This is part two of a three-part series on why I preach from the Christian Standard Bible translation. If you haven’t read Part 1, I would recommend starting with that post and then coming back here.
Enter the ESV
The ESV, an evangelical revision of the RSV, hit the scene in 2001 and very quickly embedded itself as the Bible of choice for many, especially in the Reformed wing of the evangelical world. I became Reformed in my understanding of salvation in my late teens and, at the time, the teachers I listened to used the ESV (except for John MacArthur – he was an NASB guy)
At the time of writing, my previous two churches both used the ESV avidly. When I began to teach in the church, that meant switching from the NASB (which I had grown to love at the time) to the ESV. In some ways, it reminded me of the KJV – a very elevated register, a slightly more complex sentence structure and an attempt at being closer to the original texts or formal equivalence to use the technical terms.
Before I go on, let me be clear: the ESV is trustworthy and, in some ways, really good translation. It is faithful to the original languages, it doesn’t insert wonky theology into the text and it communicates God’s Word beautifully. Even today, if I was asked to use the ESV at a church I was speaking at, I would without hesitation.
That said, I started to have some problems with the ESV – and with a few other translations that tended to be more preferred in my camp/tribe/theological persuasions. For a second, let’s talk about translations more broadly.
How Translations Work
Typically, translations of the Bible fit in two categories:
Formal Equivalence
Bill Mounce, best known for his bestselling Greek textbook Basics of Biblical Greek, describe the principles of formal equivalence as:
[showing] a strong preference for replicating the form of the Greek and Hebrew, and only move to meaning when translating words doesn’t make sense.
Standard translations that would reflect this emphasis would be the ESV, the NASB (and its little brother, the LSB) and the KJV. Sometimes, you’ll hear people use the language of a “word for word” translation (I’ll explain why that’s unhelpful language in a moment)
Dynamic Equivalence
Greek scholar Eugene Nida was one of the first to use the phrase “dynamic equivalence” in reference to Bible translation. In his book Towards a Science of Translating, published in 1964, Dr. Nida gave this definition:
A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture; it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message.
In terms even Kofi can understand, dynamic equivalence works to communicate the meaning of a passage in ways familiar to the current audience instead of strictly in terms of the original audience. Examples of dynamic equivalent translation would be the NIV (kind of) and the NLT. Just like formal equivalents are often called “word for word”, dynamic equivalents are known as “thought for thought” translations.
The Problem of Translation
There’s just a small problem with that:
No translation is purely thought for thought, nor word-for-word.
If you speak more than one language, you know this by experience. I happen to speak three languages – English, German and Twi (one of many langauages spoken in Ghana). I have had the privilege of translating between all three languages and I can tell you now – you have to apply both literal translation and just going for meaning when you can.
For example, if I want to communicate the importance of practice in English, I’d probably use the proverb, “Practice makes perfect”. The German equivalent to that phrase is, “Übung macht den Meister” – practice makes the master. If I were translating from German to English, I could translate that literally. It would get the words across…but that doesn’t communicate to my audience the same thing as saying, “Practice makes perfect”.
On the other hand, if I wanted to ask for a piece of cheesecake, there’s a 1:1 word for that – Käsekuchen. Incidentally, I now want some cheesecake as I write…
The reality is, all translation is a fine-tuned balance of word-for-word translation and sometimes capturing the spirit of what’s being said.
Of course, you can have a truly word-for-word translation – for example, the Young’s Literal Translation, and it reads like Yoda became a Presbyterian. You can have a genuinely thought-for-thought translation like the Message, but that is far more of a paraphrase than an attempt to translate.
Most well-known translations acknowledge this, for example, like the preface to the ESV:
Every translation is at many points a trade-off between literal precision and readability, between “formal equivalence” in expression and “functional equivalence” in communication, and the ESV is no exception. Within this framework we have sought to be “as literal as possible” while maintaining clarity of expression and literary excellence. Therefore, to the extent that plain English permits and the meaning in each case allows, we have sought to use the same English word for important recurring words in the original; and, as far as grammar and syntax allow, we have rendered Old Testament passages cited in the New in ways that show their correspondence. Thus in each of these areas, as well as throughout the Bible as a whole, we have sought to capture all the echoes and overtones of meaning that are so abundantly present in the original texts. As an essentially literal translation, taking into account grammar and syntax, the ESV thus seeks to carry over every possible nuance of meaning in the original words of Scripture into our own language.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016).
The Translation Oversight Committee, who worked on the ESV, note the tension while acknowledge they went for more formal equivalence than less as well as pursuing “literary excellence” (a concept I’ll come back to the third part of this series).
Most translations in their prefaces will explain their philosophy and why – which brings me back to my story.
I started to question whether this paradigm of literal vs. dynamic translation was all that helpful – I’ll get to where I landed in the next part of this series.