Archive for February 2007

Joe Paravisini has written a TextPattern plugin that uses the ESV API to let you easily link to and quote the ESV text on your blog (or whatever you’re using TextPattern for).
Meanwhile, YubNub, “a social command line for the web,” has implemented a feature where typing, for example, “esv John 1” into their text field [...]

We’ve released six new spots in the “Bible for Life” radio campaign. Each one-minute spot has someone reading a passage from the ESV and meditating on it.
This month features Sarah and Julia Ross from Everlife, Jesse Triplett from Julian Drive, one about Justin Martyr, and others.
Listen to all the spots at www.bibleforlife.org.

Three bloggers have independently blogged about the ESV over the past few days:
The Brainerd Baptist Church Blog writes:
In Bro. Darryl’s message yesterday morning, he mentioned utilizing a “readable Bible” in your quiet time. For me, that has become the English Standard Version (ESV). Although I know that there are MANY beneficial translations, my spiritual life [...]

Some new editions of the ESV include a section in the preface explaining the ESV translators’ philosophy toward translating certain specialized terms. If you’ve wondered why the ESV translates YHWH as “the LORD” (with small caps), why “Christ” instead of “Messiah” occurs consistently throughout the New Testament, or why the ESV uses “behold,” here are [...]

We’ve updated the Introduction to the ESV Bible page on this site to bring it in line with the latest text from Crossway. It’s also available in PDF (450K).
The PDF version, especially, is designed for you to print out and give to people who may not know much about the ESV. A version of this [...]

Drew at Truth and Repose explains why he switched from the KJV to the ESV:
I’ve been using the ESV in Bible classes since it was first published in 2001. This way, I could get familiar with the text to see if I really wanted to use it in the pulpit. It was a way of [...]

Sunday’s Washington Post had an article about long-form audiobooks like War and Peace, which takes 70 hours to get through. Max McLean’s recording of the ESV, by comparison, takes 72 hours.
The article shows that, against the general trend of media consumption becoming more bite-sized, the market for long, unabridged recordings of books is expanding:
Given that [...]

The Internet makes large-scale collaboration possible, with Wikipedia as Exhibit A. Theopedia and others have tried to do something similar for theology and commentary.
But sometimes smaller-scale ideas can be just as productive, as in the area of personal or family Bible study.
For example, Kletos at Amor at Labor proposes a collaborative project for the Lutheran [...]

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to read through the Bible in a year? How’s it going? Based on our statistics, there’s an 80% chance you’ve made it this far. Congratulations! You’re over the hard part.

If you disappeared from our statistics, maybe you just decided to subscribe to the RSS feed or bought a [...]

Stephen at Withering Fig suggests five keys to picking a Bible translation.
He prefers more word-for-word translations, but he also makes the good point that a looser translation or paraphrase can help bring alive some parts of the Bible—especially the stories of the Gospels and parts of the Old Testament.
His five keys:

Readability
Word-for-word
Who’s translating this thing?
How is [...]