ESV: Are commentaries less necessary with the ESV?

Another interview answer from Dr. Wayne Grudem of the ESV translation team. Click on the title to this post to read it.

I posted two comments to Dr. Grudem's answer on Adrian Warnock's blog. Here's my first comment:

I'm glad the ESV team consulted exegetical experts on individual books of the Bible. This surely increased the exegetical accuracy of the ESV. Now if they would only have consulted [a team of] English scholars so that the accurate meaning would be conveyed in contemporary, good quality, literary English we would have an ideal Bible. Instead, the ESV team chose to use many obscure wordings and some obsolete syntax. Each of these linguistic forms which is not current standard English is an additional barrier to those users of the ESV who are not already familiar with "seminary English."

And here is my second:

What is the difference between getting what Dr. Grudem calls arriving at "the best reading of a verse" through the translation process followed by the ESV team--which I happen to think is the proper procedure--using commentaries and exegetical experts on individual books of the Bible, and what is criticized by many as using "interpretation" in the translation process? Isn't getting "the best reading of a verse" interpretation? I think it is, and I think it is an appropriate process to try to do the most accurate Bible translation. I applaud the ESV process, but wonder about the criticisms directed at what seems to me the same kind of process the ESV team used. What am I missing as people define good interpretation, as followed by the ESV team, and interpretation which people say should not be used in translation, but, rather that one should simply translate word-by-one what the Bible "says" and not what it "means"?

You are most welcome to respond here (or on Adrian's blog) to anything I said in my comments.

Categories: ESV, Wayne Grudem