Monday, December 5, 2011

ESV changes for 2011

About a month ago the publisher of the ESV announced that it had made some changes in the version this year, and it provided a list of them. I have to give them credit for providing the list, because other Bible publishers typically make little changes like this without even announcing them. But unfortunately the list was presented on 27 pages in a macromedia flash container, which could not be downloaded and printed, or posted elsewhere. What's up with that? I can't think of any good reason for putting out information like this in such an incovenient form. It would have been much easier for them, and more convenient for everyone else, to put it in an html document, or a pdf. Anyway, I went and did a screenshot of each page of the list and assembled all the images in pdf file. Here it is. But be warned, it's a 4 MB file. Maybe someone else who has more time can make a text version of it for everyone.

I'm not going to comment on the changes right now. There's a discussion over at Justin Taylor's blog. I agree with the commenters who think the changes were not necessary or helpful, and especially with the point made by the last commenter: "repeatedly obsoleting a translation used in community contexts is problematic."