We would like to inform everyone that we just added a Bible Resource to the Resurgence website. We are adding a feature that enables you to click any referenced bible verse and the actual text will be displayed from the English Standard Version. From now on all articles uploaded to the website will have this feature and we are in the process of coding for all past articles to do likewise.
The following interview was done in written format:
Gary Shavey:To start on a light note, this University of Washington alum would like to know if you consider yourself one of the Dutch or one of the Ducks?
Leland Ryken: I am Dutch first, secondly an Iowan, and thirdly a Duck. During my years in graduate school at the University of Oregon, the Washington Huskies were our athletic nemesis--the big bully on the block.
GS:To follow my first question up, did you enjoy the Pacific Northwest?
LR: While I am at heart a Midwesterner, the Pacific Northwest quickly became dear to me during my four years of residence there. I do not believe that there is a more beautiful part of the country than the Pacific Northwest. Twenty years after leaving Oregon, I made a speaking trip to Portland and was unprepared for such a strong emotional up-surging when I saw the evergreens again.
GS:When did you head over to Wheaton College?
LR: I went to teach at Wheaton College at age 26, immediately after completing my graduate education, which means that I have taught at Wheaton for 39 years. I have always been grateful for the opportunity to start my career at Wheaton, a college to which many professors would aspire to move up to during the course of a career.
GS:As a teacher of English, how did you get involved in the English Standard Version project?
LR: My serving on the ESV translation committee was a classic case of 'one thing leading to another.' In the early 70s, I got in on the ground level of the Bible-as-literature movement and became the most visible evangelical figure for that movement on the strength of my publications. Also in the early 70s, I wrote a literary review of the newly released NIV for Christianity Today. The president of Crossway Books remembered that review a quarter of a century later and invited me to join the ESV translation committee as English stylist.
GS:Could you share your experience in working on the ESV, some of the passions and struggles from this task?
LR: The dominant impression that I carried away from the translation work was my amazement at the specialized knowledge that upper-echelon Bible scholars possess. In addition to what they hold in their heads, they have access to computer resources that are dazzling. Nothing in my own discipline of literary scholarship compares to the knowledge that I saw displayed by the members of the committee who knew both the original languages and the biblical and extrabiblical bodies of writing that impinge on Bible translation.
I also saw how human the process of translation is. Long ago a chapel speaker at Wheaton spoke of his experience of serving on the NIV translation committee. One of his statements was how frustrating it has been to argue for a position all morning long and then lose the vote. In my naiveté, I was shocked at the thought that an English Bible translation was actually the product of voting. I have learned since then that translation committees make continuous human choices, and that often the choices are made from among multiple good and defensible options. The final decision is often a delicate balancing act between competing interests (such as accuracy on the one hand and the need to avoid possible misreadings of a given English word as its exists at the present moment in our culture).
GS:I know that you have written a couple of great pieces of work on explaining the ESV, “Choosing a Bible" and “The Word of God in English." Reflecting on these two works what was your heart behind them?
LR: My publications on Bible translation were written after the work of the ESV translation committee was complete. These publications grew out of my work on the ESV committee, though the seeds were planted 25 years ago when in a review of the NIV I first codified what I found unsatisfactory about dynamic equivalent translations. The heart behind my writing on Bible translation is my passion that the Bible be translated accurately and well, coupled with my distress at trends in Bible translation and marketing for the past fifty years.
GS:Have you received any bad criticism or critique from your work on the ESV? If so how have you responded to them?
LR: My publications on Bible translation are part of a current debate between advocates of essentially literal translation and dynamic equivalence. I knew when I published my book The Word of God in English that I was entering the arena of controversy. I was glad to be doing so because the time was ripe for someone to issue a challenge to the hegemony that dynamic equivalence has experienced for the past half century. The criticism of my book and views has been an honest disagreement about translation philosophy, so I have responded as someone who is in the middle of an intellectual debate. I have felt honored to be able to represent the essentially literal philosophy, and also to make the case that English Bible translations should be literarily excellent. I am not so much an individual author on the subject of translation as a representative of what I consider to be the great tradition of English Bible translation.
GS:From your perspective why is the ESV important for the English-speaking world?
LR: The importance of the ESV for the English-speaking world is multiple. In a day of debasement of language and trivializing of the Bible through colloquialization of it and marketing it as though it were toothpaste or sports equipment, the ESV restates the dignity and beauty of the great tradition of English Bible translation, which is the King James tradition. Additionally, the ESV is the most accurate contemporary translation--accurate because it seeks to preserve in English what the Bible actually says in the original languages. The result of fifty years of liberties taken by dynamic equivalent translations is that readers of the English Bible increasingly have no access to what the original texts of the Bible say. To me, the issue at stake is whether readers of the English Bible will return to the real Bible or continue to read translations that have a huge mixture of interpretation as an overlay on what the Bible says.
GS:As you are an educator of future pastors and as well those that may do great ministry work in the future, how do you encourage them to work with the ESV?
LR: The ESV is a thoroughly readable Bible that has the advantage over all other English translations of placing a high regard on literary excellence and beauty. Since the ESV preserves the poetic language of the Bible, along with some of its idiomatic constructions, preachers will of course need to consult commentaries and study Bibles. But they can do so in confidence that they know what the original text says, whereas with dynamic equivalent translations they have no way of knowing whether they have been given the original text or a substitute. There are ways in which "easy reading" Bibles place fewer demands on a reader, but the great problem with elevating readability to the highest criterion is that it has resulted in English translations that do not give us what the original text says.
GS:This is a hard question, but as you look into where we are headed in terms of post-modernity or post-post-modernity, where do you think the attacks on the Scriptures are going to come from?
LR: The Bible has gone into eclipse in the evangelical world through sheer neglect. The enemy is within. The attacks from the outside are almost irrelevant. The Bible has been replaced by other things in the pulpits of evangelical churches, and church members tend to view the Bible as it is viewed in the church service. The evangelical church has only itself to blame for its well-documented biblical illiteracy. Several trends have gone hand in hand--the eclipse of expository preaching of the Bible, the loss of dignity in worship, in music, and in Bible translations, and the triumph of the modern media (including an obsession with entertainment) in the lives of Christians.
GS:Lastly, for Christians who care about the Bible and want to reach people around them with the gospel, what are some helpful tools that you would encourage them to obtain for their benefit (such as books, sermons and/or websites)?
LR: The "primary text" needs to be the Bible. The next most important resource is contact with the Bible--in church and in small groups as well as in personal reading. For me personally, hearing excellent expository sermons week in, week out, has been my best resource; Christians who lack it are at a great disadvantage, in my view. A good Bible handbook and study Bible are obvious assets. Let me say, though, that it is a great temptation these days to elevate "helps" and "aids" to the neglect of the Bible itself.
