I received my copy of Oxford University Press’s new The English Standard Version Bible with Apocrypha. The text of the Apocrypha is an updated version of the RSV translation by David A deSilva, Dan McCartney, Bernard A. Taylor, and David Aiken. Unfortunately, the translation is more like the NRSV at two very significant points than the ESV.
In The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, the OUP version reads,
[3] “Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors, and worthy of praise…
[29] “Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors, and to be praised and highly exalted forever…
(emphasis added)
This phrase, “God of our ancestors,” appears 8 times in the NRSV (Deut. 26:7; 1 Chr. 12:17; 2 Chr. 20:6; Ezra 7:27; Acts 3:13, 5:30, 22:14, 24:14). In each place, the ESV reads, “God of our fathers.” Similarly, the RSV-Second Catholic Edition, which was translated using similarly politically incorrect (i.e., accurate) guidelines renders each of these phrases as “God of our fathers.” In fact, unlike the OUP translation, the RSV-Second Catholic Edition is consistent and renders these phrases using “fathers” in the apocryphal material as well (just as it was translated in the original RSV).
In short, these two apocryphal canticles, both of which have been retained in Lutheran liturgy, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and in Presbyterian and Reformed hymnody, have been rendered in the OUP translation in a way that contravenes the very translation guidelines governing the ESV itself. I’m disappointed and can only hope that OUP corrects the mistake. Until then, I’ll turn to the RSV-Second Catholic Edition when I need an ESV-like translation of an apocryphal text.
