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The English Standard Version (ESV) is an English translation of the Bible. The first edition was published in 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers, which also owns the copyright to the text.
The stated intent of the translators was to produce a readable and accurate translation that stands in the tradition of Bible translations beginning with English religious reformer William Tyndale in 1525–26 and culminating in the King James Version of 1611. Examples of other translations that stand in this stream are the Revised Version (1881–85), the American Standard Version (1901), and the Revised Standard Version (1946–52/1971). In their own words, they sought to follow an "essentially literal" translation philosophy. To that end, they sought as far as possible to capture the precise wording of the original text and the personal style of each Bible writer, while taking into account differences of grammar, syntax, and idiom between current literary English and the original languages. The result is a translation that is more literal than the popular New International Version, but more idiomatic than the New American Standard Bible (which is commonly known as the most literal of the modern translations).
The English Standard Version was, first and foremost, a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version, and even so only about 5%–10% of the RSV text was changed in the ESV. Many corrections were made to satisfy objections to some of the RSV's interpretations that conservative Protestants had considered as theologically liberal, for example, reverting from "young woman" back to "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14. The language was modernized to remove "thou" and "thee" and replace obsolete words (e.g., "jug" for "cruse").
When necessary to translate difficult passages, the translators referred to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible (as found in the second edition of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia), to the United Bible Societies' fourth edition of the Greek New Testament, and to the twenty-seventh edition of Nestle and Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece. In a few exceptionally difficult cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, and other sources were consulted to shed possible light on the text or, if necessary, to support a divergence from the Masoretic text.
Work on this translation began with discontent (largely amongst Evangelical Christians) over the perceived looseness of style and content of recently published English Bible translations, as well as the apparent trend toward gender-neutral language in translations such as the Today's New International Version and the New Revised Standard Version, among others.
In 1997 Christian psychologist and radio host James Dobson of Focus on the Family called together a meeting of individuals concerned with these issues, and from it came the "Colorado Springs Guidelines", a set of translation principles that specified when it was and was not appropriate to use gender-neutral language. After this, the group sought and received permission from the National Council of Churches to use the 1971 edition of the RSV as the English textual basis for the ESV.
Two existing study bibles have been adapted to use the ESV text: the Scofield Study Bible (Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN 9780195278750), which updated the Scofield Reference Bible, and the Reformation Study Bible (Ligonier Ministries, 2005, ISBN 0-87552-643-8), which adapted the notes from the previous edition that used the New King James translation.
The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod has adopted the ESV as the official text used in its official hymnal Lutheran Service Book, released in August 2006.