To me, the ESV sounds like something from another era. It is not English the way I talk, listen or read. I think that even if you want to use the ‘Tynale tradition’, you can still update the English a little. The TNIV is a great translation and I use it quite a bit also. But having read the HCSB, I feel that it is the best translation for me that is fairly literal but also has good English that I can understand. Plus being a new translation and not a revision, I think the translators were not tied to dated tranlations from the past and were able to express things in a fresh, more accurate way.

Anyway, that’s my two cents worth. I’ll probably continue to use the HCSB and the TNIV, and if I need a ‘tiebreaker’ between the two, I’ll go to the NASB to get the most literal meaning. I can never see myself using the ESV.

But the ESV will outsell and outlive the HCSB. Part of the reason is what Rick mentioned, the Baptist connection. But I think a very big factor is ideological promotion: the ESV has gotten the ideological push from very influential conservative preachers and theologians, such as John Piper, R.C. Sproul, Mark Driscoll, and Wayne Grudem. Dr. Grudem has been on the highly influential radio program Focus On the Family, hosted by Dr. James Dobson, several times and he, obviously, promotes the ESV which he helped translate.

None of these men would have anything against the HCSB, as far as I know. After all, the HCSB, like the ESV, was translated following the complementarian translation principles, CSG (Colorado Springs Guidelines), developed at a meeting hosted by James Dobson, which was attended by men from both translation teams, the ESV and HCSB.

The ESV also outsells the HCSB for many people these days because it has more of a “Bible sound” that many people want. It is directly in the Tyndale-KJV line of translations and is promoted by Crossway, it publisher for being in that line. The HCSB is a totally new translation. It is a fairly literal translation, as is the ESV, but it still doesn’t sound quite the same as what many Christians are used to hearing.

For some comparisons of the ESV and HCSB (as well as other versions), see my quantified studies at this Internet address:

http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/studies.htm

Thanks for the update on the CBA list. I’ll keep checking.

You can tell your Greek students not to sweat it if they don’t get it all right now. Like I said, it was 7 years of elem., interm. and syntax before it all began to click for me. But it did click.

Anyway, sales figures for translations are as slippery as an eel. Traditionally, the only list available has been from the Christian Booksellers Association. However, there are problems with such a list because it only tracks CBA member stores leaving out Wal-Mart (which actually sells LOTS of Bibles), Amazon.com, bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble, etc.

However, at least the CBA list was some type of gauge. However, it was problematic itself. The ESV for instance didn’t really begin to place consistently on the top ten until Crossway started publishing 50¢ New Testaments. Should these even be ranked at all? Are people buying them because they want the ESV or because they are 50¢? And the HCSB stayed at the #4 spot consistently for almost two years and then suddenly disappeared altogether. Why? No one seems to know.

Then inexplicably, the CBA quit posting rankings at all about two or three months ago. One of my readers runs a Christian book store and says the rankings will be back next month but with a twist. I have no idea what that means.

It’s too bad the publishers can’t simply release their sales totals every now and then. Obviously this information exists, but for competitive reasons I don’t see them ever being so forthcoming.

I love teaching the Greek class, but it’s time consuming. I’m using Keynote a good bit for my teaching and creating the slides can be time consuming. Nevertheless, once they are created, I’ll have them set.

I’m teaching out of the Revised Summers textbook, Essentials of New Testament Greek. I like this book because the chapters are short which is helpful since SBTS covers all of elementary Greek in one semester instead of two like most seminaries. Mounce is just too overwhelming for students in one semester in my opinion. The downside of the Summers book is that it still uses the Robertson 8-case system for nouns. But I explain the issues to them, and it turns out to not be that big of a deal afterwards. If anything, they are learning the functions of nouns that they’d cover in the syntax class anyway.

Speaking of all that. I teach at 8 in the morning, and I still have to prepare slides on the imperative mood.

Thanks for the input. I certainly value your opinion. Do you happen to have any resources I could check regarding sales of the respective translations? By the way, how’s the Elem. Greek class going? It took me 7 years of Greek (undergrad and grad school) to finally get halfway comfortable with the language. I take my GNT to church all the time to help keep me sharp.

Rick Martinez,

I understand your frustration with the HCSB. At times I get frustrated as well with some translation choices. I think I was more frustrated, though, with the ESV. There were several times when I thought the syntax of the translation was more difficult than it needed to be. Hopefully I’ll be able to write about some of those in the forthcoming post.

I am very interested in reading your upcoming post Will about the HCSB because I need some good reasons to continue using it and not switch to the ESV.

God bless to all.

Daniel, I would turn your question around. I don’t see a whole lot of need for the ESV since we had the NASB. On the other hand, the HCSB was the first major completely independent (i.e. not based on a previous version) translation since the NIV of 1978. It is not in the Tyndale tradition so that it does not have the trappings and weaknesses of translations such as the KJV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, ESV, etc.

Will, I’m in agreement with what I think is your sentiment here. The HCSB is a far superior translation to the ESV in my opinion, but the ESV is already outselling it. The HCSB is having a difficult time breaking out beyond Baptist boundaries because it has a reputation as a “Baptist Bible” although this is hardly a fair characterization. In fact, only 50% of the translation committee was Baptist, but Lifeway bought the rights to the HCSB and began funding it when it was a work already in progress. And my assessment is that Lifeway does not know how to market well outside of Baptist circles.

Nice of you to stop by! Always good to get a visit from the other side of the pond.

Concerning the similarities between the HCSB and the NASB, I may be a little confused. I thought the ESV was more “wooden” than the HCSB. So I would probably expect the question to be asked the other way around: What need was there for the ESV when we have the NASB? Am I missing something?

I appreciate the input, though. It is an interesting thought to consider the necessity of new translations in general. I may pursue that in my future post.

I think the ESV was necessary in order to have a less “wooden” word-for-word translation from the critical text than the NASB, which would replace the NIV as the main Bible used in the church (I think the NIV is pretty good, but the ESV is better and would prefer it was used because of its closeness to the AV/NKJV/NASB).