Venerable RSV given a faith lift By Walter Taylor Volume 35, Number 1 Posted February 8, 2002 Given the already large number of English translations of the Bible available, the publication of yet another translation may not seem so significant. Yet, a new version has just been published that warrants our notice. It is called the English Standard Bible (ESV), a revision of the venerable Revised Standard Version (RSV). Like the RSV before it, the ESV is a translation marked by accuracy in translation and flowing literary English. Many of us know the RSV, inasmuch as it became the standard translation for mainline Protestants in the United States, and has been widely used in the larger English-speaking world. The RSV was the heir of what is called the Standard Bible translation tradition, which dates back to William Tyndale’s New Testament [1536], and takes in, among others, the Geneva Bible, the King James Version [1611] and the revisions that followed. The RSV was first published in 1952 (with a second edition of the New Testament in 1971). Like its ancestor the KJV, the RSV was able to provide an accurate yet literary translation, which made it eminently usable for the preacher, the student and the Biblical scholar. Despite its initial condemnation by some (largely because it was sponsored by the National Council of Churches), the RSV proved itself a superb translation, commanding the respect of scholars from both mainline and evangelical circles. Yet, the RSV was in need of revision. Among other things, it had retained certain archaic English terms (among others, its continued use of thee and thou in address to God). In 1990 the New Revised Standard Version hit the shelves (copyright 1989), as the long awaited revision of the RSV. Yet, the NRSV, in choosing to use inclusive language, took liberties in its translation of the Biblical text. Words that had been singular in number in the original Hebrew and Greek were translated as plurals to avoid use of the generic he, often with very bad results. In texts like Psalm 1 (where “Blessed is the man …” became “Blessed are those”), the contrast between the lone individual who serves God over against the mass of those following a different way gets lost entirely. Again, take the NRSV rendering of Mark 8:34: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (emphasis added). There were other problems in the NRSV. Its rendering of John 1:14 (“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” [emphasis added]) softens the uniqueness of Christ, as opposed to the traditional rendering of this passage (“the Father’s only Son”), which appears in the NRSV in a footnote. Given the context of John’s theology, and his use of the words Father and Son throughout the Gospel, one wonders why this passage was translated this way. Over time, many of us who first greeted the NRSV with enthusiasm became disillusioned with it and looked for another translation. Some embraced the New International Version (NIV), though the NIV has a different translation philosophy. In a nutshell, the NIV is less literal. So, many of us simply returned to the RSV, and mourned that it was increasingly going out of print. This loss of a good translation was not missed by a number of evangelical scholars, who were able to get copyright permission from the NCC to produce a revision of the RSV. Under the direction of J.I. Packer, this revision has been published as the English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway, a nonprofit publisher). Produced by an international team of significant evangelical Biblical scholars, the ESV rings with familiarity for anyone who has used the RSV (indeed, some 92 percent of the RSV text is retained in the ESV). Gone, however, are the archaic uses of thee and thou. Furthermore, the ESV translates singulars as singulars and plurals as plurals, retaining the use of the generic he where its equivalent occurs in the original text. It does use relative pronouns in places where the RSV used the words man and men, yet again only when the original text warrants it, and not as a conscious choice to alter the text for ideological purposes. For example, in Mark 8:34 the RSV reads: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself …” The ESV reads: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself.” In the Greek, the word for “man” does not occur, but only a relative pronoun. Thus, the ESV better reflects the original Greek text. All in all, the ESV represents a wonderful continuation of the Standard Bible tradition, and for anyone familiar with the RSV, the ESV is an easy and logical replacement. Walter Taylor is pastor of Forest Park Presbyterian Church, a Confessing Church, in Statesville, N.C.

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