A Myth/Mistake about the ESV

The ESV was not translated from the NA28, and the reading at Jude 5 is not an example of the ESV adopting the reading of the NA28.

(That’s the correct version, not the myth—just to be clear.)

I’ve seen this one several times before and was once even accused of bearing false witness against the ESV Translation Committee for saying that they did not translate the ESV from the NA28. The text-critical question is who saved the people out of Egypt? The UBS5/NA28/ECM/THGNT have “Jesus” (Ἰησοῦς), and the UBS4/NA27/Tommy Wasserman have “Lord” (κύριος). There is more to the variation unit than just that substitution, but that is the part I want to focus on here.

Before I get to why that is a myth, I’d like to acknowledge why I think I’ve seen it so much.

If you check the preface to the ESV, the “Textual Basis and Resources” section says the following:

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. ... 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.

That is both in the online version and in recent (at least since 2016) print versions.

Furthermore, if you check Jude 5 in the ESV, we see that it translates the reading adopted in the NA28 and the Tyndale House GNT:

Source: https://www.esv.org/Jude/

Those two things are enough to make someone think that the ESV is simply following the NA28 here.

However, there is more to the story.

I attach below images from my own copy of the 2001 ESV, which I’ve had since college. Here are pictures of the copyright page (to show that it is the 2001 edition), the “Textual Basis” section from the preface, the text of Jude 5 and the text-critical footnote for Jude 5.

ESV 2001 Copyright page

ESV 2001 Textual Basis

ESV 2001 Jude 5

ESV 2001 Jude 5 text-critical footnote

Now, assuming I’m not bearing false witness with these photos (I promise I am not, but of course, that’s exactly what someone who was bearing false witness would say, so please do find an ESV 2001 and check it yourself rather than take my word for it), here we have the reading adopted by the NA28, Ἰησοῦς (against κύριος in the NA27 and in Tommy Wasserman’s Epistle of Jude: Its Text and Transmission).

The thing to remember here is that Ἰησοῦς was adopted by the ESV Committee eleven years before the NA28 was published. The 2001 ESV was also published four years before the publication of Installment 4 of the text (2–3 John, Jude) of the ECM1 Catholic Epistles (2005), which also adopted Ἰησοῦς before the NA28 (2012) or the ECM2 of the Catholic Epistles (2013). Unless Wayne Grudem is a Time Lord, this demonstrates that the ESV did not get the Ἰησοῦς reading from the NA28. Instead, the ESV Committee broke from the NA27’s main text at Jude 5 and adopted the Ἰησοῦς reading from the NA27 apparatus—just like they said they occasionally did in the preface—and coincidentally Ἰησοῦς was also adopted (a few years later) as the main text in the ECM/NA28.

That leaves one important question though: Why does the current ESV say that it was translated from the NA28/UBS5? From here, I can only speculate. I did ask this question to someone who is on the ESV translation committee (back when I was accused of bearing false witness—I do try to check myself believe it or not, because I’ve been wrong before), and unfortunately he said he was not on the committee in the beginning when it was first translated. If I remember his answer correctly, he said the process was something like “ok we’re going to meet to translate” and everyone brought whichever editions of the original languages he used. My suspicion is that when the ESV was updated, someone simply updated the ‘editions used’ to whatever was current—which became the NA28 and the UBS5. The textual difference is not huge, and given that the ESV never stuck slavishly to the NA27/UBS4 in the first place, it probably seemed reasonable at the time. Indeed, I imagine when the committee has met since, committee members probably brought their copies of the NA28/UBS5.

Update for clarification (29 Sept. 2021): I did not, nor have I ever suggested that the translators of the ESV lied about which editions they use. Lying is intentionally saying something false. As I said above, changing the preface from NA27 to NA28 "probably seemed reasonable at the time," because I suspect the translators simply brought the editions they typically used when they met, and since they admitted that they were not bound to follow those editions at every point of variation anyway, it was sufficiently accurate for their purposes to say they used the NA edition, the most recent of which became the NA28.

As a final thought: there is something to the notion that fundamentally textual critics are not in control of what’s in people’s Bibles—translation committees are. We can rave about/rail against the CBGM all day long, but the only way it will ever change the text of a Bible translation is if a translation committee follows the textual decisions that the CBGM was used to make.

The Missing Manuscript and the Case of Variant Boundaries

[Edit: Please see the comments to find out how I was fooled by my own expectations; there is little in this post except an illustration of my misreading of the manuscript]

According to NA27/28 there is a variant at the start of Mt 10:33 (οστις δ̕ αν αρνησηται ...)

1) text οστις δ' αν

2) οστις δε (as in NA28; 1 2 as in NA27) B L 1424 pc

3) και οστις W

Quiz question: on the basis of the presented evidence, what do you think Codex Ephraemi rescriptus reads?

Since the images are online, we can check for ourselves:



Οστις δ απαρνησηται

When we look only at the first words it seems that C reads (2), οστις δε. But it also becomes clear that the variant unit as given in the pocket editions of NA27/28 cannot capture the full situation. The following verb has something to do with the variant οστις δ' αν. In some early Greek bookhands the Π and Ν are rather similar as the connecting line of the Ν between the two verticals can be quite horizontal. The presence or absence of αν is not unrelated to the presence / absence of απ- in the verb απαρνησηται.

So this is the full picture (ignoring variants in -ηται / -εται [L X 71 99 243 245 478*]):

1) text οστις δ' αν αρνησηται

2) οστις δε αρνησηται B L 517 1424 pc

3) οστις δ' απαρνησηται C

4) οστις δ' αν απαρνησηται Θ fam 1 fam 13 pc

One way in which these variants can be related to one another is to assume (2) is the origin, morphing into (3) under influence of the regularly occurring απαρνεομαι, whilst (1) is a scribal corruption of (3). The final reading is then a conflation between two secondary readings, namely (1) and (3). Of course other orders are feasible as well, for example those that start with taking the text (1) as the source of all the others. It is just that the patterns of corruption are less obvious in those orders.

Anyway, if we accept the boundaries of the variant as given in the pocket editions, C ought to be cited in support of the variant reading οστις δε. A line of support that looks like B C L 1424 has quite a bit of weight. The failure to mention C, however, is understandable in light of what follows. Shame that it requires so much work to understand C's omission from the apparatus.

Notes on Luke 22: P75, NA27 & Sinaiticus

Yesterday we had some fun with P75 in an MPhil seminar. The basic assignment was to read page 53 (containing Luke 22.38-56). Among the many things we noticed were the following:

1. For the last word of v41 P75 reads PROSEUXATO (not PROSHUXATO as NA27 app. suggests) - a reminder that the NA apparatus is somewhat an approximation and can't be guaranteed to present sufficient evidence to reconstruct readings of manuscripts in detail. We wondered whether it would be better to place P75 in parentheses in the apparatus (I think it probably would be better).
2. For the omission of 22.43f NA27 app. refers to the first corrector of Sinaiticus - from NA27 one would think that the original of Sinaiticus has the verses, the first corrector (in the scriptorium) deletes; and a later corrector restores them. But the Sinaiticus project web page now attributes the deletion to the Ca corrector, and the restoration to the Cb2 corrector - which places the action much later than the first corrector. I guess/hope that the next revision of NA (NA28) will incorporate the results of the Sinaiticus Project in the apparatus.
   
3. For the same variant NA27 cites for the addition (among other things): Ju[stin] Ir[enaeus] Hipp Eus Hier. Immediately one wants to know the reference in Justin so as to assess whether Justin knows the text as part of Luke or (possibly) as an independent floater. This is such a general problem with patristic references in our small editions that I began to wonder about how big an appendix - which provided a reference for each patristic citation in the apparatus - would actually be, especially for second and third century writers. In my imagination it would be about as long as the appendices for minor variants and differences between the editions, and would be just as valuable than either of those. What do you think?
4. In 22.47 P75 reads PROSHRCETO (NA27 txt: PROHRCETO). Here it is a helpful outcome of reading the manuscript that one realises it is more than a simple one letter variant, since the reading of P75 suggests a different referent for the following AUTOUS - it would refer to the disciples and Jesus (v45); whereas for the NA27 reading it presumably refers to the OCLOS mentioned earlier in the verse (but pluralised). Just an example of how textual criticism helps close reading of the text.
   
5. We noted that NA27 doesn't offer any evidence in support of the txt reading for 22.19b-20, which would suggest that the editors were completely (IMO overly) satisfied with the originality of the longer reading here. Or is it more a by-product of the decision to take such a large unit as v17-20 for the variants - for such a long unit listing support for the txt reading would involve a lot of parentheses no doubt.

Some Features in Vaticanus

Mike Bird posted a portion of Vaticanus which he had used in tormenting his Greek students. Good for him for using manuscripts in his Greek classes. But this clip also has at least three other interesting features:
a) the letters not re-inked (e.g. the final nu in ESTIN, line 8)
b) the use of an umlaut/distigma to signal a word order variant in line 5 (not in the margin)
c) an error (I think) in the apparatus of NA27 re the same word order variant in line 5: NA27 has B* supporting the NA27 txt line: IDEIN PROFHTHN. It is obviously more likely that I am wrong than NA27, but I can't figure out how/why at the moment.


The clip is as follows