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Another Great HCSB Review

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As many of my readers know, I use the HCSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible) translation of the Bible for many reasons.

Today, I saw a great review of the HCSB by Bruce Ashford at Between the Times that highlights the five major distinctions and improvements of the HCSB over other modern translations. He starts his post with “I stand corrected.” Bruce has realized that the HCSB isn’t a Southern Baptist translation (a stereotype I thought was put to rest years ago, but apparently not). I love Bruce’s realization that the HCSB is “a faithful and elegant translation which should have more than a little cross-denominational appeal.”

The best part is, the HCSB now has a few options for Bible readers. Their newest addition is a phenomenal study Bible with about 15,000 study notes. This study Bible can also be viewed online where the user can make their own notes and read study notes and even link to the text when blogging, tweeting, or sharing on facebook.

Here’s an excerpt from the online study Bible for Genesis 1:1:

1:1 This opening verse of the Bible, seven words in the Hebrew, establishes seven key truths upon which the rest of the Bible is based.

First, God exists. The essential first step in pleasing God is recognizing His existence (Heb 11:6). Second, God existed before there was a universe and will exist after the universe perishes (Heb 1:10-12). Third, God is the main character in the Bible. He is the subject of the first verb in the Bible (in fact, He is the subject of more verbs than any other character) and performs a wider variety of activities than any other being in the Bible. Fourth, as Creator God has done what no human being could ever do; in its active form the Hebrew verbbara’, meaning “to create,” never has a human subject. Thus bara’signifies a work that is uniquely God’s. Fifth, God is mysterious; though the Hebrew word for God is plural, the verb form of which “God” is the subject is singular. This is perhaps a subtle allusion to God’s Trinitarian nature: He is three divine persons in one divine essence. Sixth, God is the Creator of heaven and earth. He doesn’t just modify pre-existing matter but calls matter into being out of nothing (Ps 33:6,9; Heb 11:3). Seventh, God is not dependent on the universe, but the universe is totally dependent on God (Heb 1:3).

Other recent additions to the HCSB lineup is the Apologetic’s Study Bible and the leather-bound Minister’s Bible.

Perhaps my favorite HCSB resource is a 62 page Gospel of John excerpted from the Apologetic’s Study Bible which is entitled Is Jesus Alive Today? The evidence and why it matters to you. This has the beautiful HCSB translation along with dozens of short contributions from noted apologists dealing with apologetic issues in the text of John. It only costs .99 at CBD so I buy a bunch of them at a time and give them away to people I am telling about Jesus.

So now, not only is the HCSB a wonderful modern translation, but you can find some phenomenal resources depending on your needs. I would encourage anyone to take a second look at the HCSB and put aside any stereotypes you may have about this “faithful and elegant translation”.

Now I want to hear from you! Which translation do you use? What are your impressions of the HCSB? If you don’t use it now, would you consider using it in the future?

The Problem of Choosing a Good Bible Translation

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stats-mapI was reading through my blog subscriptions this morning and one post in particular really stood out and inspired this post. More about that later in the post. For now, I want to discuss the problem of choosing a good Bible translation.

Problem #1

How do you find a good Bible translation? Well, it depends on what language you speak. If you speak English, I recommend the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I’ve written about that here and here. It’s the best of the modern translations because it is accurate, it is readable, and it is not theologically biased like so many translations tend to be.

If you aren’t satisfied with my recommendation then I will happily point you to Douglas Stuart’s book entitled, How to Choose a Translation For All Its Worth.

The problem of choosing a translation in English is a minor problem. If you grab an NIV or an HCSB or an ESV or even the older KJV you will be reading the Truth (just don’t fall into the trap thinking that The Message is a translation!). There are nuances where a word choice could have been more precise or might have captured the original meaning more clearly, but it’s a minor problem.

There are bigger problems to worry about.

Problem #2

But what if you don’t speak English? Well, there are Bible translations in 4,516 languages. There are even some languages that also have numerous versions to select from, though I don’t know if it is to the extent of the selection in the English language.

However, there is a problem here. Some of these languages may only have the New Testament or the Gospels. Other languages may have translations from a translation. Only 438 languages have the entire Bible translated from the original languages. There is a great need for Greek and Hebrew scholars to translate from the original languages into many of these languages that may only have a translation from a translation or a partial copy of the Bible.

There’s lots of work to be done, but even that’s not the biggest problem. If a language only has the New Testament, they can still hear the gospel, but there are some people that don’t even have one verse translated into their heart language.

Problem #3

I like reading Kouya Chronicle which is a blog from Eddie and Sue Arthur. They are Wycliffe Bible Translators and it was his post this morning that encouraged me to write this one. He reminds us that there are 2,393 languages with NO Bible translation. That’s about 200 million people who have no access to the Bible.

This is unacceptable. The English language has plenty of translations to choose from. There shouldn’t be the thought of another translation project in our language until we cut the number of languages with no Bibles in half! And even then it probably wouldn’t be necessary to start another English language translation project. It’s amazing that the KJV has lasted so long with its thees and thous. People still use the KJV as their translation of choice. If the KJV could last so long, couldn’t our modern translations like the NIV or the HCSB tide us over for a while so that we can get as many resources over to these other countries that have nothing?

How do you choose a good Bible translation when there is no translation to choose from? The problem of choosing a good Bible translation is that millions of people don’t have a choice!

Solutions

So what can we do? Not everyone is called to be a Bible translator. Not everyone knows Greek and Hebrew. We are blessed to have so many options in our country but we have grown fat and lazy when it comes to other people around the world. They are our neighbors though they are thousands of miles away.

Here are some things WE can do even if we never become Bible translators ourselves:

1. Pray for the unreached people groups of the world.

2. Adopt a language or an unreached people group or sponsor a verse for $26.

3. Support a Bible translator financially. I recommend my friends Eddie and Sue Arthur.

4. Educate your church or small group. Send them to this blog post and encourage them to watch the following videos:    Video 1 |  Video 2 |  Video 3

Finally, do something now! Our desire to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and shelter the homeless means nothing if we don’t give them the gospel. Making this life more comfortable for a few won’t make the next life any more comfortable. We need to feed and clothe and shelter people and show our love for them in that way, but for every dollar spent meeting a physical need, why not spend two dollars for spiritual needs? In fact, if we put first things first, many times the other needs are met. Give someone the gift of a Bible in their own language and many will learn to read for the first time. The gospel is spiritually AND socially transformative, so by all means, give someone fresh water, but don’t forget about the living water that will quench their thirst forever!

ChurchETHOS Link Love

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Today I thought I would check through the stats of ChurchETHOS to determine what is of most interest to my readers and who is sending me the most visitors. Listing my top 10 posts for the past month will not only give a good indication of what has been interesting to you, but it will also give a good indication of what this blog is about. Hopefully, listing my top referrers will also give my reader a sense of other people who like my content and I hope you will visit their pages and subscribe to their feeds.

In fact, if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my feed now so you don’t miss any of the action!

Top 10 Posts from the past month

1. One God, Two Gods, Three Gods, No God is a post I wrote to show the dangers of believing that all religions are equally true and valid. In fact, all religions cannot be true because they make competing and contradictory truth claims. There cannot be one God while at the same time there are two or more gods, while at the same time there are no gods.

2. My Top Concerns for the Local Church is my most recent post and is probably the best representation this past month of what ChurchETHOS is all about. In this post I explore the most difficult and pervasive problems of the church.

3. Why I Chose the HCSB Over the ESV is both an apologetic for the use of the Holman Christian Standard version of the Bible but it also expresses my frustration with the obvious bias towards the ESV for the following main reasons: 1. The ESV has a theological slant towards the Reformed tradition and 2. Paul and Apollos (I mean Piper and Driscoll) use the ESV.

4. HCSB vs. ESV Update reflects the new data that puts the HCSB as the second most popular version of the Bible up from 6th most popular when I wrote “Why I Chose the HCSB Over the ESV”. In fact, the rise in sales is due to it’s readability (like the NIV), it’s accuracy (like the NASB and ESV), and from the attention it has received from blogs and viral marketing from HCSB users who recognize it’s readability and accuracy.

5. The Trinity Lives in a Shack? This is my reaction to the fictional book by William Paul Young called  “The Shack”. This book explores the Trinity from an unorthodox and harmful perspective. I felt like this was worthy to talk about on my blog because it reveals the habit of some Christians to derive their theology from fiction (or even nonfiction) rather than from the Bible.

6. Did Jesus Claim to be God? This is a theological and exegetical post based primarily on John’s view of the deity of Christ. The implications? Since Jesus claimed to be God, He can’t be respected as merely a great prophet or teacher. He either is the Son of God, or He is a liar and everything He has said must be distrusted. (Or he’s a lunatic but that doesn’t really fit with everything else He did does it?)

7. Tithing Ethos: The Habit of Giving in the Church is a post exploring the theological truths of stewardship. Tithing today is more of a minimum standard and we need to increase our understanding of what God requires of ALL of the resources, time, money, etc. that He has entrusted to us.

8. About – Well, I’m happy that some of you want to know about the author of ChurchETHOS. Please feel free to comment and introduce yourselves. I really want this blog to be more of a dialogue that is not only helpful to me in sounding out my own thoughts on the church, God, culture, etc. but also helpful to you and is a place where you can explore these topics as well.

9. The Case for Community is a theology of fellowship. This post explores from Biblical perspective how Christians are meant to live together. I would say this and “My Top Concerns for the Local Church” above are best representative of what ChurchETHOS is about.

10. What is ChurchETHOS? – Okay, maybe this post is MOST representative of what my blog is about simply because that’s the purpose of the post.

** Bonus Post from the Archives – My Top Ten Christian Books isn’t in the top ten for the past month but it is historically a pretty popular post that you might be interested in if you enjoy this blog.

Top Referrers to ChurchETHOS

I want to give some link love to those people who have sent visitors my way. As I mentioned above, I think this will also give you a sense of the people who enjoy ChurchETHOS. Thanks for sending people my way!

1. Tim Challies from challies.com

2. Matt Privett from themattrix.com

3. Tim Fenton from theefaulted.blogspot.com

4. Joseph McBee from josephmcbee.wordpress.com

5. Bobby Grow from theologyofbobby.wordpress.com

** Honorable Mention – Breezy Neon from breezyneon.wordpress.com

Note: These wonderful people are being mentioned here because they have either linked to me on their sidebar or in a conversation from one of their posts. If I do a recap post like this in the future I would love to share with you some of the limelight. Simply post to my blog or to a specific post and I will also do my best to send some visitors your way.

HCSB vs. ESV Update

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HCSB Study Bible[Update #2 - 4.28.09] There’s a rumor floating around that the 2nd edition of the Holman Christian Standard Bible will be coming out in September of this year. However, I got an email from Jim Baird, the Vice President of Marketing and Sales, informing me that it won’t be coming out until 2010.

[Update #1 3.31.09] I recently wrote a post about why I love the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. Will at Anwoth tipped me off to the updated data that the HCSB has now surpassed the English Standard Version on the Christian Bookseller’s Association Best Seller List. You can find their bestseller lists here.

Last month when I wrote my previous post about the HCSB and the ESV, the NIV was #1, the ESV was #5, and the HCSB was #6. Now, the NIV is #1, the HCSB is #2, and the ESV takes sixth place. I predict that we will see the HCSB as the #1 Bible translation of choice within the next year.

Will does a great job of attributing the success of the HCSB to 3 factors:

1. It is readable and appeals to all English speaking Christians.

2. But it is very accurate, not willing to succumb to tradition or doctrinal biases in the translational choices. This appeals to the scholars.

3. Finally, though the marketing from the publisher hasn’t been particularly effective, the viral marketing has been very effective.

I think the ESV appeals to a lot of extremely reformed individuals and has been talked about by their champions (Piper, Driscoll, etc.) But, the HCSB is far superior as a translation because it seems to supercede the calvinism vs. arminianism debate. All translations have a slight bias but the HCSB may be the most unbiased translation ever to be produced in the history of Bible translations. So when I say that I really like it as a translation, I don’t think that’s a biased opinion. :)

You can buy the new Holman Christian Standard Bible here.

Why I Chose the HCSB over the ESV

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Be sure to read this 3/31/09 update!d231828fd7a04b0a79a15110l

I think I’m tired of hearing about the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible. Let me be clear, I’m grateful we English speakers have so many versions of the Bible to choose from, but when a version is elevated to cult like status something’s wrong. I skim through a lot of blogs and people are always writing posts saying “Mark Driscoll said ‘x’” and “John Piper said ‘y’”. Since they are ESV users, all the Christian bloggers seem to jump at the chance to be like their hero.

The ESV-Only Crowd

I like Mark Driscoll and I like John Piper and I’m grateful for the ESV. However, I don’t think it’s the best English version of the Bible out there today and the only reason it is outselling the others is because of its cult-like following. I’m afraid that in 100 years when it’s time to move on to a fresher translation people are going to be “ESV-only” fanatics. People will be saying, “Don’t you know that when Moses received the Ten Commandments, they were written in ESV English?”

To be honest, the ESV is a “formal equivalence” or word-for-word translation that is too rigid and literal. I don’t see how ESV lovers see a difference in the ESV and the NASB (again, I like the NASB as much as I like the ESV – I just think they are too literal and hard to read). The only thing I’ve heard that is different about the ESV is that it seems to use less words to say the same thing as the NASB, so it is a simpler translation by comparison and therefore seems easier to understand.

That’s What I Thought!

On the opposite end you have the NIV. The NIV is a “dynamic equivalence” or thought-for-thought translation. The NIV is very readable but it looses a lot of the precision of a word-for-word translation. They both have their problems. One is too literal and rigid for an idiomatic language such as Greek. The other is too loose with its interpretations of the thought of the original author. Sometimes the NIV makes a decision about what the author intended that other scholars disagree with. But when you commit to a thought-for-thought you have to claim to know the exact thought the author intended.

Optimizing the Translation

Enter the only “optimal equivalence” translation – the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). Now, before I sound like other bloggers who think the ESV was handed straight to them while they were hiking up Mount Sinai one day, let me say that the HCSB also has its theological slants just like all translations. I’ve done lots of comparisons on a verse-by-verse basis between the Greek text, the HCSB, the NIV, and the ESV (especially in the New Testament) and I can tell you that there are some translations that will occasionally translate a verse better (in my opinion) than the HCSB. But time and time again I think the HCSB puts the verbage in a way that is both more precise than the ESV and more readable than the NIV.

Basically, “optimal equivalence” is a marriage between formal and dynamic equivalence translation. It’s the best of the ESV AND the NIV styles. The HCSB approaches translation with a word-for-word mentality, but when that just doesn’t quite get the essence of the meaning the translators used the phrase-for-phrase method. If there is something idiomatic in the text, the HCSB translators have the freedom to deviate from a literal interpretation and capture the sense of the author’s intent.

HCSB + ESL = A OK

The HCSB is the best English translation for both the understanding of the author’s original meaning and for modern English speakers. It is a bridge between the ancient world and the modern world. It is the translation of choice when I give a Bible to an international student who might be learning English.

Let me conclude by saying, I’m not in love with a translation. However, I felt it wise to push back against the cult-like following of the ESV and say that there are other options for people who don’t do everything Driscoll and Piper tell them to do. Our translations will always have a minor problem here or there and we should always strive for the best but let’s not get involved in translation wars. Whatever you’ve chosen as your translation (remember, The Message is not a translation) spend time in it, hide it in your heart, let it draw you closer to God. For those of you who are ESV users I’m grateful that you’ve found it helpful and understandable.

Note: Here is a great information source that includes video and history of the HCSB translation.

Update: The Christian Booksellers Association lists the HCSB as the 6th most popular Bible as of March 2009. The ESV is #5 and the NIV is #1.

You can buy the new Holman Christian Standard Bible here.