ESV Will Be Open To Revision After All

Crossway recently announced that a new revision of the English Standard Version (ESV) translation of the Bible would be its final text and that it would not be updated any further. But that decision has become controversial (especially because of an unusual rendering of Genesis 3:16).

So the publishers have reversed their course, saying that the ESV will remain open to future revisions after all.

From Jeremy Weber, Crossway Reverses Decision to Make ESV Bible Text Permanent | Gleanings | ChristianityToday.com:

The publisher of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible has reversed its controversial decision to finalize the text after tweaking 29 verses.

“We have become convinced that this decision was a mistake,” stated Crossway president and CEO Lane Dennis in an announcement released today. “We apologize for this and for any concern this has caused for readers of the ESV, and we want to explain what we now believe to be the way forward. Our desire, above all, is to do what is right before the Lord.”

Last month, Crossway announced that after changing 52 words in 29 verses—out of more than 775,000 words across more than 31,000 verses—the ESV text would “remain unchanged in all future editions.”

The publisher’s intended goal was “to stabilize the [ESV], serving its readership by establishing the ESV as a translation that could be used ‘for generations to come,’” stated Dennis today. “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.”

However, after much public discussion over the decision, Crossway has changed its strategy.

“The means to that goal, we now see, is not to establish a permanent text but rather to allow for ongoing periodic updating of the text to reflect the realities of biblical scholarship such as textual discoveries or changes in English over time,” stated Dennis. “These kinds of updates will be minimal and infrequent, but fidelity to Scripture requires that we remain open in principle to such changes.”

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