The Jesus Bible – ESV

The Bible Gateway have sent along a review copy of this edition of the ESV- The Jesus Bible.  And I am under no constraints that the review be positive, or negative.  My views on the volume are completely my own and are not influenced by any outside factor. As a member of the #BibleGatewayPartner network, I am completely free to express my opinion.  Which I will do below.

The ESV is a revision of the Revised Standard Version.  It attempts to update the language, clarify the grammar, and give a decidedly Evangelical twist to the text (when linguistically possible to do so).  It also attempts, at times, to present the language in gender-neutral format.

The ESV’s editorial board is comprised nearly entirely of Evangelicals.

This particular ‘study Bible’ purports to offer the Bible, its

66 books. One story. All about one name.

This is an extraordinarily problematic claim.  It is, at its heart, a Marcionite approach which diminishes the meaning of the Old Testament in and of itself and which purports to give the Old Testament value only insofar as messianic claims and prophecies can be gleaned from it.

The Bible is NOT one story.  It is NOT about One Name.  It is a collection of theological materials that span centuries and which offer differing perspectives on God by a raft of independently minded theologians.  The Deuteronomist is not the Chronicler.  And they are not telling the same story.  The Yahwist, the Elohist, and the Priestly writers all have their own agendas, theologically.  The compiler of Ruth is not of the same mind as Ezra and Nehemiah.  Esther’s author is not a writer of Proverbs or Psalms and the New Testament is just as varied.

What we have in the Bible, then, is a wide-ranging gathering of theologians all in conversation with each other.  We have a theological colloquium, not a univocal declaration ex cathedra.  Accordingly, when the editors of the present version of Scripture tell us that this volume is a collection of 66 books telling but one story about but one name, they are simply, decidedly, irrevocably wrong.

The ESV is a fairly good translation.   A study bible based on it, as this one is, has a good textual base.  The notes, however, are another matter.

In their attempt to haul Jesus into the Old Testament, each OT book has a page preceding it which the editors must suppose make it clear that Jesus is somewhere in each respective book.  So, for instance, preceding Esther we read ‘Jesus: Our Divine Advocate’.  Before Job, we read ‘Jesus: Our Suffering Savior’.  Before Amos, ‘Jesus: Our Justice Bearer’.

Two pages are devoted to ‘the Intertestamental Period’.  This section perpetuates the false notion that nothing was going on in terms of Judaism’s religious development and thus is of little interest to Christians.  At the end of the Bible there’s a concordance and a little table of weights and measures.

The notes themselves are all also, somehow or other, Christocentric.  Even the tale of the Witch at En-Dor is hauled in as evidence that Jesus is lurking in the cautionary tale.

Saul’s life is a cautionary tale of trying to find wisdom apart from the Holy Spirit and godly counsel.  Saul’s attempt at wisdom apart from God led him on a downward slope into spiritual darkness.  The wisdom of the Spirit, on the other hand, leads us into all truth (Jn 16:13).

All in all, this study Bible, though aesthetically beautiful with its onion paper pages and one column presentation of the text and its sidebars and notes and gold edging and double sewn ribbon bookmarks, is simply misleading.  It is eisegesis at its most unbearable.  From the premise of the volume (one story, one name) through the execution of that premise those familiar with the history of the Church will see as plain as day Marcion’s ghost.

One has the impression, reading the notes, that if the editors could have gotten away with tossing the Old Testament on the ash heap they would have done it.  Readers of the Bible deserve better.  And can do better.  There are a number of excellent study Bibles on the market.

This is not one of them.