There are several places where “extra” verses are placed in the footnotes, e.g., Matthew 12:47, and others like Mark 16 where the “extra” verses are bracketed out but in the main text. How did you make decisions like that and why have you differed from other translations in some places?
Watch Vern Poythress respond (Windows Media format).
Sometimes the question is raised about a few places in the New Testament where there are notable differences between the ESV and some other translations (because it may amount even to a whole verse, although it’s very seldom that that happens) that one Bible includes an extra sentence or two that is not in another Bible. Why does that happen?
It happens because we do not possess the original writings that the Apostle Paul or Luke the Evangelist wrote. They wrote one copy of what they wrote, and then that one copy became the source of many copies. And those copies in turn were copied. And in the course of that copying, errors sometimes crept in.
The endeavor for the ESV was to present to the English reader as closely as possible what the Apostle Paul actually wrote, what Luke the Evangelist actually wrote, and so on. The fact is that there is very little difference between all these various copies. It’s only in a very few places that there are significant or noticeable differences. We can thank the Lord that that is so.
But where there were those differences, then we endeavored to find, as accurately as possible, what the original actually said. You do this by looking at all the copies and seeing where there are these minor differences, seeing which form of the copy—which of the copies—is more likely to represent what the Apostle Paul wrote or what Luke wrote.
I should say one thing more, and that is that any one of these copies gives us something that is quite close to the original. There’s no point of doctrine that’s affected by whichever copy you might choose. The message of the Bible, the message of the New Testament is still the same. And we can thank the Lord that there is so much agreement between all these copies so that we can be absolutely confident in the great majority of verses, as to what the Lord wrote through these apostles in the first century. And then from there we proceeded to do a translation of what the original authors wrote, inspired by the Spirit.
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