Updated: Differences between the ESV-CE Lectionary and the ESV-CE New Testament — Guest Post by Cory

55 thoughts on “Updated: Differences between the ESV-CE Lectionary and the ESV-CE New Testament — Guest Post by Cory”

1. This is incredible – and such a niche area of interest. There are literally tens of us out there (mostly perusers of this website) who go bananas for stuff like this. Thanks for posting this!!!

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2. Thanks for this! I’m surprised the lectionary didn’t change 1 Tim 3:15 from the church being “a” pillar of truth to “the” pillar of truth. Other than Lk 1:28 and “overseer” instead of bishop, it’s the only thing that irks me about the ESV-CE New Testament.

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   1. IMO, just take a pen and fix it. I feel like folks are too deferential to translations when we know they’re wrong. Countless other translations with an imprimatur have “the pillar,” so just take a pen and correct the ESV. Doing so doesn’t suddenly void the imprimatur. I myself use the ESV, and whenever I see a reading I disagree with, in contrast to another translation’s reading I prefer like the RSV-2CE or NRSV-CE, I just mark the edit myself and sometimes even note in the margin which translation my edit is coming from. So my personal ESV’s text is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster.

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3. Nice.

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4. Thank you for carrying out this analysis. Surely the Bishops’ Conferences that adopted the ESV must have a record of changes made for the lectionary. Or this like the RSV2CE, where a record of changes from the RSV-CE is hard to pin down?

   One change I wish they had made is to Luke 16 where we now hear the “parable of the dishonest manager”. It sounds so clunky to have “manager” rather than “steward”.

   There’s no sign of CTS publishing an ESV-CE aligned with the lectionary, along the lines of their edition of the JB. A great shame. And I doubt the 2025 changes to the ESV – and I’m thinking here, in particular, of the notorious translation of Genesis 3:16 – will make their way into the ESV-CE, let alone the lectionary version.

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5. When did we stop saying “obliged” and start saying “obligated” (viz. Hebrews 5:3)?

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6. Love the change to “full of grace.” My dream Bible translation would be one that’s fully informed by the Catechism. To translate the verses in a way that makes explicit the Catholic teaching.

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   1. I love Mary. But I am uncomfortable with translating according to what best fits doctrine. That is not translating.

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      1. It just happens to be the most accurate translation, as even the Protestant “Amplified Bible” admits that “in a state of permanent grace” would be the most literal translation. It is the Protestant Bibles that are translating it according to doctrine.

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      2. It would be a type of translation. We’re taught to read scripture according to three principles CCC 112-114 including within “the living tradition of the church.” It would just be nice to have a Bible translation that attempted to put those principals into its translation practice.

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         1. Hi Ken, those are principles of *interpretation* (or exegesis), not principles of *translation* from one language into another. It’s easy to confuse interpretation and translation. Ideally, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Hindu, and an atheist seeking to make a word-for-word translation would produce a similar translation. In practice, of course, it’s much more complicated! Doctrine does influence not just translation but also which variants found among the manuscripts should be used as the basis of the translation. And doctrine definitely influences interpretation, as it should.

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            1. The Greek word used in Luke 1:28 is “kecharitomene,” which means “graced”, but it is a past perfect participle, which means it refers to a condition that existed in the past and will continue to exist in the future. The most literal translation of this word would be “perfected in grace from the beginning to the end”, in other words, “full of grace”. If it weren’t for Protestant resistance to Catholic and Orthodox devotion to Mary, it is unlikely this word would ever be translated in any other way.

               Moreover, the context of the verse makes the watered-down translation “favored one” unlikely because it says she was surprised by the greeting and wondered what it could mean; “highly favored one” seems unlikely to evoke such a strong reaction because it’s such a weak statement.

               Similarly, many translations attempt to water down her response to the angel: “How can this be since I know not a man?” is the most literal translation. All other translations, such as “I am a virgin,” make nonsense of her response. The point of her reply is not that she has never had yet, but that she has no intention of ever doing so. Any other interpretation turns her into a moron who doesn’t know where babies come from.

7. meh. Catholics should just stick with the Douay Rheims for the Lectionary.

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   1. Is the Magisterium more authoritative at one time than another? Do you feel that the Vicar of Christ who promulgated the Clementine Vulgate is more authoritative than the Vicar of Christ who promulgated the New Vulgate?

      The ESV-CE is much more in line with the New Vulgate than the Douay Rheims, so I think we would be taking a step in the wrong direction by going back to the Douay Rheims. The New Vulgate is the “editio typica” of the Roman Catholic Church, making it the standard from which all other liturgical texts in other languages take their lead.

      If you prefer the Douay Rheims because you enjoy reading more than other translations, that’s great. But if you think, as some often do, that it’s more Catholic or more authoritative than the ESV-CE and other modern translations approved by the Catholic Church, you would be mistaken.

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      1. Cory, thank you for standing up for the Nova Vulgata, a gift from the Holy Spirit. As I shared with Marc in an email, I’m working on a Hebrew book of Genesis (for my own study) that is a mirror image of the text-critical decisions reflected in the Nova Vulgata so that I can read Genesis as the Church reads it…in Hebrew…and without all the textual corruptions in the received text. To construct this reverse-engineered Hebrew Vorlage of the Nova Vulgata, I’m using the critical editions that the Nova Vulgata Commission themselves used and am incorporating the changes to those same editions that they note in the Nova Vulgata’s apparatus. Those changes, by the way, are the kinds of emendations that all textual critics make to ancient texts (in fact, almost all of them come from the apparatuses of the critical editions), but with the seal of Apostolic authority. So basically, if you have the critical editions the Commission used (I bought them all, with a few still on the way) and you have the emendations they made to those very same editions, you have [drum roll] … The Bible. If you want to see a sample, you can email me at timothydeanroth@gmail.com

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         1. I might be wrong, but I would imagine that could be hard where the Nova Vulgata takes some translation choices from the Septuagint, Peshitta, old Latin, and other manuscripts that don’t line up with the Hebrew. But I don’t have a copy or knowledge of the biblical languages, so I couldn’t check if I tried. I know that a month or so ago someone on here brought up that there are additions to the book of Esther that the Nova Vulgata choose to include from an old Latin manuscript that predates Jerome’s vulgate. No English bible currently has this textual variant because scholars don’t see it as original. This isn’t a knock against the Nova Vulgata. It is a very pretty passage from what I have been able to roughly translate. Would appreciate your insights.

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            1. You are not wrong, Evan, haha. It does get hard. What makes it possible is the critical editions of the Hebrew and Greek originals that the Nova Vulgata Commission used and the footnotes in the Nova Vulgata itself, which can be seen here: https://archive.org/details/nova-vulgata-bibliorum-sacrorum-editio-typica-altera/page/4/mode/1up

               The critical editions make it possible because they identify the insertion points of the possible emendation within the text and then in the critical apparatus below, they (usually) provide the emendation in the target language. So usually all you have to do is swap out the words (it’s a little more complicated than that sometimes because of Hebrew morphology and cantillation). Let’s take a classic example, Cain’s missing speech in Genesis 4:8. The received Hebrew text lacks his speech, due to a very ancient scribal error. In fact, it’s entirely missing in all known Hebrew manuscripts. But, the Nova Vulgata apparatus has Cain’s missing speech. And it notifies us that they found it in the Vulgate and in a couple Aramaic Targums. So now what? Do we plug in Latin or Aramaic into a Hebrew text or try to translate them ourselves into ancient Hebrew? No, we go to the apparatus of the critical edition, and there we find that the editors not only identify the sources of Cain’s missing speech, but they also translate it (this is called retroversion) into period-appropriate Hebrew! Now all we have to do to is insert the retroverted text.

               In doing a preliminary study of all the Nova Vulgata footnotes, I found that it is only in very rare cases that there is no Hebrew text to be found at all. For example, in 1 Samuel 23:6, there is a phrase that only exists in the Greek Septuagint and the Vulgate. In this case, I will simply have to have a few Greek words in an otherwise Hebrew text. This isn’t too unusual for the Bible, though. The received Hebrew text of Genesis has one(!) Aramaic word in it, and Ezra and Daniel have major Aramaic insertions.

               But things are very different when it comes to Tobit, Judith, the Greek sections of Esther, and the book of Ecclesiasticus (Sirach). There simply are no ancient Greek or Hebrew manuscripts that correspond to what the Nova Vulgata has. Here, the Nova Vulgata Commission accepted the Old Latin versions (pre-Jerome) as canonical in their own right and sought to restore them critically. In this case, it seems that the authentic version of these books is now the Nova Vulgata, since there just are no Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic witnesses to this form of the text. They apparently existed at one time, because the Old Latin is a translation of them, but they have vanished and there is no way to reconstruct them. So those books are now Latin, it seems. In fact, the Nova Vulgata version of Ecclesiasticus has dozens of verses that only exist in Latin. So at the very least, those verses are Latin, and Latin only, inspired scripture. So in my original-language Bible that mirrors the Nova Vulgata, if I ever get that far, my Bible will simply reproduce Tobit, Judith, the Esther additions, and Ecclesiasticus exactly as they are in the Nova Vulgata. And in my opinion, translations of those books should be made from the Nova Vulgata, since there just is no ancient witness to those books in the form we find them in the Nova Vulgata, as the Praenotanda of the Nova Vulgata clearly states.

   2. In that case, surely we should stick to the Vulgate. Oops, we do so already with the old rite.

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   3. I do sometimes imagine myself hearing John 4:31-34 proclaimed from the Douay Rheims and trying to keep a straight face:

      “The disciples prayed him, saying: Rabbi, eat. But he said to them: I have meat to eat, which you know not. The disciples therefore said one to another: Hath any man brought him to eat? Jesus saith to them: My meat is to do the will of him that sent me”

      Hands down my favorite line from the DR (from a language perspective of course)

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      1. My fiancé and I both love “Simon Peter saith to them: I go a fishing.”(John 21:3)

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   4. If a 400-year-old translation is the best Catholic Bible in print, only three possible conclusions could be drawn.
      Either
      1. The Church in the English-speaking world is dead
      or
      2. The Church in the English-speaking world is dead
      or possibly
      3. The Church in the English speaking world is dead

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      1. Perhaps the DR and Vulgate remarks were tongue-in-cheek.

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         1. The Vulgate remark was clearly a mockery of the idea of using the DR. It is impossible to say whether the suggestion to use the DR was facetious or not. There are DR onlyists just like there are KJV onlyists, and in the absence of obvious sarcasm or other context, it is impossible to say if it was serious or not.

            What is that law called where it says, “In the absence of context, it is impossible to tell the difference between satire and reality”

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            1. As I made the Vulgate remark I would like to say that I wasn’t making a mockery of anything, although I do think that using the DR for the lectionary in the Ordinary Form an odd idea if one considers the norms of Liturgiam Authenticam. It’s perfectly legitimate – and, as I understand it, canonically sanctioned – to use the DR to translate the Vulgate readings used during the Extraordinary Form, or rather supplement the Vulgate readings with the DR. Other translations may be substituted. The celebrant often does this as a prelude to his homily.

               I would make a very English distinction between mockery and speaking “tongue-in-cheek.” The latter is an altogether gentler form of discourse.

         2. Jim C. Just showed his cards with his new comment today. It was not tongue-in-cheek.

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            1. Correct, Cory. The ESV is infused with Calvinist theology, along with a dumbed-down, inelegant vocabulary. It’s the whole POINT behind its revision to the RSV. The NAB is awful, too. Catholics are better off with the DRC or at least the RSV2CE.

      2. Yes, you’re right, the Catholic Church is pretty much dead. It has a deficient normative liturgy, and constant doctrinal backsliding since V2. The Catholic Church offers Pride Masses and blessings for homosexual couples in their couplehood. Look at the massive loss of priests and nuns since 1970. Church-in-the-round and felt banners everywhere. Grotesque architecture in parishes is the norm. The LA Cathedral, serving the largest archdiocese in the US, is hideous. Even the translation used in the US for the Lectionary, the NAB, is a farce. A Catholic from 100 years ago stepping into a random Catholic parish would not recognize the liturgy and vibe as Catholic.

         The DRC is a fine translation. Nothing wrong with it. The RSVCE/2CE is/are not bad. The ESV is a step in the wrong direction. It has dumbed down vocabulary and considerably less elegance than the RSV. But if you like your Catholic Lectionary infused with Calvinist Reformed theology, that’s your prerogative.

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         1. Do you imagine that the post-Vatican II period has been the first time in Church history that there has been a problem with renegade priests and bishops?

            Have you heard of something called “The Protestant Reformation,” where priests like Huldrych Zwingli and others completely rewrote the Mass?

            Have you heard of Arianism? Donatism? Pelagianism? All of these heresies were started by renegade priests acting on their own authority,

            Moreover, what you are saying is false. “The Catholic Church” does not offer “Pride Masses”, renegade priests defying the Church do.

            And the whole “blessing homosexual couples” is a lie. Do you even know or understand the story behind that document? It was issued in response to a declaration by the Church of England that it would be blessing homosexual couples. In response, Pope Francis reiterated the traditional teaching of the Church that ANYONE may be blessed, but when you bless them, you bless the PERSON and not their sin. This didn’t change anything; it just repeated the traditional teaching. A homosexual, like every other human being on the face of the Earth, can be blessed, but the blessing should not be done in such a way as to imply endorsement of whatever sin the person might be engaged in.

            It is not “a blessing of homosexual couples”; the document is specifically written to exclude that possibility. That is like saying that if a heterosexual in an invalid marriage gets a blessing, then their invalid marriage is being blessed; it isn’t.

            Given the decision by the Church of England, it was completely appropiate for the Church to reiterate the traditional teaching, just as John Paul II reiterated the teaching against women’s ordination in response to the 1992 decision of the Church of England to ordain women, and Pope Pius XI reiterated the teaching against contraception in response to the 1930 Lambeth Conference decision of the Church of England to allow contraception.

            Did you know that the early Church dealt with the problem of women’s ordination? If you read the canons of the Council of Nicea and later ecumenical councils, you will see there are repeated condemnations of the idea that women can validly receive Holy Orders. Councils don’t just randomly make up ideas of things to condemn; they always address things that are actually happening. Numerous heretical sects were ordaining women.

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            1. Just a reminder to focus the discussion on the main topic of the post (modifications to the ESV lectionary). I’m not singling you out, BC (lots of good info in your comment), but just wanted to jump in before this conversation dives too far off-topic.

            2. Hear! Hear! Perhaps St. John Henry Newman might say today “to study history is to cease being a trad Catholic” Our century’s “Protestants.”

            3. BC, given your defense of Fiducia Supplicans (which is predicated on an plain misreading of the express words of the document, which state: “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of COUPLES of the Same Sex”) you apparently think doctrine is pliable and subject to revision. It’s thus no surprise that you’re preoccupied with revising the Lectionary, too, using the the latest Protestant fad translation, which happens to be an Evangelical/Calvinist translation. There’s nothing wrong with the Douay Rheims. It’s still used in the TLM. (Yes, yes, I know the NAB is “supposed” to be used. But at many Diocesan TLMs, thankfully, it is not.) I highly doubt the readings will be from the DRC at any Pride Mass. ;- )

            4. I understand the distinction between blessing an individual and blessing a couple in an irregular or sinful union but Rome seems to have spoken with forked tongue. Rome should have anticipated the likely consequences, confusion and doctrinal ambiguity that ensued from Fiducia supplicans. Just look at how Fr James Martin has exploited the document, despite the nuances of the text. But the real scandal is the break in catholicity by creating different approaches in different regions of the world.

               Whether any of this was inspired by or a reaction to the actions of the Church of England is moot. I somehow doubt it was a significant factor.

8. Cory,

   Thanks for the fantastic work here. Truly.

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9. Thanks Cory!

   Those of us in the US will be doing some similar sleuthing by the end of the decade as we figure what the differences are between the successor to the NABRE and our next lectionary.

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10. “The Lectionary made a change to: “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” The ESV-CE has: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

    This is an extremely important change, because “begotten” is the language of the Nicene Creed. “One and only” is an ambiguous phrase that has become popular among evangelicals due to the wide popularity of a view called “Social Trinitarianism”.

    Social Trinitarianism explicitly denies the Nicene Creed; it is difficult to explain, but Nicene Christianity holds that each of the three persons of the Trinity has a distinct will, and it denies that the relations between the three persons are eternal. Christ was not “eternally begotten of the Father before all worlds,” but he only became ‘The Son” when he became incarnate; before this, there was no “Father/Son” relationship.

    The ESV and other evangelical translations use the phrase “one and only son” because it allows for a Social Trinitarian interpretation, while “only begotten” clearly implies Nicea.

    By the way, the term is not “mute point”, it is “moot point”, “moot” means “not worthy of debate because it has become irrelevant”

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    1. I’ve seen quite a bit of lay commentary that criticizes the modern trend of translating “monogenes” in John 1:18 and 3:16 as “only” or “unique” or “one and only” (particularly irksome, as you note) rather than “only begotten.” The presence of “only begotten” in the RSV-2CE is a definite plus it has over both the original RSV-CE and the non-Lectionary ESV-CE. The quite literal Protestant NASB had “only begotten” in the 1995 edition, only to finally capitulate to “only” in the 2020 successor edition. Credit where credit is due, the John MacArthur-inspired LSB, released in 2021 specifically as an alternative revision of the 1995 NASB, for all its issues, held firm on “only begotten.”

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11. Great summary of why the rendering from John 1 is so important, BC.

    I am very interested in the Vulgate and Septuagint, but in the Anglophone world, I am left with the distinct impression that use of the Douay Rheims is merely antiquarian. If the Vulgate is a better text, translate it into modern English. If we can’t do that, it is a bit of a barrier to entry to try to convert people to Christ and to living in an eternal 1958. (I say this as someone who loves the Knox, DR and the Confraternity New Testament).

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    1. Some Protestants, such as Daniel Wallace, claim that the Church used to translate from the Vulgate because the Church taught that the Vulgate was divinely inspired and better than the Greek. Frankly, Daniel Wallace is too smart to think something so dumb.

       The real reason the Vulgate was preferred was

       a. Before the 19th century, the textual tradition of the Vulgate was superior to the Greek. People tend to forget that it used to be common to consult the Vulgate when translating the Greek. And the Vulgate and Septuagint are still older and more reliable than the Masoretic text, which Protestant scholars place frankly far too much trust in.

       b. The Vulgate provided a tradition of interpretation that was helpful. Some choices such as ‘Supersubstantial bread” in the Our Father, “Do penance”, and “She will crush your head” in Genesis 3:15. provided superior support for doctrine.

       c. The Vulgate was ancient and represented a very old version of the text, older than the earliest Greek manuscripts (before the discovery of the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) in the 19th century, and older than Jerome, because contrary to myth, Jerome did not translate the Vulgate from scratch, he merely updated a much older Latin translation dating from much earlier.

       It was only in the 20th century that Pius XII decreed that, because translation tends to be more accurate when it is from the original languages, Bible translations should be done from the original languages.

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12. I love and have been fed by the Ressourcement theology. I love having direct access in English to the four Latin Doctors, Bede, Bernard, John Chrysostom, and the Cappadocians. I would not trade them for the world. That being said, it seems clear to me now that an attitude of ripping up the results of organic development to start again “from the sources” is a peculiarly modern idea. It turns out that no matter what we do, we cannot quite shake off this modernity that bedevils us. It is not a coat; it is part of us.

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13. Jim C., I worry that some of your remarks, eg “Protestant fad”, could be read as lacking charity; plus, the DR is not “used” in the TLM, although it’s the default translation of the Vulgate in most EF missals in the English speaking world. I love the DR but for the OF it doesn’t align with the translation principles of Liturgiam Authenticam which, of course, originate with that arch Protestant faddist, Joseph Ratzinger. While we’re at it, perhaps we should lay the blame for the modern translation craze at the door of another Protestant faddist, Pope Pius XII, of blessed memory.

    Apologies but tongue is still firmly in my cheek.

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14. Excellent post. Thanks for keeping us updated. I’m highly curious in this translation.

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15. Cory and I would like to invite all readers who are interested to collaborate on the next phase of this project—completing the ESV Lectionary comparison for the Old Testament. There are a couple of basic requirements:

    1. A ChatGPT Plus subscription (for methodological consistency in using the same model for all comparisons)
    2. The Universalis app ($10)

    Working on the project together could speed up the process of doing comparisons and build community and fellowship along the way. If you are interested in participating, please email me at marc@catholicbibletalk.com by All Saints Day (Nov 1st). Once we have a group of volunteers, I will create a group email thread, and Cory will send out instructions on how to use the apps to access and compare the texts so there is consistency. We will divide up the comparisons by books of Scripture, with each person responsible for different books. I’ll look forward to hearing from anyone who is interested in taking part!

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    1. Last call for anyone who would like to volunteer to help out with the ESV Lectionary comparison for the Old Testament. Let me know by tomorrow (All Saints Day) if you’d like to take part!

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16. I just received the SPCK-published ESV-CE with Anglicized text, because this is the UK-printed Bible being promoted as the basis of the new Lectionary, and I found that some of the verses you mentioned as differing from the Lectionary are, in fact, identical to it. So apparently, there is a printed Bible that’s a little closer to the Lectionary than your source (Universalis). I’m waiting for the original ESV-CE, first published in India, to arrive. When it does, I will compare the same verses. Here are the verses you mention as differing that are in fact the same as the Lectionary (according to your crossing-out and red additions), at least in this printed copy:
    Matthew 7:16, 14:35, 26:17, 26:67, 27:30
    Mark 8:23, 12:41
    Luke 9:11, 9:14, 9:15, 14:18, 14:19, 16:11, 16:12, 16:26, 19:8
    John 9:6, 14:14
    Acts 10:40
    1 Corinthians 15:37
    2 Corinthians 11:25
    Galatians 4:23
    Hebrews 5:3

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    1. Universalis has the revised (lectionary version) of ESV-CE, whereas the SPCK ESV-CE is the same as the Augustine Bible and the edition published in India, although it is a “British Text” edition. The SPCK edition is not a lectionary-adjusted edition. CTS publishes a 4 volume “study edition” of the ESV-CE lectionary.

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       1. Hi Edward. I did not intend to imply that the SPCK version is “lectionary-adjusted.” In fact, the back cover states just the opposite. The Lectionary is supposedly based on SPCK or whatever source the SPCK used. The point of my post was to point out that whatever version of ESV-CE the author of the article (Cory) used for comparison with the Lectionary, it’s not the same version used by SPCK. In all the verses I listed, the SPCK is in fact identical to what Cory has in the Lectionary.

          By the way, do you own the four-volume study edition of the ESV-CE Lectionary? If so, we could use a photograph of the copyright page for this comparison project, as we’re about to compare the OT next. That would greatly help us untangle the provenance confusion that is already emerging in this very discussion.

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          1. Hello Scott, sorry I misunderstood what Timothy was saying. I don’t have the 4 volume set from CTS. I could try to get a photo of the copyright page of one of the sets used in my parish. The other sources of information are the CTS New Sunday, Weekday and Daily Missals. The copyright page for the Missal (identical in the Sunday and Weekday editions) reads:

             “The text of Sacred Scripture in this Sunday Missal is from the English Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition (ESV-CE), published by the Asian Trading Association, copyright 2017 by Crossway. All rights are reserved. The English Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition is published in the United Kingdom by SPCK publishing.

             “For the lectionary the ESV-CE text has been modified to assist the proclamation of scripture: with additional commas, the amending of parentheses and the use of capitalisation. The changes are made with the permission of Crossway but are not part of the ESV-CE text.”

             This seems to imply that the Indian (Asian Trading Association) and SPCK editions of the ESV-CE are identical, although I can’t be sure. Incidentally, Crossway doesn’t hold the copyright for the deuterocanonical books of the ESV-CE as they are an adaptation of those in the RSV, whose copyright rests with the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.

             By the way, for anyone thinking of buying the CTS Daily Missal, the whole print run has errors in the devotional appendix and index of saints. A separate booklet correcting the errata is available from CTS. An error free option is to purchase the Sunday and Weekday volumes separately.

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             1. Hello again, Edward, it’s Timothy (from Scottsdale). Thank you for providing the copyright page information. I luckily found a copyright page for the ATC edition, which I was able to compare to my SPCK, and I think I understand what’s going on now. I will copy and paste something I recently emailed to Marc:

                [begin copy-paste]

                I was able to find the copyright page of the Indian-published (ATC: Asian Trading Corporation) ESV-CE, where the ESV-CE was first published. It is not the Anglicized version. After studying the copyright pages (a tangled mess) of the ATC and SPCK editions, I think I know what’s going on. Here’s a brief chronology.

                In 2001, the ESV was introduced, with Protestant canon only. In 2002, our British friends made an Anglicized version, starting a tradition that Crossway seems to have implemented ever since of always making an Anglicized version of an American original for the UK market. In 2009, the “apocryphal” books were translated and immediately Anglicized. In 2016, a “Text Edition” came out that was the latest (until 2025) of several minor text updates that Crossway has issued since 2002. In 2017, the Bishops of India took that 2016 update of the ESV and made changes, producing the ESV-CE. That same year, Crossway made an Anglicized version, as they always seem to do, that apparently did not see the light of day until SPCK published it in 2021. Since the Bishops of England began preparing the new Lectionary in 2018, they clearly didn’t base it on the printed SPCK, which wasn’t published until 2021. Rather, both the SPCK and the Lectionary probably started with a digital file of the 2017 Anglicized ESV-CE licensed by Crossway. (What’s odd is that my Anglicized SPCK still has words like “baptized” rather than “baptised.”)

                Long story short, there are two versions: the original ESV-CE (used in the ATC and Augustine editions) and the Anglicized ESV-CE (used in the SPCK edition and adapted by the Lectionary). Cory used the former for his comparison; the Lectionary used the latter and made further adaptations.

                I would recommend that Cory revise his article, perhaps when the OT part is finished, using the Anglicized ESV-CE, if he can find it, as his basis of comparison because that is what the British Lectionary editors appear to have used as their starting point. That way, we would have a clearer idea of what the Lectionary editors actually changed. Also, when comparing the OT books, Psalms should be ignored, because the Lectionary uses the Abbey Psalms, not any version of the ESV-CE.

                [end of copy-paste]

                Regarding the deuterocanonical books, my SPCK says Crossway has the copyright on those from 2009 and 2017. Those books are indeed a revision of the RSV, but so is the rest of the ESV.

                Thanks again for the copyright info. If you want to snap a photo of the Lectionary copyright page after mass, I would be thrilled with that. I’m a Yank stuck over here in “No Kings” land, so I don’t have access. But no worries if you can’t. I don’t know if pics can be shared in these responses, so if you take a pic, you can send it to timothydeanroth@gmail.com.

             2. Thank you all for your attention to this. I was using the ESV-CE from Verbum, which you have correctly discovered has not only has spelling and vocabulary differences with the ESV Anglicized, but also differences in phrasing. I will get this New Testament list updated, and moving forward we will use the ESV-CE Anglicized version to compare against the Lectionary for the Old Testament. I appreciate the help!

17. Timothy from Scottsdale,

    Thanks for the investigating here. Really good stuff.

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18. As much as I am enjoying a lot of the discussion and appreciation for the NV on this site, I can’t help but note that this appreciation is quite new. There are numerous articles, both in Catholic publications and scholarly journals, especially from the early 2000s, in which Catholic scholars openly criticized the textual principles of the NV and responded with clear hostility to Liturgiam Authenticam’s language about the NV. The response to the Old Testament of the NV was infamously brutal from both Catholic critical scholars, who certainly didn’t want to be locked into the textual scholarship of the 1970s forever, and traditionalists, who believed the NV’s general allegiance to the Masoretic Hebrew meant that some liturgically beloved or patristically vouched-for readings were snuffed out. The New Testament of the NV was generally better received, since most of the changes to the Clementine edition were minor and stylistic, although it did result in the elimination of many of those places where the Vulgate and the Byzantine text/Textus Receptus stood against the Alexandrian text.

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    1. Hi Evan. For a balanced view of the reception of the Nova Vulgata, see this article by a faithful Catholic scholar:

       https://www.academia.edu/33939780/The_Neo_Vulgate_as_Official_Liturgical_Translation_full_text_

       See also this: https://www.bible-researcher.com/liturgiam-authenticam3.html

       As is often the case, the harshest and most uncharitable critics often shout the loudest and get the most attention. When it comes to the Nova Vulgata, these tend to be the scribes of old, those who want to be the gatekeepers and who resent a higher authority meddling with their pet theories. The loudest criticisms seem to have come from the Americans, the CBA, which last August had a “land acknowledgment” at their annual meeting, so they seem more interested in chasing the latest political fads rather than humbly submitting to the guidance of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised would lead us into all truth. And if you look at their notes in the NABRE, it’s clear many of them don’t even believe. I’m more interested in the quieter, gentler voices of those Biblical scholars who daily say with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Those indeed are the scholars God raised up to create the Nova Vulgata, scholars who were the best of the best and who collaborated with and submitted their proposed emendations to hundreds of other scholars from around the world before reaching a final decision. I’m also interested in the gentle critiques of those who would see opportunities for improving the Nova Vulgata. And the argument offered by the most sour CBA types about not wanting to be locked in 1970s textual scholarship is a non-starter. So the better option is to be stuck in fourth-century textual scholarship? We need a stable, unified text for liturgical proclamation. But having said text doesn’t mean the work of text criticism has to stop. When the time is right, the fruits of this scholarship can be used to make the Biblical text ever more perfect. In the meantime, I receive with gratitude what the Holy Spirit has given us through the magisterium: the Nova Vulgata. Even if the magisterium and the Nova Vulgata, like all created things, are still journeying toward ever greater perfection. Let us humbly participate in that journey. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

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       1. I really like all of the points you made. Thanks for sharing!

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19. Love reading blog posts like this!

    It’s probably an unusual opinion, but my dream Bible would be the ESV-CE (lectionary edition) with the introductions and the notes from the NABRE. Alas, I highly doubt something like that will ever be published.

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20. I wonder if anyone has done work like this on the NRSV-CE and the Canadian lectionary…

    Especially given the drama back in the 2000s over the phrasing of the NRSV

    Reply

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