The ESV & the RSV

Yes, Crossway paid the National Council of Churches for permission to adapt the NCC's Revised Standard Version for the Evangelical market.

From the ESV preface:

The liberal church group was in financial straits at the time, and the infusion of cash from Crossway kept it from going belly up.

Prior to this foray into Bible publishing, Crossway was best known for providing us the spiritual warfare fantasies of Frank Peretti.

 

Many of the problems cited by the Evangelicals concerning the RSV were corrected in the ESV, for example the virgin birth was restored. The issue is not if the ESV is so bad it must be reject, no the issue is, what is the best translation for enlightening believers. It needs to be understandable, i.e. written in modern English, and needs to accurately convey what the inspired word actually says.

As others have stated the ESV is simply a warmed over RSV, and it does even include some of the revisions found in the New RSV. Many churches are dropping the NIV because of the wholesale gender inclusive language, but that is sort of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. The NIV is easier to read and understand and thus may be more effective in building up believers in their knowledge of God.

Bottom line, the more you use and study from the ESV, the less you will like it, because it does not deliver on its statements. Too many grammatical transformations, too many word mistranslations, and too many archaic words and clumsy phrases.

Here is just one of many sites providing a comparison of the ESV to the RSV: http://www.bible-researcher.com/esv.html

 

believe that the esv kept roughly 85% of the Rsv renderings in their revision, and mainly corrected what they saw as being messianic/prophetic passages, where the rsv tended to 'go liberal!"

Also think the esv team was using the standard hebrew text much more so then Rsv team did...

 

The ESV kept about 93 or 94% of the 1971 RSV text I believe.

 

So was a substantial percentage!

Think the rsv not nearly as bad a version as some would have it being, but also think that when it erred, it went big time!

 

The RSV's rendering of Isaiah 7:14 was not one of its errors. Even the NASB has a footnote saying :"or young woman."

 

Would say that the Holy Spirit defined how God viewed what it meant though in the NT!

Think their biggest problem was not reading NT views back into OT passages, as the Spirit commentated for us what God saw it as being!

 

It would be a big problem for me if translations read NT views back into the Old Testament. Let the O.T. stand translated as it is without fiddling with it.

 

Did not all of the prophetic word though refer to Jesus, so why not see and translate Him as being th one spoken about?

 

It depends on what you mean by prophetic word.

 

OT passages that were given to highlight the coming of Him to earth as the coming Messiah, in fulfillment of the promise God made to Adam/Eve!

 

You had said "all of the prophetic word" in the initial post I responded to. But many prophesies in the Old Tesament were fulfilled later in Old Testament times. Many prophesies were not directly related to Jesus.

 

You are correct, was just referring to those that were meant to be for jesus, and that the NY confirmed as being towards him!

 

Please make an effort to edit your posts. New York is not the subject-at-hand.

 

Correct, should have been NT....