Thursday, April 10, 2008

ESV climbs to number 4...

Saw an interesting statistic tonight on the ESV Bible. As many of you know, I've decided to use this Bible as my translation of choice for the church plant. Here's what I found at the CBA site. If you rank Bibles in terms of dollar sales, here are the rankings for the month of April 2008(http://www.cbaonline.org/nm/documents/BSLs/Bible_Translations.pdf):

1 New International Version
2 King James Version
3 New King James Version
4 New Living Translation
5 Holman Christian Standard Bible
6 Today’s New International Version
7 New American Standard Bible update
8 English Standard Version
9 The Message Eugene Peterson
10 Reina Valera 1960 (Spanish)

Note the ESV is a lowly number eight on this list. But look at the list based on units sold:

1 New International Version
2 King James Version
3 New King James Version
4 English Standard Version
5 New Living Translation
6 Reina Valera 1960 (Spanish)
7 Holman Christian Standard Bible
8 The Message Eugene Peterson
9 New American Standard Bible update
10 International Children’s Bible

On this list, the ESV climbs to number 4! Does this mean that Crossway (publishers of the ESV) are making less of a profit than HSCB, NASB, etc. publishers? Or is their Bible just really low quaility/cheap packaging? I hope its the former! Whatever the reason, I'm excited to see that more people are buying this excellent translation. Of course, the real story is how blessed we are to have access to so many amazing translations.

1 comment:

Whitney said...

Go ESV...wait I am not supposed to say that after attending your class on How we got our Bible last Sunday.

I love you!