I’ve been a fan of the English Standard Version ever since I bought one in 2002, shortly after hearing it highly recommended at the London Men’s Convention (this year again at the Albert Hall 22 May; the pilot of the Northern Men’s Convention is in Manchester on 15th May).
I grew up on the Good News version, also known as the TEV (Today’s English Version), and then switched to the NIV (New International Version) at around 16. It served me well, especially the Study Bible version, with a monster concordance and good footnotes, but I was increasingly having conversations about some of the mis-renderings. (No longer the “nearly infallible version” I often heard it dubbed as a student).
Alan Jacobs (Professor of English at Wheaton College) has written a very interesting essay on the process of the translation, and some of the pitfalls of previous versions. I enjoyed his comment that the ESV is “the best thing to come out of a committee meeting in quite a while”.
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