Shelf Life : Word Up - English Standard Version Bible, an RSV update without inclusive language - Brief Article

The Revised Standard Version (1952) is generally considered the most accurate translation of the Bible into English, but it is no longer very widely available. (Ignatius Press has a densely printed Catholic edition.) As its name suggests, the RSV is a revision of an earlier translation: the beloved King James Version of 1611. The RSV was itself supplanted by the 1989 New Revised Standard Version.

And this New RSV poses a problem. The progress of biblical scholarship in recent years has made possible an ever greater accuracy in translation; but alongside these intellectual advances, we have also seen the rise of political correctness, which too often mandates inaccuracies in translation. Most of these have to do with gender. Where, for example, the Greek literally says "brothers," the NRSV says "friends." Not a huge change, it would appear, but once the principle is admitted that texts- especially texts of this level of importance-can be so casually bowdlerized for political reasons, scholarship and understanding will suffer.

We can see this in one of the NRSV's most egregious errors: In previous translations of the Book of Ezekiel, God addressed Ezekiel as "O son of man"; in the NRSV God addresses him as "O mortal." The only conceivable reason for this inaccuracy is that the translators are making a desperate attempt to avoid the forbidden words "son" and "man." But, as is typically the case when P.C. diktats are allowed to take precedence over intellectual honesty, the result is the creation of even deeper problems. Remember why, in this case, the words "son" and "man" have to be avoided: In contemporary pseudo-feminist cant, such gender-specific words are believed to "privilege" human beings of one gender over those of another so we should just snip them out.

But then we have to put something else in their place: hence, the word "mortal." But the problem with that is that the Bible, considered not just as an anthology of disparate works but as a sequential narrative, ends by fundamentally calling into question the mortality of man, and offering an alternative. To have God address a man in the middle of the book as "O mortal" suggests to the reader that mortality is the human essence, as conceived by its Creator: an implication without basis in the original text.

Clearly, the needless contortions exacted by political correctness have intellectual consequences. But instead of patronizing readers with inaccurate and misleading circumlocutions, wouldn't it be better to let the text-as far as possible-speak for itself? Indeed, wouldn't it be better to have a new version of the RSV that doesn't pander to P.C.?

As if to prove the supply-side theory of culture-that entrepreneurs will try to meet needs and wants even before they are articulated-there has just been published a new translation of the Bible that seems to fit the bill exactly. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Crossway, 1,328 pp., $19.99) is a very conservative updating of the RSV, changing the RSV only when the change is clearly an improvement. In Mark 12:2, for example, the RSV spoke of "the fruit of the vineyard"; NRSV changed "fruit" to "produce"; the ESV changes it back to "fruit." And the ESV-like the RSV before it-is statelier in its language than the conservative New International Version (one of the most popular translations among evangelical Christians). When John the Baptist sees Jesus in John 1:29, the NIV has him say, "Look, the Lamb of God": The ESV keeps the traditional (and far from obscure) word "Behold."

In some cases, the ESV is an improvement on the RSV. One example is James 4:4: In the RSV, the apostle chastises his audience as "unfaithful creatures," which sounds like a complaisant Englishwoman good-naturedly rebuking her ex-husbands; in the ESV, James calls his audience "you adulterous people"-which lends a bit more gravity to the charge. Another change is unusually bold: For many years now, the trend in translation of Isaiah 7:14-where the prophet declares, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive" (KJV)-has been toward rendering the "virgin" as merely a "young woman." Even RSV adopted this change. But ESV goes back to the KJV, and calls her a "virgin"-in accord with long centuries of commentary that have viewed the passage as a messianic prophecy.

In the ESV, the Isaiah 7:14 passage stands out as a rather provocative choice by the translators; it only serves to point up how little-in general- the ESV's renderings have been influenced by non-scholarly considerations. If you're looking for a Bible that tells you what the text says-as opposed to the polemical points the translators might wish to score-the ESV is a great choice.

As someone who has been known to confuse the Russian pianist Nikita Magaloff with the Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov-and even with the great Soviet hockey player Boris Mikhailov-I am grateful for good advice on music whenever I can get it. Very recently, a true classic of the genre was published: The Essential Canon of Classical Music (North Point, 770 pp., $40), by David Dubal. The author, a Juilliard professor and host of a music-appreciation program on New York's WQXR radio station, has compiled a monumental survey of the Western art-music tradition from Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377) to William Bolcom (born 1938).