Put Down That National Council of Churches ESV - English Standard Version

 

 The ESV is sold as KJV-like, but it relies on the 
translation of the National Council of Churches, the Revised Standard Version, which began by erasing the Virgin Birth in Isaiah 7:10.

Does the English Standard Version Stand in the Classic Mainstream of English Bible Translations? 

By L. Brigden, Senior Editorial Consultant (Linguistics)

Also available to be read as a PDF. 

I will quote some of the article below, because it is written so well:

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The First Departure: Textual Basis

"While the ESV claims to build upon the Tyndale and Authorised (King James) Version tradition, it is in fact based upon the Revised Standard Version, itself a revision of the Revised Version, and neither the Revised Version nor the Revised Standard Version can be reasonably considered a continuation of the Tyndale-AV tradition, but represent on the contrary a dramatic break from that tradition.5 This fact was clearly recognised by some scholars at the time of the Revised Version,6 and since that time has been acknowledged by numerous others.7 But this dramatic break in the classic mainstream of English Bible translations is quietly passed over by the publishers of the ESV.

Those acquainted with the history of the Revised Version are aware that Westcott and Hort, two influential scholars on the committee convened by the Anglican Church to undertake the revision of the Authorised (King James) Version, acted quite contrary to their instructions which charged them to make no change in the textual basis of the revision except where absolutely necessary.8 On the contrary, they quite boldly changed it, supplanting the Received Text with their own Critical Text.

Remarkably the Anglican Church, instead of protesting the unprincipled actions of these two men, mildly acquiesced in their boldness and accepted the work of revision.9 Subsequently and sadly, most other churches have also acquiesced and silently passed over the weighty and still unanswered objections raised against Westcott and Hort’s work. Thus, ‘truth is fallen in the street’ (Isaiah 59.14) and an unsubstantiated textual theory seems to have swept all before it, displacing the time honoured Received Text of the church with a newly devised, and never before generally received, Critical Text. And thus to this day the Critical Text still holds sway, even though the premises upon which Westcott and Hort’s theory relied have long since been found to be unsubstantiated."

and later - 

 The textual style of the ESV is from the RSV, whose lineage is Westcott-Hort's imagination, not the Majority Text.

"The Second Departure: Formal Equivalence and Gender Neutral Language

The ESV claims that it 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’.33 This is, of course, to claim to follow the principle of formal equivalence. But on closer examination it becomes evident that there are a significant number of times when the ESV does not ‘capture the precise wording of the original text’, but clearly departs from that wording and from the principle of formal equivalence. The reason is to be found in the ESV’s compliance with ‘gender neutral’ language.

Translation of anthropos

We begin by examining how the Greek word ἄνθρωπος (anthropos) is translated in the ESV. The word is frequently translated in the ESV as the gender neutral word ‘person’, whereas the AV translates it as ‘man’. For example, at 1 Corinthians 2.11:

AV: For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?

ESV: For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?"

 The ESV leans on Eugene Nida's demand for "dynamic equivalence" - his smokescreen for changing everything.

 This was created in Spanish to pave the way for English translations to be just as unfaithful to the KJV tradition of precise translation.

"The Colorado Springs Guidelines

The adoption of gender neutral language in the ESV can be traced to its adherence to the Colorado Springs Guidelines,40 which were drawn up in 1997 in response to such gender neutral translations as the New International Version Inclusive (NIVI) which first appeared in 1995. While the Colorado Springs Guidelines objected to the more extreme implementation of the feminist philosophy in Bible translation, they still complied with feminist philosophy so far as to allow the translator, at least on occasions, to avoid gender specific terms such as ‘man’ and ‘he’ even though such terms were literal translations of the Greek. This was done on the grounds that the modern English language tended to avoid generic ‘man’ and ‘he’ and it was felt that by continuing to use such words some misunderstanding might arise. But this was simply a partial compliance with feminism and an acceptance of the advances which that un-biblical philosophy had already made on modern society.

This compliance is evident from guidelines 5, 6 and 7 in part A of the Colorado Springs Guidelines which are as follows.

5. In many cases, anthropoi refers to people in general, and can be translated as “people” rather than “men”. The singular anthropos should ordinarily be translated “man” when it refers to a male human being.

6. Indefinite pronouns such as tis can be translated “anyone” rather than “any man”.

7. In many cases, pronouns such as oudeis can be translated “no one” rather than “no man”.

The allowance given by these guidelines to the use of the more gender neutral terms ‘people’, ‘anyone’ and ‘no one’ instead of the distinctively masculine terms ‘men’, ‘any man’ and ‘no man’ cannot be justified on linguistic grounds alone. The influence of feminism upon the wording of these guidelines is therefore quite evident. As we have already remarked, there is no warrant for ἄνθρωποι (anthropoi) being translated as ‘people’. The correct translation is ‘men’. "

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GJ - Those who have fallen for the ESV are trying to distance themselves from the even worse NIV. ELDONA is just as bad as the NCC Left-wing churches and the supposedly conservative WELS-LCMS-ELS-ELCA. All the organized Lutherans shun, repudiate, and reject the King James and the Majority Text, but their praise bands and Calvinist hymnals will save the day, they think.

 OH! I see! ESV!

 The Luther-Tyndale-KJV tradition has been abandoned by the Dick, Jane, and Sally apostate leaders.

 Good News for Modern Man was written this way. Go away Nida-soldiers, Go Go Go.