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<\/a><\/p>\nThis review was first published by the CBE, and I am in complete agreement with Phil Paynes critique.\u00a0 It does not do justice at all that the various passages in the NT that support women doing various sorts of ministry. In some case it relies on totally fictitious readings of the Greek.\u00a0 For instance, there is no evidence at all for a Greek make name Junias\u2014 that would be rather like \u2018a boy named Sue\u2019.\u00a0 You don\u2019t name your sons after female deities.\u00a0 \u00a0The ESV also fails to translate the church function predicated of Phoebe in Rom. 16 as deacon, which is in fact what it says literally, but then insists on a literal rendering of the term adelphos\u00a0 everywhere, even when the context makes clear that both men and women are being referred to. What is especially odd about this is that complementarians are the first to holler about a strict distinction between males and females but if so, they should have objected to calling women men, or Christian sisters brothers.\u00a0 I could go on, but the bottom line is this translation doesn\u2019t like inclusive language even when it would have better identified the audience for the reader, and it doesn\u2019t like references to women holding church offices of various sorts including deacon or apostle.\u00a0 \u00a0Here is the review\u2026<\/p>\n
Christianity Today<\/em>\u00a021 (March 2009) reports the\u00a0ESV Study Bible<\/em>\u00a0sold 100,000 copies prior to its release. Its goals are admirable: \u201cWithin that broad tradition of evangelical orthodoxy, the notes have sought to represent fairly the various evangelical positions on disputed topics\u201d (11). \u201cEmphasizing word-for-word accuracy . . . it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original . . . In the area of gender language, the goal of the ESV is to render literally what is in the original\u201d (11, 19\u201320). It says it \u201chas not kept the location of major variants a secret\u201d (2589). Nevertheless, although affirming that woman was made in God\u2019s image (2207), the ESV repeatedly avoids literal translations when Paul\u2019s Greek supports women\u2019s leadership, which is the focus of this review.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It changes Phoebe\u2019s title, literally, \u201cwho is deacon [masculine] of the church in Cenchreae\u201d (Rom. 16:1) to \u201ca servant of the church at Cenchreae,\u201d footnoted \u201cdeaconess.\u201d<\/p>\n
It translates Romans 16:7, \u201cAndronicus and Junia . . . are well known to the apostles,\u201d even though Paul repudiates status based on human connections, and the standard New Testament Greek lexicon by Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich, known as BDAG, says it means \u201coutstanding among the apostles\u201d (epis\u0113mos<\/em>).1<\/sup>\u00a0Since the ESV claims its footnotes \u201care an integral part of the ESV translation\u201d (22), its footnote \u201cJunias\u201d (male) further undermines Paul\u2019s affirmation of Junia. It notes, \u201cboth male and female forms are rare in Greek; however, the female equivalent of \u2018Junia\u2019 is much more common in Latin\u201d (2184). Eldon Jay Epp, however, observes, \u201call church writers of the first millennium of Christianity took the name as feminine . . . a very common female name at the time of earliest Christianity . . . the alleged masculine forms are nowhere attested in the Greco-Roman milieu.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\nIt translates 1 Corinthians 11:10, \u201ca wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head,\u201d but \u201ca symbol of\u2019 is not in the Greek at all. Although the ESV translates \u201cwoman\u201d eight times in 11:7\u20139 and 11\u201312, it changes the same Greek word to \u201ca wife\u201d in 10. The ESV notes make dubious cultural assertions about garment head coverings and ignore the view that women\u2019s hair is their covering, as 11:15 states. The ESV translates the Greek word in 11:11 for \u201cseparate from\u201d as \u201cindependent of,\u201d thereby obscuring Paul\u2019s affirmation that woman is not separate from man in the Lord.<\/p>\n
It associates 1 Corinthians 14:33b with 34\u201335 against every early manuscript. It ignores major textual variants.3<\/sup>\u00a0Despite three unqualified prohibitions, its notes say it likely forbids women to \u201cjudge prophecies (this is the activity in the immediate context)\u201d (2213), but four topics separate it from this, and v. 35 specifically applies it to something else.<\/p>\nIt puts the subject of Ephesians 5:22 (wives) into a separate paragraph from its verb, separating it from its context: mutual submission in 5:21. Its notes identify vv. 15\u201321 as one sentence, contrary to both Greek texts on which it claims to be based (22), where the sentence including v. 21 continues through v. 24.<\/p>\n
It conceals the apposition in Ephesians 5:23 explaining \u201chead\u201d as \u201csavior\u201d by adding \u201cand\u201d and reversing the order of \u201cbody\u201d and \u201csavior,\u201d thereby breaking the parallel grammatical structure that marks apposition. My\u00a0Man and Woman: One in Christ<\/em>\u00a0refutes its notes\u2019 allegations about \u201chead\u201d (kephal\u0113<\/em>).<\/p>\nIt translates\u00a0authentein<\/em>\u00a0in 1 Timothy 2:12 \u201cto exercise authority,\u201d even though BDAG does not list this meaning, but, rather, \u201cto assume a stance of independent authority.\u201d4<\/sup>\u00a0This verb first clearly means \u201cexercise authority,\u201d circa A.D. 370 in Saint Basil, The Letters 69.45. It translates the conjunction\u00a0oude<\/em>, \u201cor,\u201d separating\u00a0authentein<\/em>\u00a0from \u201cto teach,\u201d even though Paul\u2019s overwhelmingly dominant use of\u00a0oude<\/em>\u00a0is to combine two elements to express a single idea, as I argue in New Testament Studies.5<\/sup><\/p>\nIt adds ten masculine pronouns to the qualifications for overseers in 1 Timothy 3:1\u20137 and four to Titus 1:6\u20139, where the Greek (and the CEV) has none.<\/p>\n
These twenty-seven departures from the Greek undermine the ESV\u2019s claim to be \u201cthe very words of God to us\u201d (9) and to let the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original. Regarding women in Paul\u2019s teachings, the ESV and its notes do not fulfill its promise to represent the original text accurately, differing evangelical positions fairly, or the broad tradition of evangelical orthodoxy. Its translation and notes repeatedly assume \u201cmale leadership\u201d in home and church as the \u201corder of creation\u201d (53, 2328). It supports a wife\u2019s subordination as \u201cequality\u201d (2206), based on the theory of the Son\u2019s eternal subordination (2214, 2514), belying its claim to \u201cclassic evangelical orthodoxy\u201d (10). Many other features, however\u2014particularly Tsumura\u2019s study notes on 1 and 2 Samuel (491-584) and essays by Poythress, Packer, and Netland\u2014are outstanding, balanced, and concise.<\/p>\n
1. W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W. Danker,\u00a0Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature<\/em>, 3rd ed. (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 378.<\/p>\n2. Eldon Jay Epp,\u00a0Junia: The First Woman Apostle<\/em>\u00a0(Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 56.<\/p>\n3. Cf. Gordon Fee,\u00a01 Corinthians<\/em>, New International Commentary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987), and my\u00a0Man and Woman: One in Christ<\/em>\u00a0(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2009).<\/p>\n4. BDAG, 150.<\/p>\n
5. \u201cI Tim 2.12 and the Use of O\u028b\u0257\u025b to Combine Two Elements to Express a Single Idea,\u201d\u00a0New Testament Studies<\/em>\u00a054 (2008): 235-53.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This review was first published by the CBE, and I am in complete agreement with Phil Paynes critique.\u00a0 It does not do justice at all that the various passages in the NT that support women doing various sorts of ministry. In some case it relies on totally fictitious readings of the Greek.\u00a0 For instance, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":71639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15785],"class_list":["post-73664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lost-in-translation"],"yoast_head":"\n
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