Shalom, ElainaMor.
I've read/heard that the ESV is slanted towards Calvinism, is this true?
I can't say much about the ESV and Calvinism. But I do know from my own studies with the Hebrew texts themselves and from working with other translations that the ESV follows the same interpretive renderings of many other Christian translations throughout the centuries. It is not really very different at all. In fact, that's basically what the
ESV's own preface says:
The English Standard Version (2011 ESV) stands in the classic mainstream of English Bible translations over the past half-millennium. The fountainhead of that stream was William Tyndale’s New Testament of 1526; marking its course were the King James Version of 1611 (KJV), the English Revised Version of 1885 (RV), the American Standard Version of 1901 (ASV), and the Revised Standard Version of 1952 and 1971 (RSV). In that stream . . .
The ESV is “in that stream” in terms of its interpretation and translation. And you can see that when you compare versions in that stream against each other. The differences are usually minor and insignificant. If there is an injection of Calvinistic thought, it is negligible. Compare the ESV to a translation outside that traditional stream (like the New JPS Tanakh, Artscroll's Stone Edition Tanach, one of Robert Alter's translations, or my own translation,
the heavenly fire) and you will immediately see what the ESV might have been capable of in terms of being different from other traditional interpretations, but isn't.
Through my research on translations I've read that the manuscripts the NKJV are translated from are not as reliable as what was used for the ESV. . . . Can you shed light on this please
This is from the
preface for the NKJV:
Daniel Bomberg printed the first Rabbinic Bible in 1516—17; that work was followed in 1524—25 by a second edition prepared by Jacob ben Chayyim and also published by Bomberg. The text of ben Chayyim was adopted in most subsequent Hebrew Bibles, including those used by the King James translators. The ben Chayyim text was also used for the first two editions of Rudolph KittelÂ’s Biblia Hebraica of 1906 and 1912. In 1937 Paul Kahie published a third edition of Biblia Hebraica. This edition was based on the oldest dated manuscript of the ben Asher text, the Leningrad Manuscript B 19a (A.D. 1008), which Kahie regarded as superior to that used by ben Chayyim.
A few things need to be said about this. First, the NKJV has the KJV as its background. The KJV uses the ben Chayyim text for the Old Testament, so the ben Chayyim text has a strong influence on the NKJV. You can see this to be the case when the preface says that Kahle regarded the Leningrad Codex to be superior to the ben Chayyim text, not the translators of the NKJV. They, obviously, do not think Leningrad is superior. The Preface goes on to admit as much:
For the New King James Version the text used was the 1967/1977 Stuttgart edition of the Biblia Hebraica, with frequent comparisons being made with the Bomberg edition of 1524—25.
In other words, the NKJV plays the ben Chayyim text off of Biblia Hebraica, which is the Lenningrad Codex.
So by now you're probably wondering what these texts are.
The Masoretic text is the traditional Jewish text copied and preserved by the scribes at Tiberias. A number of manuscripts exist which are “Masoretic” such as the Aleppo Codex or the Leningrad Codex. These are individual manuscripts that come directly out of the Masoretic tradition as authored and copied and prepared by the Masorettes.
Ben Chayyim was a marvel of a man. And he changed history by putting together the Masoretic text for printing press publication. However, he only had a few manuscripts at his disposal and all of them were different. So he did his best to take from all those manuscripts what he thought was the original Masoretic tradition and that became the ben Chayyim text. For the most part, it was very close. But the ben Chayyim text was an eclectic text based on no single manuscript in existence. In other words, the ben Chayyim Old Testament text didn't exist until ben Chayyim put it together (and thus it's called “ben Chayyim”
.
So the basis of the KJV is a manuscript of the Old Testament that had never existed. It is Masoretic in name only because it is like the Masoretic text, but it isn't, itself a Masoretic text. It never existed in the Masoretic tradition. No Masorette ever worked on it. The Leningrad Codex, which is the basis of Biblia Hebraica, is part of the Masoretic tradition. So the KJV uses a text for the OT that was created by a man from multiple manuscripts based on no single manuscript in existence, and the NKJV at least puts that eclectic text on equal footing with the real Masoretic text preserved in Masoretic circles down through time.
So in respect to base texts, the KJV is worse than the NKJV since it is actually based on a text that never existed as an authoritative witness, but the NKJV isn't much better since it still depends on it. Many of the problems with ben Chayyim are small, sure. But they are problems nonetheless. Just in the first chapter of Genesis alone, I have counted over a dozen. The manuscript is riddled with them. Modern translations are better because they actually are based on real Masoretic manuscripts like Leningrad, instead of one created by a single man a long time after.
