On Thu, 05-26-05 11:12 am
Adrian has posted ten questions that he will be asking the translation committee of the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible. The ESV committee approached him to see if he would be interested in doing the interview! Now, that’s cool!
Well, thanks to everyone for their suggestions and help for me in this unique opportunity I have been given to interview the ESV translation committee.
Here are my choice of the questions submitted and quite a few more of my own thrown in for good measure! Watch this space for the answers coming soon . . .
Take a look and what he’s come up with and suggest some additional ones of your own.
More importantly, be sure to check back to see his interview and the answers to his questions.
Two of my own questions would be why, when the ESV is so close to the updated (1995) New American Standard Bible, the committee felt there was a need for a new version? And, where do they see significant differences between the ESV and the NASB? I’m not saying there are not important differences (I’m not yet all the way through my free ESV - which is quite nice, really) but it seems so close in most places to be almost redundant.
Having said that, however, I do like the ESV very much and would recommend it without reservation.
May 26th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Well, maybe I am obsessed right now, but trust me I will get obsessed with something else pretty soon! The way I blog is that I tend to do an issue to death until I get bored and then move on. Actually I hadnt blogged much about the ESV for a while when they suddenly approached me about this- could hardly turn them down could I?
But take a browse in my archives month by month and look at the titles and you will see the ESV was not my first obsession and surely wont be my last!
My current renewed obsession is about the church and preaching and how both need to be reformed. Now that obsession could last a while- so far many years!
Adrian’s comment is in response to a poor and failed attempt at humor - suggesting he was a bit obsessed with the ESV - that I had included in my post. I have since edited it out since I did not want offend him or mislead anyone else. I have great respect for Adrian, who has been more than kind to this small creature in the ecosystem! - Mike
May 27th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
I have been studying and evaluating different English Bible versions for many years. I do not find the ESV to be a significant improvement over the NASB. Many have commented over the years about how “wooden” the NASB sounds. But the ESV has some rather awful English in many, many passages, so it seems to me that that balances out. I have been collecting examples of poor English in the ESV and have uploaded my work in progress file to http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/esvcomments.doc. I am glad that many are finding the ESV to be a translation that they like. I am sad that it appears that the ESV was rushed to publication before its text was ready. Their team really does need a number of English scholars working on it so that they can repair the problems with its English. The ESV would be even more effective if it were worded in English which is completely grammatical, did not use obsolete syntactic and lexical constructions, and sounded like it was written in the language of the people for whom it was intended. None of these would take away from its literary beauty. Literature written in good quality contemporary literary English can be very beautiful.
May 27th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
a free ESV? Man, I had to get mine the old fashioned way. =( How does one go about getting a free Ryrie NASB Study Bible.