Bible Translations

I am making a second concerted effort at switching from the New American Standard, which I have used for over 31 years, to the English Standard Version. My first effort failed. I could not get past being distracted by slight differences in translation. At first the distraction was useful because it forced me to pause to truly understand the meaning of a passage, but it ended up slowing me down too much.

I was also disappointed with some of the translation choices the ESV makes. For example, the ESV will often translate participles as finite verbs; long, complex sentences with subordinating participial phrases are broken into several simpler sentences with finite verbs. Though this strategy makes the translation much more readable, it hides the relationship among these sentences.

However, as much as I love my New American Standard I recognize that it will never become the dominant American translation. And, I believe that the NIV needs to be displaced as the translation of choice among evangelicals.

John Piper has good reasons for embracing the ESV.

http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/word_god/esv.html

I am not sure, though, that I will be as successful as he has been in switching to the ESV. John used the RSV, which was the base for the ESV, for much of his adult life. The ESV and RSV are very similar. I only used the RSV on occasion when leading InterVarsity Bible and Life seminars. The NASB is much more deeply ingrained for me.

(I also wish Crossway would produce an ESV without the two column format. I much prefer a single column of text with cross references or alternate readings in the margin or as footnotes at the bottom of the page rather than in a center column between two columns of text. With the center-column reference format, I have to use a magnifying glass to read the references, and I am far too young to buy a large print edition!)

Update as of April 17, 2005

I am still using my ESV, and recently purchased the Reformation Study Bible, which is very good. One of the main advantages of the ESV is that it is an acceptable alternative for my college-age son and his friends -- in a way that the NASB for some reason is not. It has made it much easier for us to have substantive discussions about the meaning of a text without the distraction of first squaring up the translations.

The paragraphing in the ESV can be very helpful. It often highlights the flow of an argument, especially in the epistles, in a way that the NASB's line-by-line formatting does not. When analyzing a text I outline it with a line-by-line format more akin to the NASB's.

I still do not like the two-column/center-reference-column format! I wish Crossway would do something about this. I also still think we lose important information about the relationship between propositions when participles are replaced by finite verbs. But I'm starting to get used to this translation.