{"id":724,"date":"2008-12-08T09:51:11","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T14:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2008\/12\/08\/the-esv-and-translation-boo-boos\/"},"modified":"2008-12-08T09:51:11","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T14:51:11","slug":"the-esv-and-translation-boo-boos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/08\/the-esv-and-translation-boo-boos\/","title":{"rendered":"The ESV and Translation Boo-Boos"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think the ESV is a dream translation and you want to continue in your ignorant bliss, don’t read this<\/a>.  The rest of you will have some good laughs.  (Part 1<\/a> talks about the problems of translating too literally.  Parts 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>, and 6<\/a> give more examples.  Oops.  There were two parts when I started writing this; now there are 13<\/a>.  You don’t have to read them all; maybe just start with a scan of part 2<\/a>.)  Here’s the beginning of the conclusion<\/a> (Part 13):<\/p>\n

\n

As noted earlier, this survey is just the tip of the iceberg. It should be evident, however, that the ESV needs a major revision with reference to its English style. I would recommend that the ESV committee enlist competent English stylists to carefully review the entire text with an eye toward standard English idiom. <\/p>\n

There is an unfortunate tendency among biblical scholars\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwho live in the world of Hebrew and Greek\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto think they are getting it “right” if they mimic the form of the original languages. The unfortunate result is a tendency to create “half-idioms” (half-English\/half-Greek), transferring a few words of the original, but missing its meaning in standard English. This is what the ESV does when people speak “with a double heart” (Ps. 12:2), have “news in their mouths” (2Sam. 18:25), “go in and out among them” (Acts 1:21; 9:28), or “fill up the measure of their fathers” (Matt. 23:32). These are half-idioms\u00e2\u20ac\u201dBiblish rather than English. As noted earlier, idioms work as a whole<\/em> rather than through their individual parts. In translating the English idiom, “He’s really in a pickle,” it would be a mistake to preserve cucumbers in the translation. It is not the component parts but the statement as a whole that communicates its meaning. <\/p>\n

Some critics have claimed that the only way to protect the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture is to translate literally. This, of course, is linguistic nonsense. The translation that best <\/em>preserves the verbal and plenary inspiration of Scripture is one that clearly and accurately communicates the meaning<\/em> of the text as the original author intended it to be heard. The Greek idioms that Paul or John or Luke used did not sound awkward, obscure or stilted to their original readers. They sounded like normal idiomatic Greek. Verbal and plenary inspiration is most <\/em>respected when we allow the original meaning of the text to come through.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you think the ESV is a dream translation and you want to continue in your ignorant bliss, don’t read this.  The rest of you will have some good laughs.  (Part 1 talks about the problems of translating too literally.  Parts 3, 4, 5, and 6 give more examples.  Oops.  There were two parts when\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}