ESV Study Bible

The ESV Study Bible has been out for some time now, but I thought I would post this introduction as well as a few thoughts about it. I'm not typically a big fan of study Bibles. My man beef with them is that they tend to become a sort of Bible answer book. As a teacher and preacher, I've gotten quite tired of pouring in hours to study a text only for someone to comment, "That's not what my study Bible says." Perhaps, this notion goes back to the Schofield Study Bible, perhaps even further back. What often seems to happen, though, is that the study Bible becomes the interpretative key of Scripture. Rich, deep, complex themes are reduced to a few lines in a footnote, and the reader takes no more effort than that. Of course, there are many who use their study Bibles well, but the message sent by the various study Bibles as a whole is, "This is clearly what this text means. You need to look no further." What I have always dreamed about is a study Bible that gives cultural, geographical, and theological background to texts in order to aid interpretation and not provide all the interpretation. In other words, a Bible that gives the reader the tools to understand the text for themselves. The ESV does just this. I've been using it for a couple of months now, and it is everything that I hoped it would be. So for all of those seeking to dig deeper into Scripture, this would be a great Christmas gift.