LCMS HAS ADOPTED A BIBLE TRANSLATION CONTRARY TO LUTHER

LCMS Has Adopted a Bible Translation Contrary to Luther
Christian News, Vol. 49, No. 30, August 8, 2011

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has adopted a Bible translation “that is contrary to the translation principles of Martin Luther” says Professor Thomas P. Nass in “Some thoughts on the ESV and Bible Translations”, a 34 page essay he presented at pastors’ conferences of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.


Christian News has been saying much the same for more than 10 years about the English Standard Version. CN has repeatedly shown that no modern English translation is closer to Luther’s translation than William Beck’s An American Translation of the Bible. Beck said that he and Luther were almost always in agreement, not because he followed Luther, but because they both followed the Hebrew and Greek text. Professor Nass writes: “I’m sure he [Beck] would be distressed to see acceptance of the ESV as the CPH translation of choice today.” Beck was an editor at CPH.


When CPH and the LCMS took surveys, they did not include the AAT. CPH’s Paul McCain insists the editor of CN is a liar. He is at least in part responsible for the fact the CN editor has not been certified for the pastoral ministry. (p. 14) McCain has the support of the LCMS bureaucracy and Schwan Foundation.


When a pastoral conference asked that the LCMS’s Worship Committee and CPH to listen to the case the CN editor makes for the AAT, neither the Worship Committee nor CPH were interested in listening to CN or any debate between the CN editor and McCain. McCain refuses to debate the CN editor on Bible translations. CN on July 14, 2011 sent the essay by Professor Nass to McCain, LCMS President Matthew Harrison, these editors of the LCMS’s ESV Study Bible (Paul E. Deterding, Scott R. Murray, Daniel E. Paavola, Jerald C. Joersz, Victor H. Prange, Mark W. Love, Robert A. Sorensen, Steven P. Mueller, Michael P. Walther), and both LCMS seminary faculties.


CN invited them to show where Nass was in error. None of the editors or officials responded or answered the survey CN sent to them.


Nass says in his essay:
Some Thoughts on the ESV and Bible Translation
Thomas P. Nass


“CPH also has leaders like Rev. Paul McCain who definitely favor the ESV” (1).


“The ESV–A revision of the RSV

“The ESV, to put it simply, is a revision by conservative Christians of the Revised Standard Version (RSV). Depending on whose statistics you use, between 91-95% of the text of the ESV is identical to the 1971 edition of the RSV” (1).


“ESV critics have pointed out how rapidly the ESV was prepared, wondering how thorough the revisers were in examining the RSV text over against the originals. At any rate, one should be aware that the foundation of the ESV is very definitely the RSV” (1).


Liberal Theology of RSV Translators
“It is important to know that the Revised Standard Version, the base text of the ESV, received a mixed review when it was first published in 1952. The RSV was carefully done by the leading scholars of the day and was in general quite highly regarded as a translation. In the following decades it was the best-selling translation apart from the KJV. The RSV, however, was strongly criticized and avoided by many conservative Christians. The committee that prepared the RSV had liberal translators who followed the higher-critical method, and their liberal theology showed up occasionally in the translation, especially in Old Testament messianic prophecies and New Testament passages about the deity of Christ’ ” (2).


Did the ESV correct the doctrinal weaknesses of the RSV?
“Herman Otten in Christian News has encouraged Lutheran Christians to avoid the ESV because in his opinion the ESV has not corrected the doctrinal problems of the RSV. He writes, ‘Many of the errors in the RSV remained in the ESV.’ If this is true, the ESV should be avoided. The first criteria for Bible translations in our circles has always been: ‘Is the translation doctrinally acceptable?’” (2)


Calvinism
“The ESV is also weak in some passages that have been used by Calvinists to teach double predestination. The wording of the ESV is more Calvinistic than the NIV in these passages. Of course, the NIV has long been criticized by some Lutherans for supposedly showing Reformed influence. The fact is that the ESV, like the NIV, was done by a committee of translators who did not hold to Lutheran theology” (3).


ESV Adds Words
“It is certainly true that the ESV is more literal than the NIV and numerous other English translations. However, it is an overstatement to say that the ESV gives direct transparency into the original text. Often the ESV reworks the form of the original and often the ESV adds words that are not in the original. Rodney Decker in his review of the ESV correctly states, “There are far more idiomatic, functional equivalents in the ESV than most people would ever suspect based on the popular perception of this essentially literal translation” (7).“Good translation does not have anything to do with counting up the total number of words. But it is interesting to see what the total word count is in the ESV and other translations, especially since promoters of the ESV are quick to say that the ESV does not add words where they are not in the original.“Version: Total number of words:Hebrew and Greek 545,202HCSB26 718,943NIV (1984) 726,109ESV 757,439.27” (7)


“Next, if one works at all with the ESV and the original languages, one can easily find many examples where the ESV does not translate literally, and no footnote is added.”


ESV Inconstistent
“Seeing the number of shifts like this in the ESV leaves me stunned when I read Leland Ryken‘s comment that the ESV only rarely shifts away from the literal wording of the original, and generally supplies a footnote when it does. The only person who could honestly say this, it seems to me, would be a person who has not actually worked with the original texts and the ESV open on his desk. I wonder: was there no Crossway editor knowledgeable with the original languages who could correct this overstatement in Ryken‘s book?“In actuality, the handling of idioms in the ESV seems inconsistent. Sometimes idioms are brought over literally, and sometimes the same idioms or similar idioms are reworked without any footnote” (9).


“So in short, if you want to use the ESV, I say ‘fine.’ But don‘t do it because you think that the ESV will give you direct transparency into the original text without any interpretation. It has much interpretation, just like every other translation” (14).


(For entire article see Christian News, Vol. 49, No. 30, August 8, 2011)