me that I should accept the history of Christianity described in Brown’s work (of FICTION!!) because, as he said, “That’s just the way it is.”
I get the same feeling about the English Standard Version (ESV). I remember when it was being marketed in the Philippines. It was marked as superior to the NIV because it was a more literal (allegedly) translation. That is not necessarily high praise. Meaning is more important than wording. On the other hand, translators may assume the meaning that is not actually in the text, so there can be problems with dynamic equivalence too. (Yes, this happens a lot.)
Marketing is, in truth, rather a squirrelly thing. NIV was marketed in the Philippines as superior to the NASB, since the former is “International” rather than “American” in the latter.
Bringing things to the ESV, the intro speaks (I am using the Intro to the ESV Study Bible, which draws from the ESV Intro) as follows:
“ESV Study Bible uses the “essentially literal” ESV (English Standard Version) Bible translation as the foundational text for creating the study Bible notes and other features. Emphasizing word-for-word accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning, the ESV Bible is especially suited to be the basic text for a study Bible.”
As I have at least implied before, I am not particularly impressed by ‘essentially literal’ and even less the claim of ‘word-for-word accuracy.’ But for many, people will interpret this as unbiased and reliably connecting the modern reader to ancient texts.
Of course I heard about charges that the ESV translated based on a Complementarian perspective. By this is meant that the translation is done based on the presumption that men are supposed to have leadership over women in, well, pretty much everything. Often the translations are surprisingly creative to achieve this. The short video at the bottom summarizes some of this.
What surprised me, however, was when I was working on a presentation on Apostles. If course Romans 16:7 is a common bugaboo for Complementarians as the passage certainly seems to say that a woman was recognized as an Apostle. But the ESV took a rather unique way to try to get out of that problem. Again one can look at the video below in that. But I found out that the ESV is problematic when it comes to Apostles in other ways. There has long been discussions on the difference between the function of apostle versus office of apostle, and who is an apostle. The ESV doesn’t really provide a good translation for this discussion because the translators simply decide which are apostles (and translate it accordingly) and decides others are not and use other terms instead. Doing this is worse than unhelpful, and makes me question the quote above that says it is especially suitable as a basic text for a study Bible.
Does this mean that ESV is worse than other translations? I am not sure. But I find it concerning that they imply far better than they actually achieve. Since the first time I used ESV was regarding Apostles, (and am already aware of how they translate creatively roles of women and the office if Deacon), I am worried about what other problems are waiting in the wings. And since the role of apostle is inextricably linked to the role of missionary, I can’t really use it when I teach courses on missions.
