I thought I’d try a little experiment today. Searching Google Blogsearch for the acronyms of bible translations, then ranking them by number of hits. In the blogosphere we can become so insular and read only blogs that agree with us. As a result I might for example come to the conclusion that the ESV was the bloggers favorite translation as it sure does seem to be so in my neck of the woods. Actually, considering the attention given to the various translations in most Christian Bookstores, the ESV actually does come out quite well in this test.
Since the ESV sits quite comfortably somewhere between the NIV and the KJV, in the long run I predict a good future for it. Certainly in our church we have found a number of people who in the past never moved from either the KJV or the NASB have found it easy to adopt the ESV. Also, those who love the NIV find that the ESV isn’t so very different to that version either. Thus the ESV is proving ever more popular at least in our local setting.
Googlesearch Bible Translation Rankings
NIV 18,294
KJV 9,992
NLT 5,395
ESV 5,189
RSV 3,553
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