I recently discovered a virtual panel discussion, hosted by Emory University in November of 2024, featuring three people who worked on the NRSVue translation:
Dr. John Kutsko – Director of the NRSVue Update
Dr. Jennifer Knust – New Testament Editor
Dr. Susan Hylen – translator for the pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus)
Here is a YouTube link to the panel discussion. The total length is approximately 54 minutes.
The three scholars shared their personal experiences working on the project and touched on the following topics:
- The logistical challenge of coordinating and harmonizing the work of many translators
- Guiding principles behind the update process, and how they were put into practice
- Specific examples of translation choices, including words involving slavery, Romans 3:22 (“the faith of Christ” instead of “faith in Christ”) and the famous translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10.
Dr. John Kutsko mentioned his Catholic faith a couple of times during the discussion as an influence on how he approaches Scripture, and he highlighted the challenge of directing a translation project for an ecumenical audience where some Christians hold to a doctrine of Sola Scriptura, where individual word changes can spark major controversy. Until now, I didn’t realize that the director of the NRSVue update is Catholic.
I highly recommend this discussion. It provides more detailed behind-the-scenes information on the NRSVue than I’ve run across anywhere else, and it also helps to put a human face on some of the people who worked on the translation.
Fantastic video! It was great to hear opinions of a) editors making changes, b) editors supervising and coordinating those changes, and c) the person on top coordinating the whole thing. I spend a lot of time with the NRSV (and -CE) but have been very skeptical of the NRSVue, this may change that. I especially liked their comments about trying to have things translated consistently across the entire Bible. Their example was “slave” vs “servant”.
Another interesting part of the video, at about 27:30, John Kutsko was responding to comments about changing “faith in Christ” to “faith of Christ”. commented “…we’re being asked to appear before a body to…defend that change”. I assume that was related to the effort to turn it into the NRSVue-CE.
At 40 minutes in, Jennifer Knust discusses the translation of 1 Cor 6:9 and mentions an article she wrote on their word choice. I think it’s this one: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/illicit-sex-word-study/
Interestingly, the footnotes to 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10 have also been updated in the most recent list of corrections to errata from Friendship Press:
https://nrsvue.scribenet.com/errata
The footnotes now read:
“Meaning of Gk uncertain, possibly men who have sex with men” instead of
“Meaning of Gk uncertain”
Wow, I was unaware that the NRSVue has such a long errata list. And not just typos, but even continual, quiet translation tweaking.
Between the updated footnote and their claim that the word was coined in those passages, I could believe that the NRSVue’s word choice may not be a bad translation or driven by an agenda. It will be interesting to see if those passages change for the NRSVue-CE, but based on the video, it sounds like they have a good argument to present to whoever’s reviewing the Catholic edition.
In the book “Bible Translation and the Making of the ESV Catholic Edition,” Mark Giszczak says that the RSV and NRSV engage in an unusual degree of creative license for what are alleged to be “essentially literal” translations, that in many of those places where it claims “Meaning of Greek Uncertain” or “Meaning of Hebrew uncertain” they are citing an alleged “uncertainty” to justify fiddling with the text.
He says that one of the main differences between the NRSV and the ESV is that instead of making a conjectural emendation when the language is unclear, they cite early translations such as the Septuagint or the Vulgate for assistance.
Assuming his description of the methodology is accurate, the ESV would seem to be the more reliable translation.
I like the ESV, but I have serious reservations about it being my main bible. After watching an analysis that R Grant Jones did of the ESV, I was left with the impression that at least some of the revision work was done by people who did not work with the original languages at all, but were simply making a conservative edit of the RSV. I regret that I can’t recall every detail, but it had something to do with the fact that a certain strange translation decision is obviously based on a misreading of an RSV translation note.
I am also a bit suspicious of their slavish fidelity to the Masoretic text. I have been spending a lot of time with the NRSV lately (just as it is about to disappear) and am left with the impression that the NRSV cares about the Septuagint everywhere except Isaiah 7:14 and the ESV cares about it nowhere except for Isaiah 7:14.
I like some of Mark Gisczak’s work, but his promotion of the Catholic ESV seems to me to be advertising and not scholarship. It is surely more literal than the RSV and NRSV. Whether it is more accurate is another question.
But I am being squeamish in trusted company. I like and use the ESV. I have a copy of the RSV, ESV, and NRSV on my desk and I use them all at times when I do lectio divina.
I have had the same impression when you say that “the NRSV cares about the Septuagint everywhere except Isaiah 7:14 and the ESV cares about it nowhere except for Isaiah 7:14.” If you want the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls to have influence on your preferred Bible translation, the ESV ain’t it. They only relied on the Septuagint for Isaiah 7:14 because that was the verse that the original RSV caused the fuss over. Off the top of my head, the only other major emendations the ESV made using the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls are in Deuteronomy 32:43 and Psalm 22:16 (one of those “Meaning of Heb uncertain” verses in the NRSV!). Otherwise, it’s pretty slavishly Masoretic, though not nearly to the over-the-top extent that the NASB is.
Well, the real question is whether “more literal” necessarily means “more accurate”, and according to John Barton at least, that’s a highly questionable assumption.
I agree with you that the Masoretic text is a late, Medieval Hebrew text. However, all of the advances in our knowledge of the history of the Old Testament text over the last century, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Septuagint to the Targums, have called the accuracy of the Masoretic text increasingly into question.
Nevertheless, I find deeply troubling the tendency of the RSV and NRSV to resort to outright invention rather than attempt translation. It is very easy to compare the NRSV to other modern translations every time the note claims “Meaning of Hebrew is unclear” and see just how far out on a limb the NRSV translators are willing to go by making conjecture and emendations to the text that are supported by no one except themselves.
I just don’t recognise that description of Mark Giszczak’s book on the ESV-CE. He makes a strong and credible case for the translation because of its Christological choices. He’s certainly a more reliable guide than R Grant Jones.
In chapter 7, ” What is the text of the Old Testament? ” he absolutely discusses the tendency of both the RSV and the NRSV to resort to conjectural emendation unsupported by any manuscript. He provides several examples of baseless interpretations of the Hebrew in the NRSV in that chapter.
The RSV/NRSV translators would sometimes resort to using different vowels in the case of unclarity, since the Masoretic vowel-points were added later and aren’t necessarily the original reading. But, those decisions were almost always compared to one of the ancient translations. You’d see a note like “Correction: comp Vg, Gk, Sam”. At other times, the RSV/NRSV translators just prefer a reading from the ancient translations over the MT. The ESV defers to the ancient translations far less frequently, but includes great footnotes on alternate readings from the ancient translations.
Perhaps you are mis-remembering what he said, or he is mistaken. I just combed through every single footnote in the RSV-2CE and NRSVue New Testament, and outside of the footnotes for verses mentioned in this article (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10), there are only 7 places where there is a footnotes saying the meaning of Gk is uncertain. For the NRSVue they are Mark 7:3, 1 Cor 7:21, Colossians 2:18, Hebrews 10:7, and 1 Peter 4:15, and for the RSV-2CE they are Mark 7:3, Acts 19:35, and Jude 1:23. I compared these verses against the ESV, NABRE, LSB, and NET for all 7 verses, and they all said pretty much the same thing. Furthermore, some of those other translations also had footnotes about the uncertainty of the Greek. Hardly what I would call an “unusual degree of creative license” or mere “alleged” uncertainty. No “fiddling” of the text is there.
I would be much more concerned about the anti-Catholic bias deliberately present in the ESV. One of the best Biblical arguments for the authority of the Church in the New Testament is 1 Tim 3:15, which says: “if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.” (RSV-2CE). Every single major English Bible, Protestant or Catholic, says “the” pillar except one. The ESV changed it to “a” pillar. So now the Church is just “a” pillar and buttress of the truth, not “the” pillar and buttress of the truth. Why would that change be important? Because the ESV was translated by protestants who believe that the Bible is “the” pillar and buttress of the truth, not the Church. This is blatant translation bias. Jimmy Akin breaks it down here in this article: https://jimmyakin.com/2005/04/iai_pillar_and_.html
I personally lost all trust in the ESV after learning this. And BTW the ESV Catholic Edition also reads “a” pillar.
The ESV is fantastic. But you’re not wrong about the anti-Catholic bias of *A FEW* verses. And it is a disappointment that the Indian Bishops didn’t push harder on those verses for the Catholic Edition. “A” pillar instead of “the” is one. “Overseer” instead of “bishop” is another. Overseer is a perfectly fine translation, but so is bishop, and for a Catholic Edition that word should obviously have been translated “bishop.”
Did the Catholic Truth Society in the UK ever publish an ESV-CE with the liturgical tweaks? Restoring “full of grace,” etc? They did a survey about a year ago to gauge interest as to whether to publish a…ESV-More Catholic Edition?…but I don’t recall anything further. Such a Bible would likely fix the anti-Catholic tics that got past the bishops in India.
CTS hasn’t published an edition of the ESV-CE but the ESV Lectionary in use in Britain does have further revisions, including “full of grace”.
Edward from Bournemouth, England, if CTS ever publishes an ESV-CE Liturgical Bible (ESV-2CE?), that would totally be my Bible. I hope they do, someday.
Thanks for all of the updates Marc. I am a Bible translation nerd and I really enjoy the content on this site. I am impressed you found this video and that you also found that they updated the footnote to 1 Cor 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10.
For anyone new to the controversy, the NRSV read “male prostitutes” and “sodomites” in the former and “sodomites” in the later verse, whereas the NRSVue changed it to “male prostitutes,[a]” and “men who engage in illicit sex,[b]” in the former, and “men who engage in illicit sex,[a]” in the later. That prompted massive backlash and even Catholic responses such as this: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/new-frontiers-in-politically-correct-bible-translation
I was hoping they would discuss their translation choices in those two verses. To my great delight they did. I found it interesting that Dr. John Kutsko was adamant that there was no agenda or political or progressive vs conservative bent to the translation in the slightest. In fact it was mentioned that overall this update is more conservative than the NRSV, simply because of the necessity for greater accuracy. I personally have found that to be true. I used Verbum Bible software to compare every single change between the NRSV and the NRSVue in the NT, and I found that in virtually every instance the updates made the translation better. Outside of the verses mentioned above and the use of person-first language to describe physical ailments, the update was in fact more conservative compared to the NRSV.
Some of the points they made in their defense of their controversial translation of those two passages got me thinking though. Do the NRSVue translators have a valid point? How did English Bible versions translate that passage historically? What about the Vulgate? How were the controversial words in question not only used in Greek writing of the time, but how would the people of Corinth at that time have interpreted those words?
Looking at just a handful of English translations from the 1500’s through the mid 1900’s for 1 Cor 6:9-10:
Tyndale (1534): “weaklinges” and “abusars of them selves with the mankynde”
Original Douay Rheims (1582): “the effeminate” and “liers with mankind”
King James Version (1611): “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind”
Douay Rheims Challoner Revision (1749): “the effeminate” and “liers with mankind”
Revised Version (1881): “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with men”
American Standard Version (1901): “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with men”
Knox Translation (1945): “the effeminate” and “the sinners against nature”
Revised Standard Version (1946): “sexual perverts”
Considering that history, is the NRSVue’s choice of “male prostitutes” and “men who engage in illicit sex” really too liberal? Is it obviously the result of an LGBT+ agenda? These are the questions I am asking myself as one who is a conservative Catholic and was quick to assume the worst. I have more to comment on, but it will have to be a different day.
God Bless!
They removed “Son of Man” from Mark 1.
Don’t be fooled, this is a Bible for people leaving the faith. Its biggest proponents are Atheists and Agnostics.
Come on, this is an absurd claim.
@Cory
“‘Revised Standard Version (1946): “sexual perverts”'”
a quick correction the RSV 1946 Ed. of the NT readings in 1 Cor 6:9 “homosexuals” for combination of ansenokoitai and malakoi. A complaint from a seminary student pointing out the problem with it. So the chair of the RSV translation committee decided to change it in subsequent versions to “perverts” then to “sexual perverts”
My biggest change of opinion in the last year about Bible translations is that the NRSV is actually really good. I trusted the voices in comments sections and in Church publications that were telling me all gender inclusive translations were bad, but then saw many of those same voices support the ESV, which has more gender inclusive language than you might think.
As part of my Benedictine oblate journey, I have been using Benedictine Daily Prayer as my breviary since Lent. Its a heavier psalm load for sure, but I have been digging it. The psalter is the first attempt at an inclusive Grail Psalter from the 80s–not the one from the 90s that attempts to dispense with masculine pronouns for God. Besides that, the scriptural material is from the NRSV.
All I can say is that it is about a hundred times better than I thought it was, and it is not as different from the RSV as you might be led to believe.
Well, in some way shape or form, we’ve always used a degree of “inclusive” language in our NT interpretation, given that only the heterodox considered the “adelphoi” of Jesus to be his literal biological brothers.
In his book “The Bible in Translation: How We Translate the Bible and Why it Matters”, author John Barton makes the very important point that most people have their history of translation backward. Most people think that the literal is the classical approach, and that dynamic translation arose only in the 20th century. It is almost exactly the other way around. All of the early translations, including the Septuagint, the Targums, the Vulgate, the Syriac, and the Coptic, were dynamic. While all the writers who expressed something like a translation philosophy, such as Origen, Jerome, and Augustine, expressed what we would today call dynamic equivalence. It is only after the Reformation, due to the Protestant belief in plenary (that is “word for word”) inspiration of the scriptures, that literal translations came into fashion.
But even then, there was some degree of inclusive language, because Tyndale, in the Pentateuch, translated “children of Israel”, even though the original language is masucline, the Hebrew literally says “sons of Israel” but it has never been translated that way.
The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation says that the various books of the Septuagint vary significantly in their “literalness” or closeness to the Hebrew text and grammar. It classifies the Song of Songs, Lamentations, and Ruth as mirroring the Hebrew text closely, while the books of Job and Proverbs depart more significantly from the Hebrew — even bringing elements of Greek culture into Proverbs.
There were also other translations of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek (such as Aquila’s translation, which was completed around 140 AD). That version evidently emerged out of rabbinic Judaism and was almost rigidly literal with respect to the Hebrew. Symmachus’s Greek version of the Scriptures was also literal, although not as “wooden” as Aquila’s version, according to the Oxford Handbook.
Overall, I came away from that book with the impression that ancient translations followed differing translation philosophies, and many of them (including Jerome’s Vulgate) were uneven in their approach, translating some books literally and others in a paraphrastic (or even homiletic) fashion.
The history of the Greek translation of Aquila is important. Because the Septuagint was commonly appealed to by Christians, it lost favor with the Jews, and because the Septuagint often amplifies passages that are regarded as Messianic, the Jews came to regard it as inaccurate. And they regarded it as inaccurate precisely because they thought it was too loose of a translation.
An excellent example is the infamous passage Iss 7:14, which in the Septuagint uses the word “paranthenos,” which means “virgin”. It is often, incorrectly, asserted that the Hebrew says “almah,” which means merely “a young woman”; that is inaccurate. Its meaning is closer to “a young woman who is unmarried but is old enough to be married.” She could, therefore, in that cultural context, be assumed to be a virgin. There is no Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word, so the translators seized upon the thing that they thought was most important in the passage, namely that she would be a virgin, and translated it simply “virgin”,
Aquila was motivated by a desire to de-Christianize the Greek Old Testament.
In general, Jewish translations tend to be rigidly literal in a much stronger sense than even the most literal Christian translations.
While Christian translations attempt to use a degree of acculturation to make the text seem familiar to contemporary readers, Jewish translations tend to emphasize the original context to make the text seem strange, out of place, exotic, or foreign. If you have ever read any Jewish translations, such as the New Jewish Publication Society translation or the one by Robert Alter, you will know what I mean.
The reason for the difference is both theological as well as cultural. Christians tend to want to make the text accessible to everyone to more easily spread the Gospel, but for Jews, no translation can convey the meaning of the Hebrew original, which is why learning Biblical Hebrew is part ofa Jewish education, so much so that a Jewish religious school is often called “Hebrew School”, I’m not saying all practicing Jews are fluent in Hebrew, that isn’t true, but the average Jew knows much more about Biblical Hebrew than the average knows about Biblical Greek.
It’s kind of a funny thought that, as far as translations go, we’re in the same place now with English Bibles as Jews and Christians were in Antiquity. Read this as tongue-in-cheek:
The Jews had their NRSV (the LXX), which was used broadly and was “as literal as possible, and as free as necessary.” They had their New Living Translation (the Targums), which was written in an everyday vernacular and very dynamic. They had their rigidly precise NASB (Aquilla), and their less-rigid but still-precise ESV (Symmachus) – both of which suffer from mild anti-Catholic bias.
The Catholics had a Knox Bible (the Peshita), written as if “an Aramaic man had written the Bible.” We had a Douay-Rheims (the Old Latin), a generally-accurate liturgical Received Text that was well-loved in certain circles but was based in places on somewhat questionable manuscripts. And, we had an NAB equivalent (Jerome’s Vulgate), an authorized, ground-up revision that was hated to the point of violent protests upon its use in the Latin liturgy. But, over the course of centuries and after multiple emendations, it slowly found acceptance to the point of becoming “the” Bible of Latin Catholics.
The term “gender inclusive language” is misleading, because there is no ONE way to define the term.
In the NRSV, there is a tendency to achieve gender inclusivity by pluralizing masculine pronouns. This often results in bad grammar, where plural pronouns are used when it is clear that only one person is being referenced, it also tends to obscure the Christological implications of many passages, for example, Psalm 1:1. Another thing the NRSV (and the 2011 NIV) does that is annoying is it refers to “mortals”, as if it is quoting dialogue from an episode of “Bewitched”.
The other problem with the NRSV’s use of inclusive language is that it tends to present a false view of the world of the Bible, as if the authors were modern egalitarian feminists. Yet the world of the Bible was thoroughly patriarchal. And frankly, there is often an assumption by the NRSV translators that any use of the masculine pronoun is inclusive so that not just male readers but female readers are being addressed. This is a questionable assumption at best. It is entirely possible, maybe even probable, that the authors used the masculine pronoun precisely because they were trying to exclude women. In which case, using inclusive language distorts the text.
The ESV never uses the singular “they”, and it attempts to never obscure the Christological meaning of a passage in the Old Testament, so that Psalm 1:1 reads “Blessed is the man who…”, precisely because the traditional Christian interpretation of this verse is that “The Man” being referred to is Christ.
The Colorado Springs Guidelines, which were used to create the ESV, are very modest; they attempt to make it clear when men and women are both being addressed, but also to preserve the masculine when it seems only men are being addressed. This does, of course, involve a degree of interpretation, but surely a piecemeal approach is better than the near-blanket approach of the NRSV and the NIV. And there is an attempt to preserve the masculine pronoun in Old Testament verses that have been interpreted as Christological.
The nature of the inclusive language used by these two translations is radically different, and it is not really accurate to suggest that they are equivalent.
That was a fascinating video. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
The most interesting thing, to me, were the parts when the NSRVue translators trash the 1989 NRSV. Their concerns are essentially the same as the NRSV’s conservative critics. That the NRSV imported a 1980s cultural context into the translation that didn’t belong there, and they argue that the NRSVue is a more conservative translation.
Whether or not one agrees, it’s an argument I wasn’t expecting. It’s one thing for others to say these things about the 1989 NRSV. But to hear it from the scholars responsible for the updated edition, wow.
It is well known that the translation was nearly complete when the translation committee imposed the new mandate of “gender inclusiveness,” which required them to rewrite it at the last moment. This sudden change of their mandate at close to the last minute was resented by Chairman Bruce Metzger and others on the committee.
In chapter 7, ” What is the text of the Old Testament? ” he absolutely discusses the tendency of both the RSV and the NRSV to resort to conjectural emendation unsupported by any manuscript. He provides several examples of baseless interpretations of the Hebrew in the NRSV in that chapter.
The proposed CTS edition of the ESV-CE, to include the Abbey Psalter, seems to have dropped out of the listings for future publications. I wonder if it will be revived after CTS manages to complete it offering of ESV missals (weekly, daily) in the autumn. And if this project is revived, will it incorporate the changes made to the ESV-CE for the lectionary?
Sorry to hear that. I hope it does get revived and that CTS does give us an ESV-CE that includes the changes made for the lectionary. It would remove what few nitpicks I have about the ESV-CE.
I hope so too. Crossway have a reputation for playing hardball with Catholics adopting the ESV.
If that were true, they never would have allowed a Catholic Edition to be made. Crossway is hardly the only Bible publisher that is reluctant to allow alterations to be made by third parties. For decades, the only Protestant translation that allowed a Catholic Edition to be published at was the RSV, and that was only because the NCC, the copyright owners, were desperate to be seen as “ecumenical” frankly due to their liberal and somewhat indifferentist theology. And the 1966 RSV Catholic Edition made an unusually large number of alterations to the text, which has never been allowed by any other publisher since, not even the NRSV, for which the Protestant and Catholic editions’ texts are identical in every book the two editions have in common.
Perhaps hardball is an exaggeration. I’m simply reporting what I’ve heard. Maybe the Augustine Institute’s CSV will come to the rescue, should I live long enough to see it!
Edward, Mary Healy said as much, in the video linked to the NAB thread, while being careful not to mention Crossway by name.
Lectionary group from Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand meet in Maynooth | Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference https://share.google/FLym5CkHm6U3u4DpV
I would enjoy if a better edition of the RNJB itself coincided with this.
It seems like there are a lot of proponents of the ESV here. Could those of you who are in this camp please explain why? It seems to me we only have two current Catholic Bible translations to choose from that make sense to me moving forward. They are the RSV-2CE and the New Catholic Bible. Let me explain. The Augustine Institute has moved past their ESV experiment and are working on their own CSV translation. Soon the ESV-CE will be out of print in the US. The NRSV has been phased out in favor of the NRSVue, and the copyright for the NRSV-CE is soon to expire. We should be seeing within the next year or two the introduction of the NRSVue-CE and the discontinuance of the NRSV-CE. And lastly, the NABRE is being replaced soon with a revised version. So the only major modern Catholic Bible editions available today that are still likely to be in print in the US a couple years from now are the RSV-2CE and the NCB. They are both faithfully Catholic and only those two translations have editions with abundant faithfully Catholic footnotes. For the RSV-2CE you have both the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible and The Didache Bible. You also have the Navarre Bible in the RSV-CE and the Great Adventure Bible in the RSV-2CE. The NCB has the same notes for all their editions, but as I can personally attest from reading those notes, they are faithfully Catholic. Why not start focusing our attention on these Bibles as we await the updated NABRE and the future arrival of the completed CSV? Then when we recommend Bibles to our friends and family who may be looking more closely into Catholicism, we can feel confident that we are directing them to a version that highlights our faith.
As an aside, I also think the Word On Fire Bible has some excellent features, but all indications are they will have to move on from the NRSV-CE in the next year or two due to the copyright expiring. If they transition to the NRSVue(-CE), my guess is we can anticipate the NRSVue being close to what the future NRSVue-CE will be, seeing as though the NRSV and the NRSV-CE had zero difference besides the expanded canon.
The Augustine Institute is still publishing the ESV and they have not said that they intend to stop doing so anytime soon.
As for why I prefer it to the NRSV, there is an entire book on the topic that I recommend you read.
One thing I find funny is the people who say Catholics shouldn’t buy the ESV because it supports Crossway, but then turn around and say we should buy the RSV or NRSV, which funds the National Council of Churches, an organization that is far worse than Crossway.
Did you hear somewhere that the ESV-CE is going out of print? I’ll grant that it looks like it’s never getting a study Bible, but I haven’t heard anything about the existing editions going away.
As for the NRSV-CE and NABRE going out of print soon, if someone needs a Bible now, they’re still options worth considering until they’re replaced.
I’ve not seen any reports that the ESV-CE is going out of print, although I haven’t seen any sales figures from SPCK or CUP in Britain where we use this translation for the lectionary. I regularly read from the ESV, RSV and NRSV. When I read Divinity at university we used the RSV as, at the time, it was considered the most accurate translation for academic purposes. This was before it was supplanted by the NRSV in the universities.
I like the ESV because it’s fundamentally an update of the RSV – still the gold standard in my estimation – but makes more Christological translation choices while remaining faithful to the underlying texts. On a less scholarly note I’d just say that the ESV reads and sounds like scripture. It’s well suited for proclamation. Even so, it has a number of infelicities, as do the RSV and NRSV. It’s a truism to say so but no translation is perfect. I’m not familiar with the NCB. It hasn’t made any inroads in the UK.
I prefer the ESV-CE for the same reasons already mentioned by others in this thread. I agree, too, with the comments noting the lack of evidence that the ESV-CE is ceasing publication and that a completed CSV is still several years in the future.
Also, though I’m an American, my primary Bible is the Cambridge Cornerstone ESV-CE. So the Augustine Institute ceasing publication of the ESV-CE (if they do) would mean nothing to me. I could just continue to order new ESV-CEs from the UK or India. (And I am holding out hope for the publication of an ESV-CE liturgical Bible from CTS some day).
All of that said, I agree with Dr. Mary Healy’s comments, in a video linked to in a different thread on this blog, wherein she says the ESV-CE is her preferred translation but that it is destined never to catch on among Catholics. She didn’t mention the Crossway/Augustine Institute contretemps, specifically, but I imagine that’s what she meant. It’s a pity.
I can just see the writing on the wall. It’s conjecture for sure, but I would be shocked if they continue to produce a competing Bible to their new translation that they’ll be eager to promote. Just look at the efforts they went through to promote the ESV when they published it. There were articles and books about it supposed superioriority. That effort obviously paid off. I am fully expecting a new round of that when the CSV comes out, only then they will be demonstrating the CSV’s superiority to the ESV.
Tush! That sounds just a little cynical. I guess the CSV is some years from being completed.
Edward, thanks for your replies. Please let me clarify. No cynicism is in my heart in this matter. I do not believe the Augustine Institute is motivated by purely selfish motives, and I am not distrustful of their sincerity or integrity. I love and support the Augustine Institute. They have done such great things for the building up of the body of Christ! From a purely business standpoint, it is the right thing to do to promote your product. By the time the CSV is released, the ESV will likely be more than 30 years old, and it seems to be common practice to discontinue a prior Bible version when you release a new or updated one. To me it would also be a sound financial decision to cut ties with Crossways when their own translation is finished.
Also, I sincerely hope the CSV is promoted and widely accepted. I hope they demonstrate the ways their translation separates itself from the ESV-CE and others. They have only released Matthew and Mark so far, but it early returns are promising. It is my hope that when it is released it can be my new go-to literal translation.
Thanks for the clarification. God bless you.
Regarding the ESV, I feel it has committed an egregious crime against Christ and His Church by its biased tampering of the Word of God in 1 Tim 3:15. What they have done is scandalous. For the past 24 years ESV users have been led to believe that the Church is not “the” pillar bulwark of truth. Had they done this in a previous age, the Church would have declared it anathema. In GK Chesterton’s novel the Ball and the Cross, the main character Evan Maclan was so offended by an offence against the Church that he threw a brick through the offender’s window and challenged him to a duel. I certainly am not proposing we do that, but where is the righteous indignation? Where is the Catholic backlash, coming to the defense of the Bride of Christ? Why is this so quietly being swept under the rug? How is this not a deal breaker when we have other options to choose from?
The underlying Greek text does not use an article at all (neither “a” nor “the”) connected to the word “pillar”, as I understand it. As such, either translation (“a pillar” or “the pillar”) is somewhat interpretive — trying to infer the correct nuance from the Greek text. It’s hard to say what the motivations of the ESV translators were. The RSV, NRSV, and NRSVue all translate it as “the pillar.” As a Catholic, that translation makes good sense to me, but I suspect a cogent grammatical argument can be made either way. Regardless, I disagree that this rises to the level of tampering with the Word of God.
Thanks Marc. I am certainly open to other viewpoints on this. But if “a” instead of “the” is an equally accurate and acceptable translation, why has no other major English Bible translated it that way?
Major English Bibles that translate it a “the” pillar: KJV, NKJV, LEB, LSB, AMP, NASB95, NASB2020, NIV, NET, GNT, ASV, RSV, NRSV, NRSVue, NLT, DR, RSV-CE, RSV-2CE, NABRE, NCB, Knox
Major English Bibles that translate it as “a” pillar: ESV
As I reflect on my negative posts about the ESV-CE, I believe I went too far. I am sorry to all of you who use and love the ESV-CE. It is a beautiful and accurate translation in most respects, and our Holy Mother Church has approved it. I admit it is an improvement to the RSV-2CE in may ways, especially the New Testament, except for the limited variety of editions available, the absence of a study Bible, the translation of 1 Tim 3:15, “overseer” instead of Bishop, the source texts for Sirach (as discussed in the more recent blog post), certain word/phrasing choices (like “hail full of grace” and Gen 3:16), and its over-dependence on the Masoretic text for the Old Testament.
That last one is a major one for me because of how substantially different the ESV-CE is with other Catholic tranlations regarding Old Testament variants. I will post the results when we’re finished with our project of cataloging where the NV stands on variant texts in both Old and New Testament, but our results so far looking at 52 variants in Genesis and the Psalms gives you an idea of what I’m talking about. First, percent agreement with NV:
NABRE: 77%
NCB: 69%
NRSVue: 65%
RSV-2CE: 63%
ESV-CE: 44%
NASB: 37%
(Abbey/Revised Grail Psalms only: 77%)
(RNJB, Genesis only: 70%)
Next, % agreement with the Masoretic Text:
NASB: 87%
ESV-CE: 83%
NV: 35%
RSV-2CE: 33%
NCB: 27%
NABRE: 19%
(Abbey/Revised Grail Psalms only: 23%)
(RNJB, Genesis only: 30%)
While the NT for the ESV-CE generally follows the same text type (ie NA critical edition) as the other modern Catholic translations and the NV, and has 80% agreement with the NV for variants in Matthew and Mark, we don’t see a similar pattern with the Old Testament.
That’s really cool research, Cory. I honestly wouldn’t have thought the 2CE would score so low in agreement with the MT, especially compared to the ESV.
Regarding the CSV talk above: I would very much appreciate it if someone could remind the Augustine Institute about it. I’m still patiently waiting on the CSV Luke that, going by the January 2023 and January 2024 releases for Matthew and Mark, should’ve been out at the start of this year. Just give us a sign that the CSV project is still happening, and maybe an ETA on the New Testament if possible. I like the concept of an up-to-date RSV-like Catholic translation with no ties to either the NCC or Crossway, and I think the CSV’s footnotes in particular, as well as some of its uniquely Catholic translation choices, fill a happy niche. One thing that’ll still take some warming up to is the CSV’s seeming fear of long sentences.
I second that. Would really appreciate some news about the CSV. Enjoyed reading Matthew and Mark in CSV.
Hi. I did ask them a few weeks ago and there were no news from their side on the CSV..