Why I stopped reading the English Standard Version of the Bible
Gird your loins, folks, we're about to go in!
Growing up, I didn’t give much thought to Bible translations. My first Bible was an NIV protected by a cow-print cover with my name written in pink sharpie: “Savannah’s Bible DO NOT TOUCH!”
My senior year of high school, I had a conversion experience and took my Bible reading more seriously. At that point I was in the Reformed/Calvinist tradition which recommended the ESV, so I bought it and didn’t look back. In my experience, folks in the Reformed tradition were elitist about this translation. For them, other versions were fine but not as “true to the original” as the ESV. When I started graduate school, my professors recommended the NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible for many reasons, one of which was gender-inclusive language.1
I bought the NRSV and noticed differences immediately, so I began concurrently studying passages with the ESV, NRSV, Message, NIV, and KJV.
It was fascinating. It felt like I was watching the same movie from different seats in the theater.
This was my first experience with the very human process of Bible translation. If you’ve ever been in a theology class, you’ve probably heard this: “All translation is interpretation.” And no translation is perfect because we’re so far removed from the original texts in terms of language, culture, and time. Even more so, modern translations are shaped by our own modern culture. The NRSV moved towards gender-inclusive language at the end of the 20th century, in part, because of cultural shifts which sought to better include women in the church.
Which brings me back to the ESV.
After the NRSV moved towards gender-inclusive language in the 1990s, a team formed to create a Bible translation to support “conservative, complementarian interpretations” of the Bible.2 This was to combat what was perceived as feminist ideology taking over Bible translations.
One of my favorite examples is in Proverbs 31:17.
Many versions, including the NRSV, translate verse 17 to say something like, “She girds her loins with strength, and makes her arms strong.” Gird your loins is masculine behavior and is typically used to describe men going into battle in the Bible.3 The editors of the ESV feminized this descriptor to say this instead: “She dresses herself with strength and makes her arms strong.”
From she girds her loins to she dresses herself.
This changes the meaning a bit, doesn’t it? It takes us from imagining a woman getting ready for battle to a woman getting ready for tea.
It’s worth noting the ESV is still the only translation that translates the Hebrew to “dresses herself” in verse 17. Dr. Samuel Perry, whose work I link at the bottom of this post, created a graph of the interpretive choices the ESV made as it relates to gender and women:
Fascinating, right?
I don’t feel any heat as I write this. And I don’t hate the ESV. In fact, the ESV and NRSV have the same parent translation: the RSV! And if you read the ESV and love it, that’s great! However, I’ve girded my loins and given my ESV to Goodwill and I wanted to share why. If you’re on the hunt for a new translation or if you want to learn about different translations, I hope this will prompt your curiosity to look into what has shaped your Bible!
-Savannah
Writing Prompt: Talk about your relationship to different translations of the Bible. Did you grow up with a certain translation? Do you read a different one now?
Recommended Reading: This research from Dr. Sam Perry
Recommended Reading, Part Two: The NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Bible
What do I mean by gender-inclusive language? A simple example is found in Psalm 1. Where the ESV translates Psalm 1 as “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked” the NRSV translates it as “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked.” Another example is saying “Brothers and sisters” rather than just “brothers” in the Epistles, unless the commission was specific to men/women. Another example is in Mark 1:17 where Jesus says “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” The NRSV has translated this to be “fishers of people.” You get the point!
Perry, Samuel L. “The Bible as a Product of Cultural Power: The Case of Gender Ideology in the English Standard Version.” Sociology of Religion 81, no. 1 (Spr 2020): 68–92. doi:10.1093/socrel/srz022.
See Exodus 12:11; 2 Samuel 20:8; 1 Kings 18:46; 2 Kings 4:29; 2 Kings 9:1; Jeremiah 1:17; Daniel 10:5; Nahum 2:1, Job 38:3, Job 40:7
This is so interesting but also makes me a bit mad! I have always read NIV and wonder how that fairs in comparison. It makes me laugh now when people say anyone can read and easily understand the bible- not really!
Oooooooh now I’m curious about the NRSV! I have an ESV Bible that I still use from my college days (got saved at a reformed Presbyterian college ministry) and for that reason, it’s still something I really treasure. The translation I currently use most is the CSB translation, which is what the She Reads Truth ladies use for their Bibles and while it definitely has a conservative slant, it’s more inclusive than the ESV for sure. The CSB reads “she draws on her strength and reveals that her arms are strong.” The footnote mentions that another translation could read “she wraps strength around her like a belt” and I think that’s a cool way to look at it!