english standard version

As a child growing up in a Christian denomination that was generally resistant to the liberalism of the 1960s and 70s, I read the King James Version of the Holy Bible. Someone once provided a "Living Bible," which is not a Bible. Without discerning the issues that were at stake, I still managed to set it aside in favor of my faithful Authorized Version.

My grandmother had promised a tatted cross as a bookmark for any one of her several dozen grandchildren who could memorize Psalm 23. From the King James Version.

We read from it, memorized from it, heard sermons preached from it, sang worship choruses from it, purchased study Bibles based upon it, and typically examined our greeting cards to ensure that the scripture quotations were accurately quoted from it.

Another memory from my grandmother -- she kept a small promise box on her dining room table. This was a molded plastic box in the shape of a loaf of bread. It held small cards, each containing a promise from God's Word, the bread of life. When visiting Grandma, she nearly always invited one of us to draw a card from the promise box and read the Bible verse before enjoying a sweet roll or a slice of freshly baked bread. Her promises were, of course, from the King James Version.

After research and prayerful consideration of key issues (which I will mention in future posts), I am reading and studying from the English Standard Version, a new translation project that began in the year 2000. This has been an amazing blessing to our family, and I'll make brief comments occasionally in the blog.

From the ESV website:

"The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.

In contrast to the ESV, some Bible versions have followed a “thought-for-thought” rather than “word-for-word” translation philosophy, emphasizing “dynamic equivalence” rather than the “essentially literal” meaning of the original. A
“thought-for-thought” translation is of necessity more inclined to reflect the interpretive opinions of the translator and the influences of contemporary culture."