I don't speak Greek and Hebrew (yet), so I can only depend on other people's knowledge of Bible translations, which has led me to rely on the New American Standard Bible.
But Peter Bogert (the best Christian blogger that no one has heard of) has a good post up advocating the English Standard Version.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
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6 comments:
The ESV is based on the RSV, how many of the problems with the RSV did it fix? For instance the RSV translation almost deliberately broke a lot of messianic prophecy so that Christ couldn't fulfill it. Does the ESV fix this?
Dunno. This is the first that I'd heard of it. That's why I'll stick to my NASB until it's knocked firmly off its throne. It's not really that hard to read.
Jeff, what translations do you prefer?
I'm mostly an NIV guy, but I want some NASB resources too. I don't see myself switching to the TNIV anytime soon.
It was translated by Evangelicals, so I am sure they fixed the objectionables. Isaiah 7:14 uses the word "virgin".
http://www.esv.org/ will give you insight into the whole deal.
And John, thanks for your kind words about my blog.
Actually, knowing Greek or Hebrew hurts when evaluating whether the NASB is better than any other translation, because the reason the NASB sounds so awkward is that it doesn't sound like English. It retains word orders and awkward phrasings that would sound fine in Greek or Hebrew but just don't sound like English. The ESV sounds like English.
All I had to do was read their statement of translation philosophy and look at the list of scholars, and I was won over. Now that I've read most of it, my initial judgment is confirmed in almost every way. No translation will be perfect, and the few criticisms I have are much less crucial than the things I don't like about the NIV or other translations.
Hello, Jeremy,
Our Internet paths cross again! :-)
I have started doing more serious analysis of the ESV (until recently I had been concentrating on other versions more in my Bible versions analyses). I am building up a collection of English language issues I have found in the ESV and posting them to my Better Bibles Blog. I invite you to visit there again and read my comments on the ESV. I do think it is a nice translation within the beautiful literary tradition of the KJV and RSV. But the ESV team degraded the quality of English of the RSV in a number of places. As some others have noted, the ESV can become better in its next published revision, after the team has gotten a fair amount of detailed input from readers. I think each English version has benefitted from revisions over the years, often unannounced, which have improved their quality of English.
There is much more English analysis work needed on the ESV for my blog, so if you (or anyone else) come across wordings which you would like to see improved for the next edition, please do note them on my blog. I have sent a note to the ESV team letting them know about the blog resource which can help them with their next edition.
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