Thursday, March 25, 2004 AD
Assessing the ESV
The Briefing (a Sydney-based, largely Anglican, largely excellent, conservative evangelical publication) has some useful material on its website about the ESV (click on "Web Extras" once the home page loads).
This includes articles published when the ESV came out - for example, Is this the English Bible we’ve been waiting for? (answer: yes) - as well as links to more recent articles updating the assessment and responding to critiques from such luminaries as Don Carson.
Executive summary for busy readers: the ESV is excellent, much better than the NIV. It has its failings, for example some archaisms ("I adjure you..." etc), but the problems with the ESV largely come where they have stuck to the underlying RSV text. Best solution: buy lots of copies of the ESV so the publishers can afford to produce a second edition.
This includes articles published when the ESV came out - for example, Is this the English Bible we’ve been waiting for? (answer: yes) - as well as links to more recent articles updating the assessment and responding to critiques from such luminaries as Don Carson.
Executive summary for busy readers: the ESV is excellent, much better than the NIV. It has its failings, for example some archaisms ("I adjure you..." etc), but the problems with the ESV largely come where they have stuck to the underlying RSV text. Best solution: buy lots of copies of the ESV so the publishers can afford to produce a second edition.
