Happy 25th Birthday, ESV: Reflections from John Piper

Twenty-five years ago this fall, Crossway released the ESV Bible.

John Piper was thrilled.

“I grew up reading the King James Version,” he said. “As a sophomore at Wheaton in 1965, I bought an RSV [Revised Standard Version], and I used that for memorization and Bible reading for the next 30 years. And I would have kept using it, except it went out of print.”

Around that time, in the mid-1990s, the King James Version (KJV) was one of the best-selling translations in the United States.

But Piper, then the pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, knew he couldn’t put KJVs in the pews.

“The archaic words made it really difficult for families and churches to use,” he said. “For example, the word ‘conversation’ meant ‘lifestyle,’ as in ‘let your conversation be above reproach.’ But that didn’t mean your words—it meant your manner of life. Things like that were all over in the King James Version.”

The best-selling New International Version (NIV) was easier to read, partly because it sometimes paraphrased the original text. But Piper thought it didn’t stay close enough to the original wording. It was also—like the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)—beginning to lean into gender-neutral language. While in some cases that change was accurate, in others it added to or obscured the original intent, conservative theologians found.

In October 2001, in a market dominated by the KJV and NIV, Crossway published the first editions of the ESV Bible, an update to the RSV.

Odds were that it would remain, like most other translations, on the fringe of Bible readership.

However, by 2008, the ESV was beginning to gain traction with the successful release of the ESV Study Bible, which has sold more than 2.6 million copies since its initial release. As a result, the ESV was quickly becoming the preferred translation of many in the Reformed resurgence, but its reach was much wider than that.

By 2014, the ESV was the fifth best-selling Bible translation; by 2015, it was the fourth; in 2022, it was the second. Last year, amid booming Bible sales in the United States and the United Kingdom, the ESV was the most popular version sold in the United Kingdom.

Overall, more than 370 million copies of the ESV have been distributed, with most copies given away through Crossway and ministry partners, said Crossway chief publishing officer Don Jones. By God’s grace, the ESV Study Bible has now been translated into 10 languages and is in process with another 17 languages.

The Gospel Coalition asked Piper about why he likes the ESV, how many copies he has, and what Bible translation he uses for his personal devotions.

What’s your favorite thing about the ESV translation?

The same thing I liked about the RSV—it steers a middle course between the overly wooden and archaic language of the KJV and the paraphrasing of the NIV.

The ESV is an update of the RSV, which goes back to the New American Standard, which goes back to the King James, which goes back to Tyndale. So the cadences and much of the flow of grammar in the ESV is preserving the King James Version.

But it also remedies some of the defects of the KJV, which makes the translation remarkably useful across a whole range of uses, like Bible memory, children’s ministry, small group studies, and public reading of Scripture. It’s very hard to use an awkward translation in public worship with 300 people trying to stay together as they read.

The ESV is also good for preaching and serious study, which was a huge reason I wanted a more literal translation. If you’ve got a looser translation, then either the pastor is regularly correcting the translation to make the original clear (which is discouraging for the congregation), or, if your version is not precise, you tend not to preach precisely. I think we’re awash in imprecise preaching that doesn’t get detailed and specific enough to show the people from the words how you got the meaning you got.

It’s not easy for a translation to meet all of those needs that a church has. The ESV wins my support because, while you’ve got trade-offs and compromises for sure, it’s the best resource to address all those needs.

Is this the version you use for your own personal devotions or for preaching?

If I’m not reading the Greek or the Hebrew, I’m reading the ESV.

I don’t like to read books electronically, because I want to mark them up. I’m a real marker, so I default toward print books when I am just sitting and reading a book.

But for Bible reading, I’ve got three screens in front of me. The one on the right is an open Logos with ESV on one side and the Greek or the Hebrew on the other. It switches automatically when you go back and forth between the Old and New Testament. That’s my default screen all the time. That’s always open.

And then for my private devotions, I use an iPad. I like to read my devotions in the Greek. And I don’t know Greek perfectly, so I’m always tapping on the word and seeing what the meaning is. And that’s immediate.

Goodness gracious, when I think about the time that God has saved for us! Thirty years ago, I took 10 times more time to look up a Greek word or to follow it out in a concordance, and now I can do it in two seconds. I mean, to whom much is given, much will be required. And I don’t take that lightly—we ought to be very productive people.

I love that. But don’t you miss writing in your Bible?

Yes, I do. There is a big trade-off, and one of the biggest downsides is not being able to make a little note in the margin. You can make notes in Logos, but they just vanish behind a little yellow dot. You never see them.

But even more than that, I miss being able to circle a word like “justified,” draw a line to where the word occurred three verses earlier, and circle it. And then notice across the margin—there it is again. Circle it, draw another line. So my page looks like circles and lines.

You can’t, you can’t do that with Logos. So that’s a loss. And who knows? I may go back to that.

Think you’ll ever switch to a different translation?

No, I don’t think so. I’m too old to think a better translation will come along in my lifetime.

Maybe the most important thing to say is that the translation one reads is not as important as reading at all. Reading any translation of the Bible is always better than reading none.

God is merciful to all of us. He makes his glories known through every version of his Word. The greatest obstacle to seeing is not the version, but the heart. So we pray, “Lord, open our eyes that we may see wonderful things in your Word.”