May
27
Frustration With the ESV
Posted in: TeachingI’m sitting here on the patio on a beautiful night writing curriculum for the upcoming semester of our Echo Groups, and I’m getting frustrated with the ESV on one point. I’ve always noticed it, and when I was teaching through Matthew, it didn’t really bother me, but in Ephesians (our target book for the fall), it does pretty bad. So what is this singularity that is causing me so much angst?
The ESV doesn’t capitalize pronouns that point to the Trinity.
Anyone else put off by this?
I can’t stand that practice… not in the Bible, and not in books.
I doubt I’d buy a Bible translation that did not give proper respect to the Lord (Bible + no respect = someone’s created a book of words out of it. Terrible, terrible.)
To be fair, the ESV translation is the most reverent in translation philosophy, and seeks to make sure that the Bible does not become just a ‘book of words’. They just didn’t capitalize pronouns. I’m sure there’s a reason; I just don’t know it.
It doesn’t bother me. I think this is a relitively new practice within the last few hundred years. It definately did not occur in the original Greek and Hebrew.
Yet another one of mans traditions that have falsely become sacred. I know it rubs up against our traditions but maybe it is a good thing for us to re-evaluate what is real and what is human invention.
The reason it bothers me is because it’s an English translation. In the Greek and the Hebrew (which you capitalized, btw), there are no capital letters. In English, it is used to designate proper nouns (specific people, places, or things…such as languages). God, I’m sure, is the specific person, so the tradition has come about that even pronouns should be capitalized when referring to Him. Whenever the pronoun in the Greek is pointing to God, it should be capitalized in the English. It just makes sense.
I was reading Isaiah in the ESV and was frustrated by the lack of capital letters…I most often read the NASB, and it always capitalizes divine pronouns…I stumbled across your blog to see if anyone else was frustrated by it. I don’t know why they didn’t capitalize divine pronouns. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
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