Reflections on ESV onlyism

I am just going to jot down some of my thinking on ESV onlyism. First off, because this translation so closely resembles the RSV, it appeals to those who do not like change. And I am one of them. I understand this fully. I am not surprised to see many people use this Bible.

However, I am surprised that the translation committee made some of the decisions that they made, and said some of the things they said. In any case, here are a few stray thoughts to wrap up what I have been thinking as I wrote the previous posts.

1) Some ESV supporters have taken a strong stand against women's ordination and they prefer to use a particular variation of 1 Tim. 2:12, as in the ESV, as evidence against it. They also prefer to believe that although women were prophets and judges in the Hebrew Bible, Christian women are created for submission, and cannot be real deacons, prophets, or apostles.

2) Some ESV supporters believe that women are designed by God to be in the image of God only within male headship relationships. These people support male leadership, male representation and the priority of male over female. As Ware says,

Does this masculine language not intentionally link God's position and authority as God with the concept of masculinity over femininity?

They do not mince words about the priority or supremacy of the male.

3) ESV supporters also believe that all human relationships are that of authority and submission. The role of authority is assigned by gender and other innate characteristics of an individual and are not shared with the one who submits. This sets up all relationships as a place where one person has rule over another. Authority is not first assigned by ablity, morality, availability, proximation to the problem, but by gender. Authority belongs permanently to one person, and submission belongs permanently to the other person.

I am aware that many people who use the ESV have no association to these beliefs and many who hold to these beliefs use other Bibles. However, many of those who were involved in the ESV have widely published on the topics above.

Why ESV onlyism

I have two theories about ESV onlies, or ESV onlyism.

The first is that the ESV supporters believe that certain verses, as they are translated in the ESV, are more efficient in preventing the ordination of women. These verses would be Romans 16:7, 1 Cor. 11:10 and 1 Tim. 2:12. (Oddly, the TNIV is much closer to the KJV for all these verses.) While many groups who use the KJV and TNIV do not ordain women, some would like a foolproof translation. See this post.

My second theory is with regard to something much more serious. Bruce Ware has described the status of women in the image of God in this way,

What this suggests, then, is that the concept of male-headship is relevant not only to the question of how men and women are to relate and work together, but it seems also true that male-headship is a part of the very constitution of the woman being created in the image of God. Man is a human being made in the image of God first; woman becomes a human being bearing the image of God only through the man. While both are fully and equally the image of God, there is a built-in priority given to the male that reflects God's design of male-headship in the created order.

Poythress and Grudem, Gender Neutral Bible Controversy, page 218, express their conviction that

in both Hebrew and English, a term with male connotations designates the whole human race.

They continue,

Gender neutral translations, while preserving the main point of God's creation of the human race, nevertheless leave out the connotation of a male representative by translating Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2 with "humankind," "human beings,"or "people" instead of "man."

Poythress and Grudem believe that adam must be translated as "man" in Gen. 1-2 and 5:2 because, they say, adam has male semantic content in Hebrew, and must be translated by a term with male semantic content in English. This appears to be because male representative language communicates the God's intent that male representation is significant to our existence as sexual beings.

But we know from the fact that the 32, 000 girls of Numbers 31 were called adam that this word does not have male semantic content, and can just as easily refer to a group of females as to a group of males or a mixed group of males and females.

However, this false notion, that the word adam is an example of God inspired male representation, lines up well with Ware's notion that male headship is part of the constitution of women as they are created in the image of God.

This deprives women of self-advocacy and puts them at the mercy of men, either the men of their own family, or at the discretion of men they may have appealed to for help. Women who do become independent and self-supporting in their private lives must, at least nominally, acknowledge male headship in church.

I believe Bruce Ware when he says that male headship is about built-in male priority. No doubt, many readers of the ESV are not aware of the intent of the translators, nor are they aware of the very significant differences between the ESV and the KJV. However, those of us who are aware of these differences, may see that the doctrine of "male representation" or "male priority" contravenes the notion that women are not second class citizens and deprives women of self-advocacy.

Grudem and ESV onlyism

On Feb. 20, 2006, Ben Witherington blogged about his concerns regarding the ESV. He said, that a member of the TNIV translation committee had told him,

"The ESV we owe chiefly to one particular scholar who has spent much of his career opposing the idea of women being involved in minstry. I am told that this scholar did everything he could possibly do to scuttle the TNIV, in the main because he abhorred the idea of the use of inclusive language in the translation even where it was fully warranted and did better justice to who was being spoken of in particular cases. A good example would be when the Greek term 'anthropoi' ('human beings')is used to refer to a mixed group containing both women and men. To translate the term 'men' in such a case is in fact to misrepresent the meaning of the word in such a case since there were also women present who were not mere ciphers or appendages of the men who were there.

Witherington concluded his post, by saying,

Why am I mentioning this now? Because I have been told that the Southern Baptist Convention is considering endorsing the ESV as the one true Baptists ought to use. I hope this will not happen, but it is a twilight zone kind of possibility.

While Witherington withdrew his post, I am reproducing these statements, first because I know them to be true, since I was involved in a translation seminar at Regent College in the fall 1997, where I was told exactly this same information, and because much of Witherington's post is cited in this post on the Bayly blog. (I saved Witherington's post at the time, so I could refer to it without error.)

After Witherington had posted this, Wayne Grudem responded on Justin Taylor's blog,

Dear Ben,

Regarding your blog about the ESV Bible on Feb. 20th, 2006, I suspect I am the “one particular scholar” to whom you refer in your second paragraph. ...

But contrary to what you reported from your friend on the TNIV committee (which I think was his speculation), the ESV grew out of the appreciation of many scholars for the merits of the old RSV and a desire to see it updated, and not out of opposition to the TNIV Bible. The reason for my own involvement with the ESV was a long-standing desire to see an updated RSV, and had little or nothing to do with the TNIV controversy.

Tim Bayly then responded with a post of his own, citing from an article he had written in 1999,

The second translation hoping to pick up some of the Bible share lost by the NIV is the English Standard Version (ESV), announced in February by Crossway Books. The version had its roots in discussions that took place before the May 1997 meeting called by James Dobson at Focus on the Family headquarters to resolve the inclusive NIV issue.

The night prior to the meeting, critics of regendered language gathered in a Colorado Springs hotel room to discuss the next day's strategy. During the course of the evening it became clear their concerns with the NIV extended beyond gender issues. The group discussed the merits of the Revised Standard Version, first published in 1952 by the National Council of Churches and recently replaced by the New Revised Standard Version, a regendered update.

In 2002, 100 scholars signed a statement against the TNIV. Among those who signed were several men on the translation committee of the ESV.

It is a puzzle to many people why Wayne Grudem continues, through publishing books and talking on the radio, to criticize the TNIV, and at the same time denies that this has anything to do with the inception and promotion of the ESV as a more transparent and accurate Bible. Well, Dr. Packer has exactly the same position. He has published a paper on stopping the ordination of women, he signed the protest against the TNIV, and he is the editor of the ESV. It is hard to deny that this is something of a package.

ESVonlyism and Packer

Dr. Packer has also criticized the TNIV, both by signing the statement of concern against the TNIV, declaring it "not trustworthy" and by expressubg his views in this interview,

Dr. James I. Packer of Regent College in Vancouver served as general editor and chair of the 12-member Translation Oversight Committee. He told BCCN the translation grew out of discontent with other modern translations – which, he asserted, tend to “deviate from what was said in several thousand places,” in the interests of lucidity or easy readability.

In particular, there was discontent with translations such as the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and Today’s New International Version (TNIV) which make such deviations to achieve gender-neutral renderings.

Packer said these translations may have presented “what was meant but not what was said. The reader should know what Paul or Isaiah said.”


Packer said some other translations are particularly frustrating for expositors who, in explaining what the text means, have to pause and first explain that what was translated is not actually what the text originally said.

In contrast, the ESV attempts to be what he termed a “transparent” translation – in that the reader can see through it to what was originally written. Another word Packer used repeatedly was “precision.” He said: “We think we have produced a version more precise than any of the alternatives.”


The ESV is a word-for-word rather than a ‘thought-for-thought’ translation. The ESV website states that the latter translations are “of necessity more inclined to reflect the interpretive opinions of the translator and the influences of contemporary culture.”

But later in the interview we can read,

Packer said the producers were very careful to not make extravagant claims or get into a competition with other translations. He said the ESV was not launched with the “trumpets and drums” of certain other translations.

Rather, the ESV was released quietly and soberly and allowed to “find its own level.” ESV’s natural audience is “serious evangelicals who want a translation they can trust to be transparent to the original.”

When I interviewed Dr. Packer in 2006, he denied that the TNIV was untrustworthy, although he did not offer to withdraw his signature from the statement of concern. My interview with Dr. Packer is no longer posted on the internet, although pieces are represented in the archives of the BBB.

However, as I left the room, after interviewing Dr. Packer for an hour, he added,

"The scholars of the TNIV are extremely learned men. They are my colleagues here, you know."

It is a very sad thing, and revealed to me that much of what esteemed theologians have to say, is not particularly worthy of our trust. I feel sorry for them all.

ESV onlyism and Sproul

There is renewed talk about the ESV, which began, I am surmising, in the wake of some favourable posts about this translation a few weeks ago. CD-host took up the topic, and then Aberration blog, and now Polycarp and Onward, Forward, Toward.

In a comment on Aberration blog, I wrote,

This is from an article called “Evangelical Lap Dogs”, by R. C. Sproul, which appeared in the November 2002 issue of Tabletalk:
Actually, the TNIV appears to be a move not toward greater accuracy but away from it. One example: In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’ (Matt. 5:9). The TNIV changes sons to children. But the Greek word huios in its plural form means ’sons,’ not ‘children. ‘My Latin Bible translates it ’sons’ (filii). My German Bible, my Dutch Bible, and my French Bible translate it ’sons.’ Likewise, every English Bible I own translates it ’sons.’ Indeed, from the first century until today, the whole world has understood what the Greek says.

I am not sure if you know but the Tyndale, KJV, Luther and the Dutch Bible all say “children of God.” I think he is right about the Latin and French Bibles though. 2 out of 5 is not so bad, I guess.

That the KJV has always used "children of God" has particular significance for me, since this verse is represented in an enormous banner in the police headquarters of my city. That the KJV was gender neutral in this respect, is one feature which has made it possible to use Bible verses in public places. Not only that, but female police officers play an important role in combatting domestic violence.

It is disappointing to me that those who support the ESV and denigrate the TNIV, are basing their criticism on a false memory of the Tyndale, KJV and the Luther Bible.

Please click on the images below to read R.C. Sproul's comment in context.