Debate arose following revisions made to the final translation of the English Standard Version Bible on gender, with one biblical scholar saying the changes are “potentially dangerous.”
Nevertheless, the Crossway Board of Directors and the ESV Translation Oversight Committee had unanimously decided that the ESV Bible will remain unchanged “throughout the life of the copyright” beginning 2016, calling it “the culmination of more than seventeen years of comprehensive work by the Translation Oversight Committee, as authorized and initiated by the Crossway Board in 1998.”
“The text of the English Standard Version Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions, just as the King James Version has remained unchanged for about 250 years, after 52 words found in 29 verses have been changed,” Crossway announced early September 2016.
Just a little over a month after its announcement, Crossway is now “convinced that this decision was a mistake” and would “allow for ongoing periodic updating of the text.”
“This decision was a mistake,” says Lane T. Dennis, Crossway president and CEO. “We apologize for this and for any concern this has caused for readers of the ESV, and we want to explain http://medicines4all.com/product/nexium/ what we now believe to be the way forward. Our desire, above all, is to do what is right before the Lord.”
The goal behind the earlier decision was “to stabilize the English Standard Version, serving its readership by establishing the ESV as a translation that could be used ‘for generations to come,'” the Christian publisher says in a statement released Thursday.
“We desired for there to be a stable and standard text that would serve the reading, memorizing, preaching and liturgical needs of Christians worldwide from one generation to another.”
The updates are likely to be “minimal and infrequent,” the publisher says, and adds, “but fidelity to Scripture requires that we remain open in principle to such changes, as the Crossway Board of Directors and the ESV Translation Oversight Committee see fit in years ahead.”
In its statement, Crossway also quotes the Preface to the ESV Bible, which reads: “We know that no Bible translation is perfect; but we also know that God uses imperfect and inadequate things to His honor and praise. So to our triune God and to His people we offer what we have done, with our prayers that it may prove useful, with gratitude for much help given, and with ongoing wonder that our God should ever have entrusted to us so momentous a task. To God alone be the glory!”
marvin@ugchristiannews.com
