David Warnock, at the nicely named (at least for a longtime HHGG fan who is enjoying listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio broadcasts on MP3) 42 Blog has a really good post about the ESV.
Lots of thought provoking questions, and a caveat:
My main concern is that this is being used as a new way of dividing the Church, I can already predict claims that "Real Christians use the ESV" and implying (or even stating openly) that those who don't are not really Christian (don't laugh, it has happened before, I am writing from personal experience here).Personally the very first example on the ESV's "Compare Translations" page terrifies me. They translate Gen 5:2 as:
Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.The use of "Man" even with a capital is simply indefensible in contemporary English, as least as she is spoke outside Churches!
Both lexicography and context show that אָדָם * here is inclusive, but in contemporary English "Man" (even with the capital) is expected to refer to a gendered entity, especially when the capital follows "he named them...".
Psalm 8:4 shows this gender bias, and adds a hint of doctrinal bias too:
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"Mother's son" would be more defensible here than "son of man"! (Of course we could keep the intertextuality if we rendered ο υιος του ανθρωπου in a similar way - as we surely should.)
It seems that for this translation at least - translation is a/effected by doctrine - how sad.
Stupid mistake corrected thanks to Ed Cook! back ¶ 7:28 AM
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Tim, another problem with that traditional wording of Ps. 8:4 is that it is inaccurate (I know using that word "inaccurate" is shocking, especially in discussions of versions where accuracy was held up so highly). Here's the wording, again: "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"
Here is the accuracy issue that I see. English "and" blocks interpreting the conjuncts it joins as being co-referential. And yet Hebrew poetic form calls for "man" and "son of man" to be co-referential here. The easiest solution so that the Hebrew form is preserved while also maintaining accuracy is to delete English "and." We are attempting this way to get an English appositive construction. Unfortunately, English speakers do not understand what Semitic "son of ..." means, so even without the "and," the co-referentiality is not clear. We may just have to give up some of the form in order to preserve accuracy in translation. Such are the difficult choices confronting Bible translators.
By 
Wayne Leman, at
June 23, 2005 9:37 AM
In Gen. 5:2 the word is adam, not enosh. Doesn't change the point, though.
By EMC, at
June 23, 2005 10:54 AM
