Interview with Dr. Ed Blum, General Editor for the HCSB

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Ed Blum, the General Editor for the Holman Christian Standard Bible. I have been using the HCSB for several years now, and it is by far my favorite translation. I think this interview will be helpful to clear up misconceptions about the HCSB as well as to help people unfamiliar with this translation learn a little about what has become a very influential translation.

The interview is divided into four parts. You can read the whole thing or jump to the parts that interest you the most. They are, (1) Distinctives, (2) History, (3) Translation, and (4) Marketing.

If, after reading the interview you would still like more information about the HCSB, visit these sites:

www.thislamp.com

heissufficient.net

http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/hcsblinks.htm

www.broadmanholman.com/hcsb

Also, you can read the HCSB online here: hcsb.broadmanholman.com/crossmain.asp

**UPDATE: I’ve added a brief section from Dr. Blum dealing with the gender issue at the end of the ‘Translation” section.**

And now, enjoy the reading:

Distinctives of the HCSB

Will: In your mind, what makes this translation distinct from other translations? I’m particularly interested in its distinction from the ESV, which seems to be one of its biggest competitors, if I can use that term.

Ed: The ESV comes from the King James tradition. The King James was revised continuously until about 1750. In 1870 they did a major revision of the King James which never became really popular which was called the English Revised Version, and I think popularly known as the Revised Version. It actually came out in 1881. The Americans who worked on it weren’t happy with it, but they had signed an agreement not to publish for 20 years, so they came out in 1901 with the American Standard Version, their revision of the King James tradition. And that stayed in print until the mid 1930s and the National Council of Churches who owned the copyright started on the RSV. And the RSV NT was done in 1946, and the OT was finished in the early 1950s. Everybody thought the NT was fairly decent, but the OT, they had a number of Jewish scholars and they felt that it wasn’t quite what they wanted. So a group of Americans from the Lockman foundation took the old American Standard Version and made the New American Standard Version. That one began as a revision of the King James tradition. And then there was the revision done by Thomas Nelson; they did the NKJV. Then the NASB was revised again in 1995. The English Standard Version took the old RSV and revised about 7% of it. So it’s not a new translation; it’s a revision of the King James tradition. Although they worked on a lot of things, if you really compare them you’ll see that it’s still the King James tradition. They’ve taken King James word order, much of the vocabulary is still the same. The HCSB is a new translation from the original text. For example, the standard Hebrew lexicon that we used is the most recent one. The ESV is a lot closer to the NASB95 and the King James tradition. For example, how often do you use the word “shall”?

Will: Not very often.

Ed: Right. Not very often. Usually in a stylized phrase like, you might say to your wife, “Shall we eat out tonight?” But that is sort of stylized. The ESV has the English word “shall” 6,389 times. The HCSB has it zero. So for example, “Thou shalt not,” is stylized. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is traditional. We would say in English today, “Do not commit adultery. “ So the ESV uses outmoded English expressions of language. How often do you use the word “behold”?

Will: I try not to.

Ed: Okay, “behold” is in ESV 1,102 times. HCSB has it once. ESV retains the old form “Oh” plus the vocative: “Oh, King, live forever.” “Oh, Lord.” The TNIV has taken almost all the “Oh” plus vocative out. ESV follows the King James and has “Oh” plus the vocative 1,129 times. We have it in the HCSB 10 times, and in the next edition that will come out in 2009 there will be zero. The use of “whom” is declining. When you answer the phone do you say, “Whom do you wish to speak to?” Or do you say, “Who do you want to talk to?” King James has “whom” 763 times. NKJ has it 760 times. NASB has it 755 times. ESV has it 740 times. NIV has cut it down to 394. HCSB second edition coming out has it only 142. So, it’s dropping. If you got engaged, how would you introduce your fiancé? Would you say, “She’s my betrothed”?

Will: Probably not.

Ed: ESV’s got it 15 times. We have it zero. Here’s an interesting one. You’ll find that very few translations have this correct. ESV, NIV, a lot of them use the expression “strong drink.” Most people think “strong drink” is whiskey or rum or gin or something like that, but distillation was not discovered until the 9^th century ad. So our translation correctly translates it “beer.” ESV continues to use the old terms like “leper.” But then they add a footnote every time they use it, and they have the same footnote 20 times. There’s a confusion in popular thinking about Hansen’s disease. Whatever it was in the Bible period—it grew on the walls and grew on clothing and so on—was not Hansen’s disease. ESV uses old terms like “tithe.” What is a tithe in your mind?

Will: Ten percent.

Ed: Ten percent. And “tithe” is just an old English word meaning “tenth.” So why not use “a tenth”? We have several special features that help the average Bible reader. We have these bullet notes. For example, ESV has the same footnote in the book of Revelation 15 times. We would just have a bullet note that takes you to that section in the reverse.

History of the HCSB

Will: Let me ask you a little bit about the history of the HCSB. Dr. Farstad, you knew him personally?

Ed: Art Farstad, we both taught at Dallas Seminary. He only taught there about 3 or 4 years, and then he went to work for Thomas Nelson, and he was the Executive Editor for the NKJ tradition. He was an adherent of the Majority Text (MT) position.

Will: Okay, when he was doing the NT work on the HCSB, he was using the MT?

Ed: Well, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. He wanted to do a MT translation of the NT. The Southern Baptists who were paying the freight, they agreed to do a parallel translation. We would do a critical text translation, and we would have an electronic MT translation that would be given to Art at the completion of the project. Unfortunately Art only lived 5 months into the project, and so that was dropped. So, our translation is based on the Nestle text.

Will: Now, is it correct that he was working on this translation from the mid 1980s for about 14 years before you took over the project?

Ed: Art had always had an interest in textual criticism. He and Zane Hodges published their own critical text. But they made a distinction between the Textus Receptus (TR) and the MT. So they published this critical text with Thomas Nelson and there were 2 editions done of it, so he was interested in the MT tradition, not necessarily the TR which was the translation that the KJV was based on. So when he was working on the NKJV, he wanted to change the text in about 260 places that he felt the KJV text did not represent the MT. In other words, he made a distinction between TR, the Byzantine tradition and the critical text. And they did publish an interlinear, and each time there’s a variant reading, down at the bottom it will say, “Critical Text,” “TR,” or “MT,” so you’ll be able to tell which is which. But the people who were backing the NKJV did not want to do any textual critical changes. So he was not too happy with that. The TR is based on one manuscript, and that manuscript was written in the 16^th century. So, as he had time, Art wanted to do a modern translation that was based on the MT. He would write it out, and his cousin would put it in a database. And he was working on that in 1995, and there was a foundation in Glide, Oregon. The guy had a bunch of money he had made in computer chips, and he had a foundation he had set up called Absolutely Free. The purpose of the foundation was to provide Bibles or portions of the Bible and evangelistic booklets for various purposes, and when Art was working with them, they distributed something like 9 million different booklets. One that was done was called “Living Water,” and it was based on this text that Art was working on. When I came back to Dallas, Texas in ’96, they already had the gospel of John in print, and Art asked me if I would want to work with him on the translation of these booklets. So we worked on Matthew, Mark and Luke, and we were starting work on Acts and Romans, and the people who were funding the thing decided that they didn’t want to fund a whole new translation. So, at that point, Broadman and Holman, who wanted to have their own translation—and that’s another reason you’ll see why that was done—Southern Baptists liked the NASB. They published Sunday school literature in it, and so on. They tried to buy the NASB three times, and they had it under contract, and the guy renigged, so, they looked at three or four other translations that were in process, and they came back to Art, because Art had been the Executive Editor of the NKJV, and they thought that he had the expertise and so on. So they made a deal, and Art was going to get a version of the MT translation, and he would have to have someone else work on the OT.

Will: Okay, that’s very helpful. I think that also answers why once Broadman and Holman took over, why they were so quick to publish the four gospels, because they were already in the works, is that correct?

Ed: For example, the gospel of John that Art had worked on, you can still find copies; it’s called “Living Water.” When we did our first thing, the first thing that we published was the gospel of John, but none of that was published while Art was alive. We started in April and at the end of August he had major surgery, and a clot broke loose, and he died. So he was only there 5 months, so I became the General Editor, and we worked on the gospel of John. We went through the text of the gospel of John 21 times. Now, actually, it would be nice if you could do that on every book. For example, Isaiah, we only got through 4 times. I think I spent 7 months on Isaiah. We used the software called Accordance. So we had a lot of advantages, so we were able to do a better product in a shorter amount of time for less money.

Will: When the project was in the works before Broadman and Holman took over did it have a name? Was it just called the Christian Standard Bible?

Ed: Actually Art had tried to use the term “Tyndale 21,” but he got an objection from Tyndale publishing house. So he changed the name from “Tyndale 21” to “Logos 21”—the Word for the 21^st century is what he had in mind.

Will: Along those lines, why did Broadman and Holman decide to call the translation the Holman Christian Standard Bible? Why not just the CSB?

Ed: That’s a very good question. If you’ll notice, more recent editions on the spine say “Holman” in small letters and in big letters “CSB.” There is a small publishing company called “Christian Standard Publishing.” They had published a magazine for maybe 70 or so years. They objected to “Christian Standard” being used. It actually went to arbitration, and the arbitration went in favor of Broadman and Holman. But they felt like they would use “Homan Christian Standard Bible” to help these people with their objection. But I think legally in the future you’ll see it being used as CSB.

Will: So we may see editions in the future that are just called the Christian Standard Bible.

Ed: Right.

Translation of the HCSB

Will: One of the things I really appreciate about the HCSB is the translation philosophy. How did you come up with the term “optimal equivalence” to describe the translation philosophy you used?

Ed: The way the term actually arose was, there was a guy who was one of our OT editors, named Price, and he had published a four volume study of the Masoretic accents. His name is James D. Price. James Price had written a little booklet called “Optimal Equivalence.” So we really owe that term to him.

Will: It seems that the HCSB has changed several familiar passages to reflect a more accurate rendering of the original text, such as John 3:16.

Ed: John 3:16 is probably the most famous. Mounce sent us an emailing saying that we’re the first translation that actually got John 3:16 correct. Instead of “for God so loved,” it’s actually, “God loved the world in this way.”

Will: What kind of discussions did you have about how changes like that might affect this version’s reception with a readership that may not understand the changes.

Ed: For example, LifeWay is a large company that is a revision of the old Southern Baptist Sunday School Board. As such it has trustees that are chosen from all the states, and they meet probably two to four years each. The guy that was the chairman of the trustee board at that time was also the head of the Gideons. The Gideons will not distribute a Bible that doesn’t have “only begotten Son.” Most Gideon Bibles are either King James or New King James. Zondervan did allow an edition of their Bible to be altered to appease the Gideon’s objections. So there’s actually a John 3:16 Gideon Bible in NIV. We had discussions on that and decided we wanted to go where the evidence lead. We actually would have liked to use the term his “unique Son.” If you say, “God gave his only Son,” or even like we have, “one and only Son,” there is a slight problem since we are called sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. But we couldn’t find a better term. We thought about using, “God sent his unique Son,” but the problem with “unique” is there are these word associations. For example, if a guy comes in the room, and you say, “There’s so-and-so; he’s rather unique,” it may have the connotation of oddness. We just felt that unique is a better word; it means really “one of a kind,” but the way it’s used in modern English, it has that hangover of oddness to it. Another thing you’ll find is that our translation has a lot more notes than any other standard translation. Ours also has twice as many textual footnotes of any translation. We have a lot more and more accurate footnotes. Here are three books that, if you ask me what the three most difficult books in the Bible are, I’d say 1 John, Song of Solomon and the book of Revelation. The reason 1 John is difficult—easiest Greek—but most difficult because it does not have as many connectives, there’s no historical background, and it uses a lot of abstract language, like light, love, and so on. Song of Solomon, people don’t even agree about whether it’s talking about a married couple, two horny teenagers in the back of a chariot, God and Israel or God and the Church. So, people don’t even know whether there are two characters or three characters. Song of Songs is very, very tough. The book of Revelation of course has its own unique things. For example, ESV has 10 notes on 1 John. HCSB has 35. ESV has 29 on Song of Solomon. HCSB has 85. ESV has 65 notes on Revelation, but 15 are the same note on the word “bondservant.” HCSB on Revelation has 251 footnotes, plus an additional 29 bullet notes. So we have a lot more information if a person is trying to find out exactly what the book of Revelation is saying. For example, we clarify terms like “Armageddon.” Also, we’re one of the few translations besides the Jerusalem Bible—it’s a Roman Catholic translation, but they use Yahweh consistently. We have Yahweh 75 times. The King James has Jehovah in 6 or 7 places. ESV follows the traditional LORD, but Lord is not a name, it’s a title. So in the 75 places in your Bible where the word “name” occurs, like it says, “Yahweh is my name; my glory I will not give to another,” so we’re sort of breaking new ground here. Everybody’s following the traditional LORD for the name of God.

Will: So did you decide to use Yahweh only in places where God says, “This is my name,” or where there is some association with the name? For example, in Joshua 24 God is making a clear distinction between himself and the pagan Gods, yet you’ve translated it Lord instead of Yahweh.

Ed: In the second edition that will come out in 2009, we’ll have Yahweh in it around 400 times. The only reason Yahweh’s in there at all is that I had to fight tooth and nail; even all the Hebrew guys wanted to stick with the tradition. You’ll find it interesting that the NLT second edition has put the name Yahweh in a few places. Bruce Waltke’s OT theology has just come out, and interestingly enough he doesn’t particularly like “Yahweh.” He’s published three different books. In one book he published—his Proverbs commentary—he used “LORD.” He used “Yahweh” in his Genesis commentary. Now in his OT theology he uses “I AM,” which I think is a little odd. I mean, there’s no tradition for the use of “I AM.” Also, regarding the controversy over the translation of doulos, all the English translations except ours translates doulos either as “servant” or “bondservant.” But there is a big difference between a slave and a servant. A servant gets paid, has certain rights, can quit, can change owners, etc. A slave doesn’t get paid, belongs to somebody, and so on. Murray Harris of Trinity Seminary has written a book on the slave of Christ showing that there’s a loss of a significant Pauline metaphor by mistranslating doulos as “servant” or “bondservant.” ESV feels like they have to put a footnote every time, and every time that they do it, they say, “or slave.” Then they say, “Greek, ‘bondservant,’” but if you look at a standard Greek lexicon, BDAG, it’s against this. In other words, an ESV reader would think he’s getting insight into what the Greek really says, but the standard Greek lexicon says that only English translations in America are using the stupid translation of “servant” or “bondservant”; the word is “slave.” If you read a text that says, “You are not your own; you’ve been bought with a price,” you’re really a slave; you belong to him. Now obviously it’s a metaphor, you’re a son, but you’re a slave; but we’re the only translation that has that one right. For example there’s a Hebrew expression that’s carried over into NT Greek; it wasn’t really translated, “Amen, Amen.” Now I suppose you could do, “Amen, Amen.” We have a note, we translate it as, “I assure you.” ESV goes with, “Truly, truly.” How many people say “Truly, truly” or “verily, verily”? Also I think you’ll find that the Hebrew word torah is better translated as “instruction” or “teaching.” The modern Hebrew lexicons all favor this. ESV sticks with “the Law” as in Psalm 1. We have “the Lord’s instruction.” Torah is the term that the Jews use for the first 5 books of the Bible. Genesis is Torah, which is God’s instruction, but it doesn’t contain the Laws as we use the term—so like in Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who meditates on the Lord’s instruction,” rather than on “the Law.” The Law is 613 commands, positive and negative. I don’t know anybody who meditates day and night on those 613. What does the modern reader make of these words: Molech, Asheroth, Astoreth, Samirtan, firstfruits, atonement, propitiation? See, we offer explanations and definitions for all of them; ESV does not.

Will: Speaking of words, what drove the decision to keep some very technical theological terms like propitiation, justification and sanctification?

Ed: Romans chapter 3, verse 24, “They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood.” And we have a footnote, and the footnote is fairly long. It says, “Or as a propitiatory sacrifice, or as an offering of atonement, or as a mercy seat; see Heb 9:5. The word propitiation has to do with the removal of divine wrath. Jesus’ death is the means that turns God’s wrath from the sinner; see 2 Co 5:21.” We could have done Romans 3:25 without the word propitiation. We could have said that Jesus is God’s means of turning his wrath away from the sinner by the person believing in the death of his son, but we decided that we wanted to keep traditional theological language but make it understandable.

Will: Just a couple of other word choices that come up every time this discussion takes place it seems would be why you chose “deluge” instead of “flood” in Genesis, and why “atmospheric domain” in Ephesians 2?

Ed: Yes, we got rid of that. That’ll be changed. “Atmospheric domain” is gone. That’s actually a definition in one of the lexicons and is probably a bad choice. And we got rid of “deluge” too. Here’s a number of words that were in the HCSB that we revised. For example, “hewn” or “hewed,” “estranged,” “execration,” most of these we have changed or taken out, like “scabbard,” normally people use the word “sheath” now. So we do have a number of words we have changed. For example, TNIV, and a lot of people would say the TNIV is a very modern translation, here are these words that we found a little strange in the TNIV: “astir,” “to no avail,” “nought,” “self-abasement,” “kindred,” not necessarily bad, but unusual, “suckling,” “slew,” “unsandled,” “unwary.” Here’s a couple that are interesting: “nor,” TNIV’s got it 322 times, NIV’s got it 328, we have it 42 times. “Upon,” rather than just say “on,” NIV had “upon” 351 times, TNIV cut it down to 97. We have it only 4 times. “Toil” we don’t use at all, they use it 39 times. “Thus” NIV has it 32 times, TNIV has it 29 times, we have it zero. Our goal was to be more accurate than the NASB, and to be as readable as the NIV if possible. Sometimes we can’t be as readable because they’re paraphrasing, and a paraphrase is easier. But we tried to make it easy to read. You’ll see some people say, “Well, you’re not really more accurate than the NASB are you?” And I would say, “Oh yes we are.” For example, 1 Corinthians 7:36, the question is what does it mean when it says, “If any man thinks he is acting improperly toward his virgin”? If you look at HCSB we have a footnote, and we give 4 different understandings of the word “virgin”: (1) a man’s fiancé, (2) his daughter, (3) his Levirite wife, or (4) a celibate companion. We would say we’re more accurate; we give you four choices, and we put them in the order of our preference.

Will: Why did you choose the lower corner brackets instead of italics to indicate supplied words?

Ed: That was a decision, I think, long ago when we started, that Art was pretty insistent on. He says that the average person thinks that something that’s in italics is more important. And what we’re really saying if you use them is that it’s not there. So the average reader who picks up a Bible and sees an italicized word, he doesn’t know that that’s a supplied word; he thinks it’s an important word.

Will: Well let me kind of turn the question around and ask why even use brackets or italics at all? It seems like the philosophy of optimal equivalence would make that unnecessary.

Ed: I think that’s true, but there are some places, particularly in the OT where the Hebrew is very, very terse, and you might have to add 3 or 4 words in order to get meaning out of a sentence, particularly in a book like Jeremiah. There we just sort of felt that some of these we want to let the reader know with a footnote saying, “The Hebrew is difficult” or something like that.

Will: That sounds, though, like just a natural part of the translation process.

Ed: Yes, you could do that. I suppose one of the reasons for doing it was to be able to say that we are as literal as possible.

Will: What about capitalized pronouns for terms relating to deity?

Ed: That’s a difficult one; I wasn’t in agreement on that, but that was a decision that was made early on by Art. There are several things when you work on a translation that you don’t have much choice on. For example, virtually everybody who worked on this translation hates red-letter editions. But most publishers argue that everybody wants them, the market, that is. So I personally don’t use a red-letter edition. The HCSB is out in a Minister’s Bible that does not have red-letter. Art was opposed to it; he argued that 7-8% of American males are color blind. So the red letter is harder to read for a significant number of men. Also it has bad theology that these words are more important than the other words. But it’s a tradition that goes back a long time. Even in the medieval period people did purple lettering and red lettering, and I think really the American Bible publishers around the turn of the century added that as one of their features on their boxes that they ship the stuff on: “words of Christ in red.” We have argued and argued and argued, but to no avail on that one.

Will: Would you mind clarifying a little bit the position you took on the gender issue when approaching the HCSB. I know there is info in the preface, but maybe elaborate a little bit.

Ed:     KJV and even NIV are overly “masculine” judged by modern standards.  In the Introduction to the HCSB, our policy is explained. As an example, NIV in Romans 12:6-9 has  “man”, “his”, or “him”  nine times in their text where the Greek does not have a masculine word.  On the other hand the TNIV has gone overboard to become “gender neutral” and removed (or changed to plurals) “he” , “him” or “man” from places where the Hebrew or the Greek  does have a masculine form (see Psalm 1).  Our goal was to be “gender accurate”. The  book “The TNIV and The Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy” (494 pp.) written by Poythress and Grudem and published by B & H explores and clarifies the issues involved.

Marketing of the HCSB

Will: Speaking of marketing, let me ask you just a few marketing questions. There seems to be a feeling at times that this is a Baptist translation.

Ed: Yes, there are a couple of things you probably want to clarify to people to help them. First of all Art was not a Baptist; he was Brethren. I’m not a Baptist; I’m a Presbyterian. So the General Editor in both cases was not a Baptist. The Southern Baptist contingent was maybe 1/3 of the translators. Also, you might remember that the Southern Baptists at 16 million members are by far the largest Protestant denomination. So if we worked on a numerical basis, we probably would have had more Southern Baptists. They are the largest of the seminaries as well, so there would be a lot more people to choose from.

Will: The endorsements for the HCSB seem to be somewhat lacking. When I look on the HCSB website, the list there is not a list that’s full of great theologians and scholars. There are some popular men on the list as well as some theologians, but in addition it’s a short list. But when I look at the endorsements, for example, on the ESV website, there’s a very long list of very highly respected theologians, pastors and scholars. So, two questions: first, is Broadman and Holman trying to get more and better endorsements, and secondly, why do you think that the ESV was able to garner that kind of support while the HCSB was not?

Ed: That’s an interesting question. ESV might be better marketers. Sometimes people are given something if they give an endorsement. It’s customary in the publishing industry if a person gives an endorsement that you send them a nice bound copy of that Bible. ESV started out probably 2 years before us, so they had the jump. By the way, I’m not sure if you know this, but ESV is not selling half as well as we are.

Will: Actually, I have in front of me CBA’s recent list of best-sellers, and based on dollar sales I see that HCSB is at number 5 and ESV is at number 7.

Ed: Here’s something else that the average person doesn’t realize. When you publish a Bible you pay usually 7% to the holders of the copyright. So if Broadman and Holman wanted to do an NIV apologetics study Bible they would have to go to Zondervan to get permission not only for the text, but also for the concept. If Zondervan wanted to publish it themselves, they would be permitted to do it. Broadman and Holman wanted to do a translation because they thought the Bible was too important to leave up to Zondervan or the International Bible Society to determine what text you’re going to have available. Also, they wanted to do certain products and publications, and they didn’t want to have to share whatever they’re doing with Zondervan before they publish it.

Will: What about the HCSB website? Any chance we’ll see an update to that soon?

Ed: I have very little knowledge of it. I think it’s hard to use, and if you go to Broadman and Holman you can send a recommendation in to them.

Will: There seem to be a lot of people who want information about the HCSB.

Ed: There are a lot people who have misinformation too. One of the blogs, the guy wrote that this was a translation that the SBC did to put in their Sunday school literature in place of the NIV. The fact of the matter is the SBC never endorsed or promoted this translation. And if you know about the Southern Baptists, each church is independent and can use whatever translation they want. The SBC did come out later against the NIV’s change to the unisex. When we started this project, though, the SBC had nothing to do with it. LifeWay corporation paid the bills, but that’s a different entity than the convention. It’s not a Baptist translation. I was at one of the Southern Baptist booths and we had pastors come up and some of them wanted us to put “immersion” in every place where it says baptism. I said, “Well, are you going to change the name of your church to the First Immersionist Church?” Of course they’re not going to do that. Certain things are traditional. A lot of people will say the motives were all financial. Of course none of us made any royalties. No individual got royalties. That’s different from the Philips version or The Message where they own the copyright.

Will: Let me ask you, just to wrap up here, what kind of study Bibles or study tools can we expect to see in the future that use the HCSB?

Ed: There’s an edition of the Scofield Bible with the HCSB now. Oxford of course has made a lot of money off the Scofield. You can get a Scofield in NIV, NASB and ESV, so they’re just trying to sell Bibles. In fact, the story goes that Oxford publishing would have gone down the drain if they had not published the Scofield Bible. But that’s a nice edition if you like the Scofield. The Apologetics study Bible has notes that are more related to apologetic issues. That one is out. The study Bible we’re working on will come out in 2009.

Will: Is there anything else you would like for people to know about the HCSB?

Ed: I would think that one of the things that is sort of surprising to me is that I have not seen any kind of extensive review in any of the theological journals that I look at. Evidently they don’t really review translations that often. You don’t really see reviews of translations very often at all. I don’t know that there’s a big discussion of the values of the language and so on. But it’s a little disappointing in a way that there has not been a descent review of the HCSB.

Will: You’re working on a paper for ETS, correct?

Ed: Yes, I’m planning on it. That should attract a certain amount of attention.

Will: Well, thank you, Dr. Blum for the interview.

Ed: Thank you.

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