Monday, November 7, 2011

Should We Capitalize Divine Pronouns?

Should we praise God for his love or for His love? Should we capitalize our pronouns when they refer to God, and should we teach others to do so? My high school Christian school books told me that I should. This was rather ironic, however, since this particular curriculum used the King James Version of the Bible--a translation that does not capitalize divine pronouns! The following excerpt is from the most recent preface to the English Standard Version of the Bible. In it, the translators explain why they chose not to capitalize divine pronouns in the ESV. It should prove relevant for anyone who writes or teaches others to write.
"...It is sometimes suggested that Bible translations should capitalize pronouns referring to deity. It has seemed best not to capitalize deity pronouns in the ESV, however, for the following reasons:  first, there is nothing in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts that corresponds to such capitalization; second, the practice of capitalizing deity pronouns in English Bible translations is a recent innovation, which began only in the mid-twentieth century; and, third, such capitalization is absent from the KJV Bible and the whole stream of Bible translations that the ESV seeks to carry forward."
 

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