More on 1 John 3:24 in the ESV: Change Is Coming
The post, as its title implied, was meant in fun as a number of ESV proponents have been critical of the use of singular they in the TNIV. At the time, I felt that the ESV rendering of 1 John 3:24 was simply an error on the part of the editors and I said so:
What's the real story here? The use of them for αὐτῷ in the ESV rendering of 1 John 3:24 comes from the legacy of the RSV which reads, "All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them." As standard practice the RSV (rightly) did not capitalize pronouns referring to deity. So to keep from confusing the reader, the RSV translators changed the singular ὁ τηρῶν ("the one keeping" or "the one who keeps") to a plural ("all"). In changing the antecedent subject to a plural, it was necessary to change the corresponding pronoun to a plural as well ("them").
What's interesting is that the ESV translators, in revising the RSV, changed the subject in 1 John 3:24 back to a singular, but failed to do change back the corresponding pronoun to match its antecedent. Why? Well, my hunch is that in keeping with the reality that the use of singular they has never left informal modes of communication and therefore sounds perfectly natural to most hearers, I believe the ESV translators simply overlooked it.
So on Monday of this week over on the ESV blog, they announced that the ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament had finally been made available. On the Bible Translation Discussion List, David Dewey pointed out that the page of the Interlinear shown on the ESV blog displayed a change in 1 John 3:24. The revised ESV rendering of the verse reads
Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him.
I have to believe the particular page displayed was chosen on purpose and that Stephen Smith, the webmaster at Crossway, was sending a wink to the folks who had noticed the ironic issue in the original ESV rendering of the verse.
So, I should say, bravo to the ESV revisers. They have made two changes here. Outside of using a singular they, changing the αὐτῷ (literally him, a dative 3rd person masculine pronoun) to "God" AND changing αὐτὸς (literally he, a nominative 3rd person masculine pronoun) also to "God" best communicates the meaning of the original text. And when translators choose to communicate the meaning of the text over the literal words, I believe we call this dynamic equivalence. 