Greetings and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle. I'm the pastor of Christ Reform Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. It is a cold, snowy February day here in central Virginia, and the focus of our episode today is going to be offering an initial response to the announcement of the new English Standard Version text update for 2025, the ESV text update for 2025. The ESV or the English Standard Version is a popular English translation among some evangelicals here in the US and other places in the world. It's especially popular with a lot of Calvinistic Baptists with some Presbyterians and others who use the ESV and many people very ardently love the ESV and they will defend it quite vociferously. The ESV has an interesting history. It appeared in 2001. It was published by Crossway and it was very vigorously promoted in those days. There was really a sort of an overwhelming bandwagon promotion of the ESV. A lot of the top evangelical pastors of that time, particularly Calvinistic ones like John Piper, were really hyper promoting the ESV. The history of the ESV is interesting because I remember being in a conference and it was being promoted and they said, oh, this is in the Tyndale tradition. This is the heir to the authorized version sort of thing. But if you look at the history of the ESV, it actually has its roots in a translation that was known as the English Revised Version of 1881. And that translation came out of a committee and it was put forward at the same time, 1881, as the Westcott and Hort modern critical texts of the Greek New Testament that so challenged the Texas Receptus, and the English Revised Version was really in some ways the first major English modern version that attempted to challenge the use of the authorized version among English-speaking people. It actually wasn't very successful, that was very heavily promoted, Large sections of it were printed in major newspapers, including in the US. There was a major promotion of it. But whereas the modern critical texts of Westcott and Hort seemed to gain ground with pastors and scholars, the English Revised Version really didn't gain much ground. There was an American edition of it known as the American Standard Version, the ASV, that was produced in 1901. And then later on, it was revised and put forward in 1952 as the revised standard version. And that became the main text used by most mainline Protestants in the US, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterian Church, USA, I guess, or the forerunner of it in 1952, the Methodists, the American Baptists, and so forth. And I remember when I was a college student, uh, in my religion class, the course, uh, the, the book that we use, the, the edition of the Bible that we used for the class required was the revised standard version. Um, it was updated in 1989. It's recently in the 21st century been updated again as the RSVUE updated edition. But the ESV, the English Standard Version, was not really a new translation, but it was an evangelical revision of the RSV. People like Wayne Grudem and John Piper and others were behind it. And they liked the RSV, which is based on the modern critical text. But there was some controversy about the RSV because of some of its readings. Like at Isaiah 714, where it says in the RSV, a young woman will conceive. And that's a departure, and in some ways, a subtle undermining of the virginal conception of the Lord, the virgin birth of the Lord. And so they wanted the ESV to read in Isaiah 714, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And so they made that change. If you were to take the RSV and the ESV and lay them side by side, you would see though that they are largely in many, many places exactly the same. So the ESV really was a revision of the RSV. And again, it came out in 2001. to a lot of hoopla, a lot of promotion in evangelical circles. In those days, this was, I think really before social media really exploded and before there were cell phones, there was a lot of print promotion of it in periodicals like Christianity Today and a lot of big evangelical conferences at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting, a lot of promotion of the ESV. It was presented as the heir of the Tyndale King James Version tradition, but it really wasn't that, was it? It was really the heir of the English Revised Version. So it came out in 2001. And then a couple of years later, they revised the text a bit. I think it was in 2007. And I picked up, I have my ESV study Bible. And I got this at a meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. This came out in 2008. I remember Crossway was handing these things out like candy at the ETS meeting. They were very cheaply priced. I'm not sure how they got the funding for it, but I think you could get one for like $10. But I looked at my copy of this, and at the front of it, when it shows the information about the copyright, it says the ESV Study Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright 2008 by Crossway Bibles. And then it says that it's the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles. But then at the bottom it says it's the ESV text edition 2007. So I'm not sure if there were revisions between 2001 when it first came out in 2007, but at least there was a revision of it probably before the study Bible came out. And then I think there was another one in 2011. And the one that most people remember is they revised it yet again in 2016. And this time, I think they were beginning to get some pushback from the users, particularly people maybe who had bought this Bible as a pew Bible. All of a sudden, they're going to change it every couple of years. And so in 2016, they announced that they were going to have the permanent text edition of the ESV. And they announced, we're not going to change it anymore. It's going to be stable. It's going to be solid for use. But then they got backlash, not from maybe the people who wanted it to stay the same, but from another side that said, wait a second, we're committed to the modern critical text and having our text reflect all the great advances that we're making in New Testament textual criticism, all the significant scholarly finds, and we want our text to be updated as needed. And so they backed away from the 2016 permanent so-called text edition, and they said, we will periodically change the text, update it, and they have a translation oversight uh, committee. And so this new, uh, updating of the text came out, I think just this week, I began to just to hear about it just yesterday. And so, like I said, I'm giving a very initial response. I'm not giving a detail, but my initial response to it. So this came out 2025, and I guess this would mean this would be the fourth, um, updating of the tech since it came out 2001, 2007, 2011. 2016, 2001 was the initial, 2007 was the first update, 2011 the second, 2016 the third, nine years later 2025 this is I think at least the fourth revision of the ESV. And so I wanted to take a look at the announcement about this and I do think in the beginning that that some folk like Grudem and Piper and others who are behind it thought we can come up with an English text that would be in standard use. I mean, there's some hubris even about the title, English standard version. But although it's, again, been widely used by many evangelicals, it's by no means become the standard version among Christians worldwide. and only has part of the market in Bible sales, even among evangelicals, as there continue to be the multiplying of English Bible translations, more come out each year. But let's see if we can pull up this announcement, and we'll walk through it, and we'll look even a little more closely at some of the changes that are being made in this 2025 update. So it says, again, there's no date on this, but I think it was just posted yesterday, which would be February the 10th of 2025, and it's labeled ESV text change summary 2025. And they were talking about this. I remember last year there were a couple podcasts where I heard discussion of this, that they were meeting and that there were revisions that were coming. And so it's not a total surprise, but here it is now in February of 2025. It says, for generations to come, the ESV Translation Oversight Committee, or TOC, is a standing committee of the Crossway Board of Directors. The purpose of the TOC is to preserve and carry forward the publication of the English Standard Version Bible Translation and to ensure ongoing accuracy of the ESV for this generation and generations to come. And you can look up, this is the oversight committee. It says this committee is responsible for stewarding and caring for the publication of the ESV Bible to transmit the treasure of God's word to this and future generations. And it lists the persons who are on this along with the positions that they held at the time of the translation process. I did a review of the ESV study Bible a couple of years ago, and I pointed out that one of the things I thought was really interesting about it, when they listed the people who had contributed notes and commentary, they made sure they listed their names and the schools they went to, where they got their degrees from, what was missing. No mention of what churches they're members of. What's their ecclesiastical connection? Some of that you can pick up perhaps from the schools that they went to, but it's kind of odd. It just shows you that there's sort of a bent to this to say that the Bible is a matter of academic study and the Bible is controlled by publishing companies and by academia and not by the church. But anyways, it lists these persons. Lane Dennis, Publishing Chair. Josh Dennis, CEO and President of Crossway. Clifford John Collins, ESV Old Testament. Vern Poythress is on there, the ESV New Testament Chair. Clifton Arnold. From Biola, Wayne Grudem, research professor at Phoenix Seminary, although I don't think he's that anymore, as I understand it, maybe he's still there. Frank Teelman, Dane Ortland, Kent Hughes, John Dennis, Peter J. Williams from Cambridge House in Tendale, the Tendale, rather, house at Cambridge, I should say. Justin Taylor, Don Jones, Doug O'Donnell, and Kevin DeYoung, a PCA pastor of a large church in Charlotte and a frequent writer and speaker. So these are the persons on the TOC, the Translation Oversight Committee. So let's go back to the explanation of it. With this purpose in mind, the TOC met over the summer of 2024 to consider a limited number of minor changes to the ESV text. We'll see in a moment, are these minor changes? To briefly summarize, the committee made changes to 36 scripture passages involving 42 verses, resulting in a total of 68 word changes, given that there are nearly 757,400 757,400 words in the ESV. This represents a change of about one word per 11,000 words in the ESV text. In other words, this is minor, nothing to look at here. It's just very light editing that's gone on. Again, we'll get to some evaluation at the end about what is the influence of having a Bible that is under constant revision. What does this convey to the readers? What does this convey to the world about the Bible? In addition to the above text changes, a limited number of changes were made to 57 footnotes, and a few additional changes were also made to punctuation in 14 verses. And what they're gonna show us are changes to various passages, It's not yet to be seen what the footnote changes were. That'll be interesting. Again, this is very preliminary. Given that there are more than 540 editions of the ESV, wow, that's a lot of different editions currently being published worldwide. The rollout of the text update will take nearly two years to complete with the first copies of the new ESV text editions being released in the spring of 2025, and Lord willing, with almost all of the new ESV text editions being published by the fall of 2026. So over the course of two years, they're going to change over all their published 540 different kinds, apparently, editions of the ESV to the 2025 text. I mean, that's interesting because what does that mean? I mean, you might be in a church and maybe the church uses the ESV. Maybe the pastor is preaching from the 2025 update, but people in the pew might have the 2001 or the 2007 or the 2011 or the 2016 permanent text edition. Anyways, they continue by God's grace, more than 315 million copies of the ESV have been published. and distributed through ministry partners worldwide since its publication in the fall of 2001. We rejoice in the many ways the Lord has provided for Crossway and the ESV. The words of the Bible are the very words of God. Agreed. For this reason, the ESV Translation Committee and the Crossway Board of Directors have undertaken their work with full awareness of the gravity this entails. relying on the Lord's grace, mercy, strength, and providence for the glory of God alone. And they cite the ESV preface, we know that no Bible translation is perfect. We also know that God uses imperfect and inadequate things to his honor and praise. So to our triune God and to his people, we offer what we have done with our prayers that it may prove useful with gratitude for much help given and with ongoing wonder that our God should ever have entrusted to us so momentous a task, to God alone be the glory. If I can increase the size here just a little bit to see it better. We are so thankful for all those who love the truth and beauty of the very words of God, words inspired by the Holy Spirit in their original writing, words that are without error in all that scripture teaches, words that are trustworthy and true for all of life and forevermore. Interesting insights there on the bibliology, talks about the inspiration in the original writings. I would agree from Confession 1-8, London Baptist Confession 1-8, the scriptures are immediately inspired, but also they've been kept pure in all ages and a faithful translation, if it faithfully reflects the originals, does reflect the purity of scripture, although they seem to be bending over backwards in this preface to say that translations are imperfect. Well, they're perfect to the degree they properly convey the underlying immediately inspired text. But anyways, on behalf of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee, the Crossway Board of Directors, we are pleased to provide the following comparison of the 36 scripture passages approved and adopted by the crossway board last summer. So this change apparently was approved by the board in the summer but I don't think it was publicly announced again to till just this month and therefore it's called the 2025 update. So here's a listing of these 36 passages And I want to go through, I don't think we'll talk about every single one of them, and we're certainly not going to be able to talk exhaustively about them, but I just want to survey them and see some of the changes. And some of them are fairly significant. One in particular that everyone's going to talk about, it's been a matter of controversy, is going to be John 1, verse 18. But let's go through some of these other ones, and some of them are not. insignificant either. And right off the bat, Genesis 3, 16, your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. That was the reading in the 2016 permanent text edition. And this is from, of course, the cursing of the woman after the fall. And now it's been changed to your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. Not the adversative conjunction, but as in the 2016, but the conjunction and, and he shall rule over you. And this is interesting because like in my 2007 text edition, it read like the 2025 edition. So they had, Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you, at least in the 2007, maybe the 2011. But they changed it in 2016. And I think given Grudem's influence, I'm sure a background for this was over interpretation of the complementarian relationships between men and women and the influence of the fall. And whereas in the, in the 2016, they were saying that the curse was that the woman's desire would be contrary to her husband, but nonetheless, he would still rule over her. And now they just want to say, rather than using that adversative contrary to, they change it to simply for, which is a little more vague. What is, what will the woman's desire for the husband be for the husband's position? Will it be the desire for companionship, for intimacy? What will that be exactly? But they have changed it now. So whereas you used to say, choosing more of a clear interpretation contrary to, you'll have desires contrary to, there'll be conflict with the husband, but he will rule over you. Now it's simply, your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you. And I'm sure there's a lot of theological practical significance to this change in the minds of the interpreters. And this is also reflected a bit in the change made at Genesis 4, 7, the same type of changes contrary to for you, but you must rule over it and you must rule over it. So part of that might've also been simply changes in grammatical understanding of the construction. but it's a change nonetheless. Let's look down here at, you know, I'm not going to look at all of these. This is interesting. There are a number of these I noticed. In Exodus 2011, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and that was 2016, now 2025, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth. So the big change here is simply from the singular heaven to the plural, the heavens. And I think this is simply reflecting the fact that the Hebrew Hashamayim for heaven is a plural noun. And so now they're going with, I guess, what might be conceived by some as a more literal rendering, because Hashamayim in Hebrew, the heavens, is plural. They're going to make it that, but someone might say, well, that's kind of a wooden construction, even though it's plural, it's reflecting a singular concept. It's simply a plural noun like the name in Hebrew Elohim could be rendered as gods, but it's normally rendered in reference to God as the singular God. And in sort of many translations in the AV tradition, for example, Hashamayim is often simply rendered as heaven in the singular. But here it's a change. And there are a number of these. You can also see the same thing in Exodus 31, 17, whereas in 2016, it was the Lord made heaven and earth. Now it's made the heavens and the earth. So there are a number of changes like this. There were also a number of changes related to the naming of God. X is 3423, before the Lord God, and it's lowercase L, well, it's uppercase L, but then a lowercase O-R-D, uppercase G, lowercase O-D, but now it's uppercase L, lowercase O-R-D, and all cap God. And behind this in the Hebrew is the Tetragrammaton, The name, special name for God, often rendered as Jehovah. So it's Jehovah Elohe. And so they're putting the G-O-D in caps as an indicator, I guess, of the Tetragrammaton being there in the text in reference to God. And let's see. We'll look at, oh, we could go down to, there are a couple of these changes too. Let's look at Joshua 15, 16 through 19, and actually in verse 18, where it says, let's see, look at this again. Yeah, here's Caleb, and to him will I give, Aksa, my daughter, as a wife. And it says, and she got off her donkey. That was in the 2016 permanent text. And now it says she dismounted from her donkey. And there are also some changes here as well. But I'm guessing maybe it's possible that this might have been changed because of a potential blue sort of misunderstanding of a reader on this language. It could be taken in a wrong way, and so it's been smoothed out and changed a bit. Let's go down. Let's see. Let's look at 2 Samuel 7, 22. Therefore you are great, O Lord God against another place with the divine name where Lord is in all caps, whereas in the updated edition, Lord is capital L, but lowercase O-R-D and uppercase God. And so it's a it's a different interpretation of the divine name where God is given two titles. And in Second Samuel 722, It's Adonai, Jehovah. And so it's going to be rendered here as Lord for Adonai and G-O-D, all capitals, for the Tetragrammaton. And interestingly enough, well, actually, this is a case where the KJV reading is actually like that in the 2016 permanent text edition. So, let's see, let's keep looking at 2 Kings 1915. We have the same issue with the singular heaven in the 2016 edition, and now it's been changed to the plural heavens. Again, that accounted for several of the changes that were listed. Chronicles 19 7 this is an inner 9 7 2nd Chronicles 9 7. This is an interesting one in the 2016 text edition it reads Happy are your wives? But that has been changed now in the 2025 Happy are your men? And that's an interesting change. You might say that's pretty different, wives versus men. That's totally different. And this is an interesting case because the 2016 edition, permanent text edition, and the notes that were there will tell you that wives here followed the Septuagint. This was a place in the 2016 edition They had altered the text, corrected the text using the Septuagint. The Hebrew reads men. And if you read the ESV footnote, it conveys that information to you. But now they've gone back to the Hebrew. So they've actually, in this case, made the reading conform to what you find in the authorized version, for example, which follows the Masoretic text. Job 7.4, but the night is long and I am full of tossing till dawn has been changed to I toss and turn. This might also, I'm not sure, but in the In the UK context, this may have been another sort of blue where there could have been some untoward overtones there. I'm not sure, or if they just wanted to use a modern idiom, I toss and turn, so it's a bit of a dynamic equivalent. Psalm 119, 159. You can see in the 2025 The addition is the evocative, Oh, Lord, consider how I love your precepts. Give me life. Oh, Lord. Whereas in the 2016, consider how I love your precepts and the Oh, Lord, the calling on God's name is not there. And so that's seemed like a fairly significant change. And actually, this is another place where It brings the ESV 2025 text into closer conformity with the traditional text. Because if you read the authorized version based on the Masoretic text, it also has the exclamation, O Lord, or the evocative, O Lord. Let's see, Isaiah 3716, heaven and earth, the heavens and the earth. We've got that change. Again, we've seen four of those so far, I think. Jeremiah 24 and verse seven. This is interesting. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord. That was 2016. Now I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. And this is yet another place where this is closer to what we've read in the authorized version, the 2025, which says the AV reads to know me. It includes the first person pronoun there. Lamentations 314, I have become the laughingstock of all peoples. And the 2025, I have become the laughingstock of all my people. So plural in the 2016, without the possessive pronoun, now possessive pronoun, first person possessive pronoun, my, and the singular people. And this is another place where it's closer to the Masoretic reading and the AV translation. The AV is to all my people. So it is interesting in several places. It seems to be conforming to the more traditional text and traditional translation. Let's see. Let's go on down and look at a few of the New Testament examples. Obviously, there were more in the Old Testament, but let's look at a few of the New Testament examples. Let's start with, let's look at this one in Matthew 21, verse 30. This is Christ's account of the two sons. It says, he went to the other son and said the same, 2016, and he answered, I go, sir. And in the 2025, however, it says, I will go, sir. And this one is interesting because if you look at the Greek text in both the Nestle on 28th, the modern critical text and the TR, it actually simply reads ego, the first person nominative pronoun, And then Curiae, the evocative from Curios, I Lord or I Sir. And in the King James version, it's it reads kind of like 2016. I go Sir, but it would have the go in italic to show the reader that the verb is actually not there in the original. ESV doesn't use the italic to tell the reader that there's a supplying here of a verb. It's not actually there in the original, and it changes it from present tense to future tense. So I'm not sure what the reasoning was there because there isn't a verb present in the text. John 118, I'm going to come back to this in just a moment. We'll save this to last because this is without question the most significant change. Maybe the Genesis 3, 16 and John 1, 18. Those would be the most significant, I think, theologically changes that are made. We'll come back to it in a minute. Let's look at a few more. Romans 15, 10. And again, it is said that was 2016. And again, it says, so a past tense or an imperfect. And then now in the present tense and in Greek, it's the verb legae, the third person singular of lego. In the KJV, it says he saith, he says, so at least the verb. is the same as in the authorized version, although it gives the subject as impersonal, it, using the pronoun it, whereas the AV has the masculine he saith, referring to the prophet being quoted. Let's see, let's look down here at Ephesians 1, 9 and 10. This is an interesting one. In the 2016, ESV, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and on earth, period. Whereas in the 2025 update, it's to unite all things, not in him, but in Christ. But then at the end of the, of the verse, end of the sentence, it includes the prepositional phrase in him. So rather than in him, in Christ, and the addition of an in him at the end, and this is another place where this is closer to the reading that you find in the authorized version, reflecting the reading found in the traditional text where you have a prepositional phrase in Christ and you have a prepositional phrase in him. Ephesians 2.3, Whereas the 2016 has a body for the Greek word sarx, 2025 updates that to read flesh. Let's see, Revelation 13, 8, before the foundation of the world was the 2016. From the foundation of the world is the reading of the 2025, and that's actually bringing that also closer to the AV reading, which also simply is from the foundation, not from before, as in the 2016. So let's go back, though, and let's talk about the one that's most controversial and the one that has generated the most discussion thus far. In the 2016, it says, no one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side. Now, in the new 2025 updated edition, it reads, no one has ever seen God, God, the only son who is at the father's side. Now, this has been a controversial passage in modern translations since the mid 20th century. And there are two issues that are involved here. One is the matter of the text. Because the traditional text, which I might add, is supported by 99% of the extant evidence, including some of the oldest evidence, the reading of Codex Alexandrinus. It's a reading that's found in many of the church fathers from the third century. It reads, ha managanes hwias, the only begotten son. But it reads son, hwias. But there is a distinct minority, less than 1%, but it includes a couple of papyri. And it's also the reading that's found in the twin darlings of the 19th century critical critics like Westcott and Hort Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it reads monogamies or homonym monogamies. So it reads God that us, whereas the traditional reading, the one that 99 percent of the stamp manuscripts reads son. And so that was began in the 19th century and attempt to have the reading God there. That's the text issue. There's also been a translation issue related to the term monogamous. The traditional translation tradition in English was to read monogamous as only begotten. It appears several times, other times in John, like in John 1.14, like in John 3.16, also in 1 John 4.9, only begotten. And so the traditional reading was texts done, translation of monogamies only begotten. But again, mid-20th century, you have people coming along and saying monogamies should not read as only begotten, but it should read only. And the dispute here is about the root for monogamies. The traditional view was to see it coming from the verb genao, To beget. Whereas in the mid 20th century they said no, it comes from the word meaning kind, and so it means it comes from the verb genomi. And so it doesn't mean only begotten doesn't have sort of the biological meaning, but it has a meaning of unique one and only. And so you begin to see translations reading, again, taking the text, God, and taking the new translation only. But this has been a point of heated dispute because really in the last couple of decades, several persons have said, wait a second, this was a big mistake. One person who has challenged this has been Charles Lee Irons, a Presbyterian minister who has made, I think, a very convincing argument that monogamies should be understood and should be translated as only begotten. And as I pointed out with respect to the text, 99% of the extant evidence reads sun. And what is more, only begotten sun, ha monogamies huias, was the reading, again, that was the predominant reading of early Christianity, later Christianity, up till the 20th century. And this verse, John 118, was one of the major proof texts for the doctrine of the eternal generation of the son, which was an important part of Orthodox Trinitarian theology. The father is unbegotten, The son is eternally begotten. The spirit is eternally spirated. And so this is a proof for the eternal generation of the son. So if you're a reformed Baptist like me, and you look in chapter two of the second London confession and paragraph three, it talks about the Trinity and it talks about the only begotten son. And what's the first proof text? It lists for the only begotten son, John 114 and John 118. But this in the 2016 reading, they had followed the the modern reconstrual of this and they had rendered it the only God. And now, though, they have come up with this God, the only son. Now, I made the comment on social media, I interacted with some people about this, that I feel like this translation here is, I called it a hot mess, because what they're saying, I'm presumably, they believe the text, if they hold to the Nestle Aland 27th edition, 28th edition, they believe the text reads, monogenes theos. Even if you take monogenes to mean only, and you take, the text to read Thaos here and not Huyas, how do you come up with God, the only son? Are they taking God from Thaos and they're taking the only son as a sort of a creative interpretation, a subsentival reading of monogamies as the only son? And it's interesting if you compare the New American Standard Bible, New American Standard Bible 1995, translated as the only begotten God, then the 2020 update of the New American Standard Bible, they have this same reading, God, the only son, but they put son in italic. to tell you that the word son is not actually in what they take to be the text. The Legacy Standard Bible went back to the reading of the New American Standard Bible of 1995, and it reads the only begotten God. But this ESV reading, I don't understand it translationally, and it maintains the problem of not properly communicating and being in harmony with the classic Trinitarian articulation of the eternal generation of the sun. So that is the most significant change that appears in the ESV 2025 edition of the text. Well, again, this is just my initial observation, my initial responses. I have not done deep dive studies on these. I'm just giving you sort of my surface reactions, responses. Let me close, if I can, with just three observations about the ESV 2025 update of the text. First thing I would notice is that many of the changes, interestingly enough, seem to revert back to either a more traditional reflection of the Masoretic text and to a more traditional English Protestant English translation tradition. I pointed out with several places where it's actually closer to what you find in the AV. On one hand, I might applaud that and say that sounds good. On the other hand, the problem with it, and we'll get to this more in a moment, is the constant changing of the text. I remember when I was growing up, My older brother and I, my dad would give us tasks to do. He didn't like for us to be just sitting around being lazy. I appreciate that. He gave us things to do, manual work to do around the house, chores. But sometimes my brother and I would joke that, you know, he would, he would just give us sometimes things to keep us busy. So, you know, we would, we would take pile of dirt and move it from place A to place B. And then maybe the next week from place B to place C. And then the next week, we would move it from place C back to place A. We would just go back right to where we started from. And so this was a joke with, inset joke with me and my brother, that my dad would give us these things to do, but maybe it wasn't. Sometimes it was very purposeful. Sometimes it was just things to keep us busy. And in this case, it seems with the ESV, these changes, You start off with one reading, like in the Genesis 316, and you change it to something else in the 2016 permanent edition. And now you change it back to the same translation you had originally. And so what progress really does that reflect? And it also relates to this issue of this whole Translation Oversight Committee. As I mentioned already, these are persons who are academics, connected to schools, but what churches are they connected to? And in the future with the ESV committee, who names this committee? In the future, how can we be sure that sound men will be on this committee? And what changes might possibly be made in the future if men who are not sound are placed on this committee? Who is safeguarding this? Is it Crossway? What authority does Crossway have to be giving oversight to these changes? It's not a church. The Bible is the church's book. It's not the publisher's book. It's not the academy's book. It's the church's book. So again, first thing is these changes, many of them are returning to traditional readings, but it demonstrates the issues related to these constant changes being made and changes that might be made in the future. A second observation, it seems like this update did not appear to me to be particularly heavily influenced by some of the modern shifts in things like approach to the text, particularly with the New Testament, maybe the coherence based genealogical method, the ECM. They didn't change the text of 2 Peter 3.10 and add a negative not, as appears in Nestle Elan 28th edition, although Jude 5, the ESV reads Jesus rather than Lord. And it's interesting that it came out in 2025, before the new Nestle Elan 29th edition and the United Bible Society 6th edition, which will have many changes. for the Book of Acts and Matthew and Revelation. So they didn't embrace any of those changes that are coming to the critical scholarly texts of the Greek New Testament. And maybe some of those changes that are being made that will appear in the Nessalon 29th edition, it'll, we'll see those, changes embraced 10 years from now, nine years from now, whenever the oversight committee deems that more updates, more changes will be made. But at present, it didn't seem overly influenced by that. Third observation, sort of touched on this a little bit in the first one. It seems that the English Standard Version is committed to an ever-changing Bible. And this reflects, I think, the worldview of the publisher, the worldview of the scholars who are engaged in this. And the problem is, I think we could say that they don't believe that in this world, in this age, till the coming of Christ, Christians should not expect to have a Bible that is stable. The Bible is constantly changing, even if it's just little changes of tense from the present tense to the future tense, or the subtleties of the name of God, or even in very significant things like whether John 1 18 refers to the Lord Jesus as the only begotten son, or as the one and only God or the only God or God the only son as the ESV currently reads. And of course, my sense of that is that that has a detrimental effect on Christianity overall, that for ordinary people, it is discouraging and disconcerting to think that the Bible is not settled. And I think for ordinary Christians who have, I think, an intuitive belief in the stability of Scripture, as the Confession says, that it's been kept pure in all ages. Their intuitive reading of passages like Matthew 5, 18, where Christ says, one jot, one tittle will not fall away till all has been fulfilled. There's an intuitive sense of something's wrong if the Bible is not settled. And it's been interesting to see some of the reactions on X in particular, Twitter in particular, as I've seen several pastors say, that's it, I'm done with the ESV. We can't be changing our Bible every couple of years. Some of the, some of them were saying that pragmatically, we, we, you know, we can't be changing our pew Bibles every couple of years, but most of them were saying, I think theologically, we can't be constantly shifting around. I can't be preaching from one text, you know, one day and then, They change the reading, you know, a couple years later. This is going to cause confusion. What if you're memorizing the Bible? You memorize it in one edition, and a couple years later they change that edition. And this shows, I think, again, the advantages of having a Bible that's not going to constantly be changing. That's one of the reasons I do like one of many reasons I do like the authorized version because as it's being used now I know it went through several places where there were there were changes to things like spelling and punctuation not the types of changes that were made in these updates to the ESV. There were some minor changes but now or since 1769 the Blaney edition. It's a stable text. It's an it's an early modern Bible translation that we in the modern era can still understand and use. And the Bible that I read and that I memorize and that I preach from is the same Bible that my parents read, that they memorized, that they studied, that they heard. that and my grandparents, and if we continue to use it, that my children would read, that my grandchildren would read. There's a wonderful sense of continuity across the ages when you have a translation of the Bible that is not constantly changing and constantly You know, when you've got a new Bible, what does that mean for the publisher? There's there's more sales. Publishers do this all the time. They come out with a revised edition of a work. If you're in academia, if you're a teacher, and I do some teaching professor at a local college, textbook vendors do this all the time. You've got the first edition, then a few years later, they come out with another edition. And what that means is everybody has to buy new books. And Again, I don't know if that's the motive in this case, but it certainly looks suspicious, doesn't it? Theodore Ledis was famous for calling the publishers of the Bible, the Bible landlords, that they are making money on these new translations and new additions and updates and so forth. Whereas the King James Version is in the public domain, in the US at least, And there's not a lot of profit to be made from changing it and updating it and constantly revising it and so forth. Well, with that, I'm going to bring this episode to a close. Again, these are just some very preliminary and initial responses. And I'm not sure that I'll do too much more of a deep dive on it. But it does seem to be getting a lot of chatter, a lot of conversation among people. And I wanted to share my preliminary insights about this 2025 ESV update to the text. Hope this has been helpful for those who are listening. I'll look forward to speaking to you in the next episode of Word magazine. Till then, take care and may the Lord richly bless you.