Monday, July 11, 2005

ESV Bible Blog --Will the ESV do away with Commentary Use? (Wayne Grudem Discusses...)

"A related question to this is whether the accuracy of the English Standard Version will mean that people will trust it so much that they won’t read commentaries anymore, or will read them less. In one sense, I think that’s true. I think that in our philosophy of an essentially literal translation, we have tried to produce a translation where people can trust every word, where it is reliable and faithful to the original in all the details, insofar as the English language allows."

An interesting answer to this question. In my experience, most people don't consult commentaries based on the reliability of their Bibles. In other words, they don't go to commentaries when they don't trust their Bibles--but when they don't understand them.

Understanding that my primary version is the ESV, I would still submit that those who have a literal translation (one where the focus is translating words more than meaning) would need to go to commentaries more, not less, and that this is a good thing, not a bad thing. I would further submit that translations that focus primarily on meaning (dynamic-equivalent) are in many ways more like a commentary than a translation.

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