LEARN ABOUT

THE ESV BIBLE

THE PUBLISHER

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The purpose of Crossway has been, from its founding as a non-for-profit ministry in 1938, to publish gospel-centered, Bible-centered content that will honor our Savior and serve his Church. We seek to help people understand the massive implications of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word, for all of life, for all eternity, and for the glory of God.

What Is the ESV Bible?

The ESV® Bible (English Standard Version®) is an “essentially literal” translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Created by a team of more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors, the ESV Bible emphasizes “word-for-word” accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning.

—Crossway 

ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION

Learn About the Translation

Accordion Content

The ESV is an “essentially literal” translation that seeks as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer. As such, its emphasis is on “word-for-word” correspondence, at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. Thus it seeks to be transparent to the original text, letting the reader see as directly as possible the structure and meaning of the original.

Quoted from the Preface to the ESV at Crossway.org

Publishing Team

The ESV publishing team has included more than a hundred people. The fourteen-member Translation Oversight Committee benefited from the work of more than fifty biblical experts serving as Translation Review Scholars and from the comments of the more than fifty members of the Advisory Council, all of which was carried out under the auspices of the Crossway Board of Directors. This hundred-plus-member team shares a common commitment to the truth of God’s Word and to historic Christian orthodoxy and is international in scope, including leaders in many denominations.

Quoted from the Preface to the ESV at Crossway.org

Oversight Committee

  • Dr. Clint E. Arnold
  • Dr. Clifford John Collins, ESV Old Testament Chair
  • Dr. Lane T. Dennis, ESV Publishing Chair
  • Dr. Wayne A. Grudem
  • Dr. Paul R. House, ESV Old Testament Associate Chair
  • Dr. R. Kent Hughes
  • Dr. J. I. Packer, ESV General Editor
  • Dr. Leland Ryken, ESV Literary Chair
  • Dr. Vern Sheridan Poythress, ESV New Testament Chair
  • Dr. Frank Thielman
  • Dr. Gordon Wenham, Old Testament Associate Chair
  • Dr. P. J. Williams
  • Dr. Bruce Winter

Previous Translation Oversight Committee Members:

Emeritus Members: Dr. Robert H. Mounce; Dr. William D. Mounce
Previous Adjunct Members: Rev. David Jones; Rev. E. Marvin Padgett

For positions and degrees of the following members of the ESV Oversight Committee, see Crossway’s page here.

The ESV is based on the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible as found in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (5th ed., 1997), and on the Greek text in the 2014 editions of the Greek New Testament (5th corrected ed.), published by the United Bible Societies (UBS), and Novum Testamentum Graece (28th ed., 2012), edited by Nestle and Aland. The currently renewed respect among Old Testament scholars for the Masoretic text is reflected in the ESV’s attempt, wherever possible, to translate difficult Hebrew passages as they stand in the Masoretic text rather than resorting to emendations or to finding an alternative reading in the ancient versions. In exceptional, difficult cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, and other sources were consulted to shed possible light on the text, or, if necessary, to support a divergence from the Masoretic text. Similarly, in a few difficult cases in the New Testament, the ESV has followed a Greek text different from the text given preference in the UBS/Nestle-Aland 28th edition. Throughout, the translation team has benefited greatly from the massive textual resources that have become readily available recently, from new insights into biblical laws and culture, and from current advances in Hebrew and Greek lexicography and grammatical understanding.

Quoted from the Preface to the ESV at Crossway.org

In the area of gender language, the goal of the ESV is to render literally what is in the original.

For example, the ESV uses the generic “he,” refers to the collective human race as “man,” and retains the New Testament references to “brothers” and “sons” without expanding the English translation to include “brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters.”

In each case the objective has been transparency to the original text, allowing the reader to understand the original on its own terms rather than in the terms of our present-day Western culture.

To learn more, see “Translation Principles and Styles” in the Preface to the ESV

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ONLINE BIBLE

The free ESV Bible app for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices was designed to make reading the Bible on your phone or tablet as intuitive as possible. Featuring study content, interactive reading plans, and more, the ESV Bible app makes engaging with God’s Word wherever you are easier than ever.

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SPECIAL THANKS

We are so grateful!

Our team at Bibles.net is so grateful to Crossway Publishers, not only for providing us with permission to quote from their website on this page, but also for their excellent work, faithfulness to God’s Word, and their genuine love for the Lord. 

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