Recently in Commentaries Category

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post. This is not an exhaustive list, just the commentaries that I think are most worth paying attention to.

My first choice, hands down, is Darrell Bock's BECNT (1994, 1996). It's fairly comprehensive, well-reasoned, easy to read, aware of all the scholarship, and generally conservative. He handles theology more fully than most detailed commentaries (e.g. Marshall, Fitzmyer, Nolland below) and spends a little time on what Luke would have wanted us to take away from the text, which you won't get in very many academic commentaries. This commentary is strong on the flow of argument, taking larger blocks of text to comment on and explicitly thinking in terms of the larger flow at various points, although this usually stops short of what many think of as literary analysis (on which several commentaries below are very strong, sometimes at the expense of everything Bock does well). He does interact a little with Robert Tannehill's work in that area in volume 2, but it's still not a lot. Bock has also written the Acts commentary in this series, but his work on Luke is much more detailed, filling up two volumes, both bigger than the Acts volume. Bock is well-known for his work countering the claims of radicals and skeptics who write about the life of Jesus with the kind of scholarship liked by the History Channel. He's also been very influential in developing and defending progressive dispensationalism, a view that I think is still a little too far in the direction of dispensationalism but is really a different animal and is much more defensible than traditional dispensationalism. I place him solidly in the conservative evangelical camp, and he's taken some criticism for this in reviews, mainly from people who assume historicity and theological agendas are incompatible, something Bock spends a great deal of time arguing against. His scholarship is top-notch. If he's weak anywhere, it's in favoring commentaries over journal articles. Bock has also written the IVPNTC and NIVAC volumes on Luke, but I don't think there's any need to look at the shorter two if you have the BECNT, which you should.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post. This is not an exhaustive list, just the commentaries that I think are most worth paying attention to.

Pride of place goes to the NIGTC volume on I Corinthians by Anthony Thiselton (2000). This is now the most in-depth recent commentary on this book. It's based on the Greek text, and it includes a number of long excurses on difficult issues, so this isn't an easy read, but it's not mainly the Greek that's the issue. It's just a very dense, scholarly work, and it's hard to capture that in popular-level writing (although I think Thiselton is clearer most of the time than most academics are). Thiselton gives close attention to the Greek lexical and grammatical issues, the social background of the letter, Paul's rhetoric, and other elements commonly found in commentaries. Thiselton is also an expert in hermeneutics. One unsual thing about this commentary is that he also includes a lot more of the history of interpretation than is typical, since one of his strengths is the history of theology. I've read some lengthy enough sections of it to know that it's tough-going if you're not up on your Greek, and the excursus I read (on gender issues) was so detailed that it was difficult to get a clear sense of what Thiselton's conclusions amount to. The wealth of information and close attention to detail make it an excellent resource for consultation, even if it might be more difficult to read the whole book cover-to-cover the way I like to. I expect this to be an important scholarly standard for some time, even if Ellis has a good chance of eventually take that place (see forthcoming commentaries below). I also very much appreciate Thiselton's application of speech-act theory (from my own field of philosophy) in biblical studies. Thiselton's philosophical background also makes him more trustworthy on the moral philosophical background of the Greco-Roman world.

David Garland's BECNT (2003) is very good. I've looked at it less than I have some of the other volumes here, but it was enough to see that this is now the first place to look for a more readable treatment than Thiselton. Garland is widely respected by scholars across the spectrum. He left a Southern Baptist seminary because of his egalitarian stance, but on most other issues he's fairly conservative. He has ten years of additional scholarship to influence him and to respond to when compared with Fee below. Fee has such a high reputation that it was difficult to put Garland ahead, but I think I'd actually give up Fee if I were forced to choose. Garland's NAC on II Corinthians was very good, and I think this BECNT is even better. He's also done work on Matthew and the NIVAC volumes on Mark and Colossians/Philemon. He's currently contracted to write commentaries on Luke (ZEC) and Thessalonians (NCC).

Gordon Fee's NICNT (1987) was for a long time the commentary to buy on I Corinthians, but Garland and Thiselton have interacted with a lot of recent scholarship since Fee's commentary was published, and they are at least as good on enough issues that I recommend them slightly higher than Fee. I would prefer not to be without any of them, however. Fee is an excellent commentator in so many ways, including matters of language, historical and cultural background, flow of the argument, and textual criticism. But this very scholarly work doesn't come across as mere scholarship but as the work of someone with a vital relationship with God thinking through the scriptures in a way that will be profitable for his audience. He ends each section with contemporary application issues, but even throughout the commentary you'll frequently find him passionately engaging with Paul's thought or reflecting on the relevance for daily life of the principles he derives from Paul's letter. Fee is one of the most respected Pauline scholars of our time, having now written or planning to write commentaries on Galatians (PC), Philippians (NICNT), Thessalonians (NICNT), and the Pastoral Epistles (NIBC), along with a Pauline theology of the Holy Spirit and an excellent NT Christology. [He's planning Revelation for NCC, so he'll finally be verging into something outside the Pauline corpus.] Most people consider him a moderate Pentecostal. His views are actually not too far from some Reformed charismatics and non-cessationist non-charismatics. I wish most Pentecostals would read this commentary or God's Empowering Spirit to see how someone can be Pentecostal without flatly contradicting scripture in their practice of the so-called sign gifts. One of Fee's most controversial moves in this commentary is his rejection all of the egalitarian approaches toward I Cor 14 as exegetically impossible, leading him to conclude, against all evidence, that the short passage in question is an interpolation by another author despite its being in every manuscript.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post. This is not an exhaustive list, just the commentaries that I think are most worth paying attention to.

Gordon Wenham's WBC (1987, 1994) receives the best all-around reviews of any commentary on Genesis and from a wide range of people. Wenham is a moderate to conservative evangelical. He spends some time on source-critical issues, generally taking a skeptical stance toward those who think they can delineate sources and identify different time periods for different parts of the book. Wenham is good at historical background, often defending the plausibility of the narratives, particularly in the patriarchal section. He spends more time than most academic commentaries dealing with matters of theology and even Christian application. Of the Genesis commentaries that are accessible enough for someone like me (i.e. someone not knowing any Hebrew) to read, Wenham's is the most detailed on textual criticism. One strength is his proportionally-greater treatment of the structure of individual passages, although some might think it's a bit much. I did think the commentary was a bit briefer than I expected once you get through the literary and source-critical issues. His structural analysis shows a tightly-woven narrative by a single mind, which undermines the credence he shows to the general source-critical approach (as skeptical as he is of particular proposals in source criticism). Wenham has an absolutely stellar NICOT on Leviticus and a pretty good exposition in TOTC on Numbers. He also has done a lot of more general work on the Pentateuch and is generally seen as one of the top Pentateuch scholars of our time.

Victor Hamilton's NICOT (1990, 1995) is about at the same level. He is a conservative evangelical, and the series is generally seen as being more conservative than WBC, which is probably the reason he gets a little less attention from the less-conservative end of scholarship. I think the commentaries are about equivalent in quality, with Wenham perhaps winning out a little more often in terms of incisive exegesis but Hamilton giving a little more depth on more issues, especially in his introduction. Hamilton is particularly better on linguistic issues such as grammar and close analysis of particular words, but I think he may sometimes overdo it chasing lexical rabbit trails, and he's perhaps less strong on big-picture thinking. He takes the time throughout his commentary to look at the New Testament use of Genesis. I would say that Hamilton and Wenham balance each other pretty well as a pair. Hamilton is also known for his Handbook on the Pentateuch.

Bruce Waltke had a set of exegetical notes he would distribute to his Genesis seminary classes, and one of his former students, Cathi J. Fredericks, talked him into letting her edit them for publication in this 2001 volume. He did expand on them in places, but these are mostly brief exegetical notes with theological summaries for each unit he discusses. I generally find his exegesis to be the best of any of the Genesis commentaries I've looked at, but there isn't a lot of detail here on historical background, language, and many other things you might expect to look to a commentary to help you understand. The book is uneven, having much more discussion on the parts he chose to expand on and much less of insight on the notes he chose to leave as they were. It makes it hard to tell the intended audience also, since it doesn't have enough depth on every matter for academic work, has a bit much on structural and rhetorical elements for the average paster, and isn't evenly balanced in amount of detail across the whole book to be a first choice for any purpose. Nevertheless, I recommend it with Hamilton and Wenham as an excellent supplement to their more detailed work. Waltke is a conservative evangelical, and he's also known for excellent commentaries on Proverbs (NICOT) and Micah (Eerdmans) as well as an oft-cited Hebrew grammar.

There are those who think there's something immoral about translating the measurements in the Bible into contemporary units (e.g. miles or gallons). They claim that it's anachronistic, because the writer of the passage wouldn't have had a clue what a pound or an inch is. I can accept this argument with respect to passages where the numeric values are clearly symbolic, as in the temple measurements in Revelation. Translations that remove that by using contemporary units and thus different numbers are removing a key enough feature of the text that it's worth keeping the original values and units. But some people think it's changing the Bible to use contemporary units anywhere.

When I was reading Andrew Hill's commentary on Chronicles, it occurred to me that the Chronicler does exactly the thing such people spend so much effort calling evil. He translates units used in the early Kings text into the Persian units of his own day. People who make this claim are almost all inerrantists. If they were to remain consistent, they would have to admit that the Chronicler was inspired by God to do something they think is immoral, and thus they'd have to give up inerrancy, at least about Chronicles, or give up their view that this kind of translation is always bad.

I came across an oblique reference to this while scanning my file of unblogged things that I've thought about blogging, but I don't have any references. I thought it was an interesting enough point that I figured it deserved a blog entry, even if I couldn't remember what part of the book this occurred in.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

This post in particular is heavily reliant on my earlier reviews of commentaries on Habakkuk and Zephaniah, since most commentaries on each of these books include all three. One Nahum-specific commentary appears here, just as there were some Zephaniah-specific and Nahum-specific commentaries in the other posts. Where possible, I have tried to key my discussion of each commentary here to the Nahum section in the commentaries that deal with more than one book.

Craig Blomberg reviews the new Pillar New Testament Commentary on II Peter and Jude, by Peter Davids. I just got my copy and haven't had time to look at it much, but I'm looking forward to spending a little time in it when we study II Peter in our congregation in August and September.

From what Blomberg says, there's a lot to look forward to. I tend to agree with the few criticisms he offers. I don't know why you would need to think of Jude seeing a writing as canonical for him to quote it, and I'm certainly with Blomberg on the eternal security point. But I don't expect that sort of thing to be the norm.

I should note that, while Blomberg says at the bottom of his review that Davids gets his asterisk for "top pick among detailed but not overly technical commentaries on the English text of these two little epistles", a quick glance at the page he's referring to shows that it doesn't occupy that position alone. Thomas Schreiner's NAC on both epistles to Peter and Jude is still asterisked. I've spent some time in Schreiner's commentary, mostly on I Peter, and it's absolutely excellent. His work on the other two epistles will no doubt be equally good.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

This post in particular is heavily reliant on my earlier review of Zephaniah commentaries, since most commentaries on either of these books include the other. One Habakkuk-specific commentary appears here, just as there were some Zephaniah-specific commentaries in that post. I have tried to key my discussion of each commentary here to the Habakkuk section in the commentaries that deal with more than one book.

I've organized most of my lists of volumes in commentary series both in canonical order and in chronological order of publication. This is the chronological listing of the volumes in the New American Commentary series, first for the whole Bible and then for the Old Testament and New Testament separately. The list of volumes in canonical order can be found here.

[Note: The volumes on Daniel and Galatians were released in the same month. I do not know the exact publication dates. Therefore, I don't know which came out first if they were published on different dates. I had to list one of them before the other, so I went with canonical order. All the others are in chronological publication order.]

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the New American Commentary (NAC). For a chronological list according to publication date, see here. For more series, see my post on commentary series. This series is published by Broadman and Holman, and thus its commitments will reflect those of the current people behind that publisher, who are conservative Southern Baptists. Not every commentator in the series is a dispensationalist SBC type (e.g. a few are Reformed Baptists with other eschatological perspectives), but all volumes can be expected to affirm inerrancy and to have contemporary relevance in mind. The aim is to be mid-level, less depth than the New International Commentary series (and even a little less than the Pillar New Testament Commentary) but much more expansive than the Tyndale series and most other expositional commentaries. Some of the volumes seem to leave much of the scholarship in footnotes and just give a running exposition. Others are more detailed in exegetical rigor in the main text. All are fairly readable to those without strong seminary training, and some are quite excellent. Most of them spend more time on theology than is common in more detailed series. The series is mostly complete now, with Psalms, Isaiah, Zechariah, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Hebrews, and Revelation left to be published. Here are the volumes that are out:

O. Palmer Robertson's Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah has put together an excellent treatment of these three minor prophets. He defends views typical among conservative evangelicals, placing the books in the 7th century and defending the unity of composition, each by the single author they claim to be about. His treatment of the theology of these books is probably one of the best among contemporary commentaries.

Robertson tends to emphasize New Testament and later Christian interpretations, usually in a way that I find convincing but occasionally going a little beyond the text. Consider the following example. Coming from a Reformed theological tradition, Robertson defends the Reformation interpretation of justification by faith in Habakkuk, something several of the more mainstream commentaries have sought to undermine. He so emphasizes faith (over faithfulness) that I think he underemphasizes the connection between faith and repentance that some other commentaries seemed to me to get more clearly, but I welcome his attempt to see genuine justification by faith in Habakkuk's prophecy. I didn't notice anything particular to covenant theology as opposed to new covenant theology (the differences between Reformed covenant theologians and Reformed Baptists), though his expertise is in covenant theology.

I've been reading through Andrew Hill's NIVAC commentary on Chronicles with Sam, and I was intrigued by one of his so-called Contemporary Application sections (which in Hill's commentary sometimes stretch the boundaries of what I think the NIVAC series intends for those sections, often verging into abstract, theoretical constructs that have not much more than tangential connection with the text and not a very clear practical value). In his application of I Chronicles 18-20, a section about David's military victories, Hill spends four pages explicating the classic Christus Victor view of the atonement (literally "Christ the Conqueror"). In the process, he cites Greg Boyd's God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict, which argues that the battle between God and Satan does a lot more work philosophically and theologically than most evangelicals want to allow for. I happen to think Boyd goes way too far with this by accepting that God can't predict what Satan will do and by coming a little close to a dualism that treats God and Satan as near-equals. He insists that God will win in the end but doesn't give much philosophical or theological ground for how even God knows that Satan won't win in the end, never mind for us to be assured of it. Since this is largely a response to the problem of evil, I don't think it ultimately succeeds. The most crucial element of the Christian response to the problem of evil is that God's plan contains all the details of what will happen, and even the smallest details of what will happen are included in God's perfect, sovereign plan. So I've never thought that Boyd's overall view is even good at doing the one thing that he wants most of all to achieve with it.

But on the Christus Victor issue, I think Boyd has a point (although I hope to show that his point needs to be dulled, as my brother used to say). For the record, my general view of the atonement is that most of the theories of the atonement reflect part of what the atonement accomplishes. Jesus' death surely does serve as an example for us to sacrifice ourselves in love, but that doesn't come close to expressing its main purpose. Jesus' death also provides a redemption, i.e. a buying back of those who belong to sin and death to bring them into life and into service of God rather than slavery to sin. It takes care of a legal death penalty that all fallen human beings deserve for committing the highest of all crimes, rejection of the perfect and loving creator. It removes the corruption that cannot enter God's presence and makes us holy and thus allows reconciliation with God. [A great place to investigate this subject in detail is to read Rebecca Stark's blog series The Purposes of Christ's Death.]

And yes, Boyd is right that it constitutes a conquering of all evil raised up against God, signaling victory over all God's enemies. It is thus the fulfillment of all the divine warrior imagery throughout the Hebrew scriptures, including the kind of thing said about God fighting for his people Israel, which the psalms and prophets did attribute to David's military victories. Thus it's not that much of a stretch for Hill to bring this in with a discussion of I Chronicles 18-20. But I think Boyd takes this too far, as most who emphasize just one element of the atonement do. While he doesn't make the mistake of reducing the atonement to Christus Victor, he does take it to be the fundamental purpose of the atonement, on which all the other elements are based. On that point, I can't agree.

Tyler Williams reviews commentaries on Genesis. Tyler is a bit more positive about Walton that I'd want to be. I'm a bit disappointed with Walton's NIVAC in terms of the series' general strength, which is supposed to be contemporary application (and bridging the context from original meaning to contemporary application). Walton seems to have a very strained view of how much contemporary relevance Genesis has. Other than that, I think I agree with pretty much everything else Tyler says.

If you're interested in commentaries and haven't seen his Old Testament Commentary survey, you should take a look at that too. His Genesis post is basically an update to his entry on Genesis in that survey.

Update: Tyler has a followup post that adds a few more commentaries and then offers some thoughts in forthcoming commentaries on Genesis, including some information on when some of them are likely to be out.

Brian Weatherson links to the Unsuggestor, which uses Amazon personal profiles to match up books people have with books they're not likely to have. It's sort of the inverse of Amazon's engine for recommending books based on what other people who bought what you bought have bought. I tried a few books I've got, and I discovered some disturbing things. Consider the following sets of unrecommendations:

They have the second Harry Potter book opposed to The Gospel According to John, by Leon Morris, a fairly respected evangelical commentary on the fourth gospel. I have both books and like them both very much. Most of the Harry Potter books have several John Piper books turning up in the top five, mostly some of his newer books (which I don't have), but his earlier Desiring God turned up with some of novels by Terry Brooks, one of my favorite fantasy authors. This would again be a case of two books I pretty much like (even if I criticize Piper on a few issues here and there). Some books in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series are put up against John Piper, Josh Harris, Wayne Grudem, A.W. Tozer, J.I. Packer, and other books by evangelicals, including several books I've got or have at least spent time looking through. Pratchett's Reaper Man isn't my favorite of the Discworld series, but a lot of it is funny. Its opposite is Doug Stuart and Gordon Fee's How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, one of the best popular introductions to biblical interpretation ever written. Pratchett's much better Lords and Ladies is opposed to Knowing God by J.I. Packer, one of the most important popular introductions to theology in print. While I don't think Grudem's Systematic Theology is well-argued on the level of detailed exegesis (as in the classic tradition of Reformed systematic theologies like Hodge's), it's an excellent reference work, and I think his positions are largely correct on most issues. It's opposed to Pratchett's Pyramids, a Discworld book I very much loved. D.A. Carson's guide to New Testament commentaries, something I use all the time, lists Harry Potter book 6 as its opposite, a book that is next on my list to read. Carson's How Long, O Lord?, the best book I've seen on the problem of evil, also lists Potter book 6 as its first unsuggestion.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

I have a hard time deciding between Thomas Schreiner's NAC (2003) and Karen Jobes's BECNT (2005) as my first choice on I Peter. I think Schreiner's is the best NT volume in the NAC series. Jobes has a good deal more space in her commentary, and it's a little more recent and thus has an edge in terms of having more scholarship to interact with. Schreiner includes II Peter and Jude and thus is more limited in scope in his I Peter portion. Both seem to me to be excellent both in exegesis and in sorting through the contemporary scholarship, but Jobes has more space to interact with other scholars. Both are well-written and easy to read, although Schreiner will be slightly more easy-going for those without Greek. Jobes comments directly on the Greek text, although she transliterates and translates every time she gives an expression in the Greek. Schreiner works in transliteration and translation entirely.

Both come from a theologically Reformed background, but Schreiner presses those issues a little more firmly (not a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned, and I don't think he goes overboard as some do). He connects his comments up with broader, systematic theology categories. I count both as theological conservatives, even on less central matters such as gender issues (both are complementarians, although Jobes doesn't think I Peter itself deals with the general issue of male headship in marriage, as she thinks Ephesians and Colossians do, but rather just deals with women submitting to unbelieving husbands for the sake of evangelism).

When I let a friend borrow some of my commentaries for a sermon on I Peter, he told me Schreiner's was the most useful of the bunch and an enjoyable commentary to read, although several others were helpful to him. He didn't get to read Jobes, however, so I'm not sure how he'd compare the two. On Schreiner, see also Craig Blomberg's review. Surprisingly to me (given how much I like Blomberg), I think I agree with Schreiner in most of the places Blomberg takes issue with him.

Jobes contributes three things in her work that are worth mentioning. First, her treatment of the Old Testament in this letter spends a good more time than usual in looking at how the fact that OT quotations are from the LXX should affect how we interpret their use here. This is a welcome feature that I think will affect future I Peter scholarship will have to take into account.

Baker's commentary is very brief. This would be an excellent guide for a Bible study leader or pastor without much training in biblical studies. For more detailed exegesis, I recommend O. Palmer Robertson's NICOT or Waylon Bailey's NAC. This commentary would provide a nice supplement to those volumes.

Baker takes a conservative, evangelical approach to these three minor prophets, selecting what he considers to be the most important information for the basic interpretation of the books. He defends the unity of each book, along with the traditionally ascribed authorship, dating all three books to the traditional period of the 7th century.

Baker is broadly Wesleyan in his theology, and I am more Reformed, but I did not find much in this commentary that I disagreed with theologically. At most, and in only a few places, I would have worded things slightly differently. Baker thus does well at capturing the theological message of these books without trying to score points for his particular theological viewpoint. He simply discusses what the text is saying. He has room for enough linguistic, textual, and background issues to show the general sense of what the text is saying, even if he does not always give full details on matters that have a smaller effect on the overall message. A more detailed commentary would be required for that.

I know of no work at this level that does as good a job, even if it turns out to be not even as detailed as a number of other volumes in the Tyndale series, even the other minor prophets volumes. I would not prefer to have to teach these books with just Baker's commentary, and there are a lot of good commentaries on these books, but this is one of the ones I want on my shelf. This may well be the lowest price-to-information ratio among the evangelical commentaries.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

Timothy Ashley's NICOT (1993) is an excellent commentary by a fairly conservative evangelical. It has more detail than some of the older commentaries in this series (e.g. Wenham on Leviticus, Craigie on Deuteronomy), though not quite as much as some of the massive two-volume works in the series (such as Waltke on Proverbs, Block on Ezekiel, or Hamilton on Genesis). I have read this commentary in its entirety, and I enjoyed it very much. The most unfortunate thing about it is that it was published just after Milgrom's JPS commentary (see immediately below) came out. Ashley had access to Milgrom's published papers on Numbers but not the commentary itself. He had enough time after its publication to mention his regrets about this in the introduction but not enough time for it to affect the body of the work. Still, Ashley handles well the historical, theological, and linguistic issues that arise in this book. He tends to avoid authorship issues but treats the book as a unity.

The NAC by R. Dennis Cole (2000) is more recent than Ashley's, but I've heard more mixed reviews. Cole interacts with the scholarship a little more than some volumes in this series, giving plenty of citations of other authors. He argues that Moses is largely responsible for the book. Cole has received favorable comments from reviewers on his handling of theological issues and his analysis of the unified structure of Numbers despite the variety of material in the book. Some of his critics find him somewhat less helpful in biblical theology and narrative criticism. He sometimes spends time on literary observations without making any connection to the interpretation of the book or its theology. Some reviewers consider Cole a better first-choice evangelical commentary than Ashley. Cole does have some stronger points than Ashley, but Ashley is a bit more detailed (although some might prefer a little less detail). What clinches it for me is that I haven't seen the kinds of complaints about Ashley that I've seen about Cole, and thus Ashley gets the nod for my first choice.

For those who pay attention to my recommendations for commentaries on biblical books, I have been updating my list of recommendations over the last month. I'd almost finished several weeks ago up through I Corinthians in my advanced commentaries list. A discussion on another blog reminded me to finish that list, which I finally did earlier today. I've also updated my recommended forthcoming commentaries list from that series (as opposed to my more comprehensive forthcoming commentaries list, which I have been updating regularly) to take into account the much larger information base I now have, to remove commentaries that have been published, and to add indications of what level of detail I expect each forthcoming commentary in the list to be. I've also added in links to each post from the first one, so you don't have to scroll to the bottom of each post to get to the next one.

I am in the process of working on an entry on Numbers to my series of posts of more in-depth reviews of commentaries on each book of the Bible. My congregation is about to finish our sermon series on I Peter this Sunday, and I'm expecting to do that after Numbers.

Linda Belleville's II Corinthians commentary in the IVP New Testament Commentary series is one of the best of the briefer treatements of this important but often underemphasized letter. I would say that the only close rival at this level of detail is Scott Hafemann's NIVAC, which has the advantage of being a little later (and thus could benefit from Belleville's work and the scholarship since) and with more emphasis on applicational issues, whereas Belleville has a little more focus on the exegesis itself.

I like Belleville's approach for the most part. She seems to me to be much more balanced than some of the more detailed academic commentaries. She argues for Pauline authorship of the entire letter. She tends to favor seeing the letter as a unity, with some caution that certainty is impossible. She finds no absolutely convincing explanation about why the last few chapters seem very different, but she nonetheless does not take the differences to demonstrate their being taken from some other letter, and we should give the letter in its current form the benefit of the doubt in the absence of clear evidence. Overall, her exposition captures well the basic themes of this letter and how it ties in with I Corinthians and demonstrates both a familiarity with the literature on the epistle and an eye for how to interpret and apply its message in our contemporary setting.

Her goal seems to be to provide enough information from the best scholarship on the book to understand what Paul is up to in this letter without getting too bogged down in some of the more thorny problems. Sometimes she just refers to other scholarship when the details are tricky and the importance of the disagreement is less significant. She does give exegetical and text-critical notes at the bottom of the page, with a running exposition (not always verse by verse) taking up most of the space on most pages. It's hard to read both in order, however, since she does not use the notes at the bottom as footnotes. Since the commentary proper is not always verse-by-verse, it's difficult to figure out when to read the notes at the bottom. Other than that, the commentary does not seem like a scholarly reference work but feels like a book you can read.

For detailed scholarly work on this book on the level of the Greek text, try Murray J. Harris' NIGTC, and for a more detailed exegetical work without the detailed Greek I recommend the NAC by David Garland. But for this level of detail Belleville is excellent.

As I've done with several other of my lists of commentary series, I've put together a chronological listing of the Hermeneia commentaries. For the canonical order and a brief review of the series, see here.

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

Duane Garrett's NAC is usually the first place I loook on Hosea. It's toward the more in-depth end of the mid-level commentaries, a little more in-depth than most volumes in the series. It's the most recent of the evangelical works on this book, and I find his judgments to be sane and reasoned yet without dogmatism when the issues are less clear. Garrett has also done Song of Songs for WBC and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (all in another volume), and Joel (in this volume) for NAC. His Rethinking Genesis is one of the more reasonable defenses of conservative views on the authorship of Genesis (and the Pentateuch in general). It's not surprising, then, that he is a conservative evangelical. His strengths include philology and a good sense of the literary features of the book, and he offers lots of detailed excurses on exploring some particular issues in more depth.

Douglas Stuart's WBC is the classic evangelical treatment. It's getting pretty dated now, but Stuart is revising it for publication next year (according to Thomas Nelson). Several reviewers I've read have said they Stuart is their favorite on Hosea. His work on Hosea and Jonah in this volume generally get placed as the best of the commentaries on the five books it treats (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah). He is especially strong on theology but handles other matters judiciously also. One key strength is his tying the prophetic oracles back to covenant blessings and curses in the Torah, with his conception of prophets as enforcers of the covenant. One reviewer wishes Stuart spent more time explaining alternative views and thinks he's a little too willing to emend the MT. Stuart has also written the NAC on Exodus, the Preacher's Commentary (formerly Communicator's Commentary) on Ezekiel, and a commentary on Malachi in the same series as McComiskey's Hosea (see below). He is currently working on a second WBC volume to replace the current one on Micah-Malachi. Stuart is also a conservative evangelical. I don't like the format of this series, but I do think it's easier to read than McComiskey below, and Stuart is usually a clear writer. I look forward to the revised edition, which may well replace Garrett as my first choice on this book. [add link to Thomas Nelson site]

Since I don't really have the time today (or the ability to focus) for putting a post together out of any of the several things I want to blog about, I'll just share an interesting piece of information I picked up from Karen Jobes's Esther commentary.

Apparently the Persian emperors had a special method of coming up with ideas for imperial policies. They would gather together their closest advisors, all get drunk, and then start tossing out ideas. If they still agreed with the policies after they'd sobered up, they would implement them. This isn't just the way some of their policies came about. According to Jobes, this was their usual method of figuring out how to deal with difficult policy decisions. This isn't unheard of in our day, either. I know several philosophers who come up with their best stuff when drunk. Since they have to wait until they're sober to write it up, I'm sure that allows some good quality control.

Of course, there's also the following corollary. If you have any ideas while you're sober, you should wait until you see what you think about them when you're drunk before implementing them.

This post is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post.

D.A. Carson's PNTC is easily my favorite commentary on John. I consider Carson to be one of the most balanced theological interpreters of scripture. Those more skeptical might just think that's because I tend to agree with him, but I think it's because we've independently arrived at similar enough views that I happen to think he's just gotten it right much of the time. This is clearly a favorite among most evangelicals. Carson operates at an academically sophisticated enough level that serious research ought to interact with him far more than actually happens. He defends traditional Johannine authorship as the most likely explanation of the data we have without insisting on it as a point of orthodoxy. His theological perspective is mainstream evangelical and broadly Reformed.

Herman Ridderbos' mostly theological commentary (English translation 1997) is very widely appreciated across the theological spectrum despite its distinctively conservative conclusions. It's a little light on what's usually called introductory matters (i.e. date, authorship, and other issues usually covered in the introduction), but that's because its focus is on the theological meaning of the text. At this task, Ridderbos excels. On some issues, Ridderbos' moderately conservative views come through, but it's not usually front and center. The original commentary was published in two volumes, one in the late 80s and the other in the early 90s. Like other commentaries translated into English, the date might fool you into thinking it interacts with scholarship later than what the author actually had access to. His first volume was prior to Carson's, and his second was shortly after Carson's.

For those who are interested in upcoming biblical commentaries who don't regularly check my posts on those (and I know some of my readers do check in on those posts fairly often), I wanted to make it known that there have been lots of updates to them recently. [You can look at the same information organized in two different ways: by book of the Bible and by commentary series.] In this post I'll give several highlights and major updates among a lot of smaller changes that I won't mention here but are at the main posts. As always, the main posts just linked to will be updated when there is new information, and they include much that's changed that's not here. I will not be updating this post. This is just to draw attention to changes that have occurred on the other posts for those who don't check them regularly.

I'm perhaps most excited about this first item, which I haven't included in the other posts since it's not new commentaries but new books about commentaries. Baker is releasing new editions of Longman's OT commentary survey and Carson's NT one in January. Also, John Glynn is expecting the new edition of his own commentary review to be published by the end of the year. I've already ordered Longman and Carson at Amazon. I couldn't find them there by searching, but you can use the Baker links above to get the ISBNs and then type them into the Amazon search box. I don't believe they have the new Glynn edition listed at Amazon yet.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Hermeneia series. For more series, see my post on commentary series. For a listing in alphabetical order, see this post.

The Hermeneia series is noted especially for its comprehensive attention to parallels in other literature. This will almost invariably involve many speculative connections with literature not necessary for interpreting the biblical text and just amounts to distraction. A number of these commentaries are absolutely excellent and in fact the scholarly standards on their respective books (e.g. Psalms 51-100, Song of Songs, Amos, I Peter. Others are outdated or eccentric (most notably John and the earlier Bultmann I-III John), and such books might be better served by other commentaries. It uses the original language and will be harder to read by those unschooled in Hebrew and Greek, but there is usually a translation of any non-English, which makes it much easier than some other series. Even though it's more detail than necessary in most cases, some of these volumes really are the best detailed exegesis of the book they cover, and I'll indicate some of those when I do the review of commentaries for each book. In most cases, scholars will need to refer to them, but expositors will not. The series is still very much in process in the Old Testament, with only one volume on the historical works in print, and that was just this year. The prophets and wisdom literature have much better coverage, and the NT is much further along. Non-canonical books also appear in this series.

One misleading element of the following lists is that many volumes are translations of German or French works, and the delay between the original and the Hermeneia translation is sometimes more than a decade. Some of these are much older than they seem to be from the date given, which is the date of its release in English translation in this series . Others were new works produced in English.

Volumes out so far:

As I've done with several other of my lists of commentary series, I've put together a chronological listing of the Tyndale Old and New Testament commentaries. For the canonical order and a brief review of the series, see here.

Old Testament:

This is part of a larger project reviewing commentaries on each book of the Bible. Follow the links from that post for more information on the series, including explanations of what I mean by some of the terms and abbreviations in this post. You can see my annotated Amazon Listmania! list of Leviticus commentaries if you want a quick overview of what I think are the most important commentaries (or at least what I thought when I made the list) before looking more deeply at this more detailed review.

Gordon Wenham (NICOT, 1979) has my favorite commentary on this difficult book. Wenham is especially strong on understanding the theological significance of cleanness/uncleanness, holiness, and other ritual matters. It's not as detailed as some of the following commentaries, but I think it's the best starting place for a pastor or Bible teacher. He's got a good sense of the symbolism behind most of the laws that sound very strange to the modern ear and what they would have meant to Israel. He ends each section with some reflections on connecting the material he's just discussed with the New Testament. Especially helpful are his explanations of how the New Testament authors would consider the various festivals and sacrifices as fulfilled in Christ in different ways. I thoroughly enjoyed working through this commentary. Wenham spends little time speculating on source critical issues, due to the circularity of most such arguments and the wide divergence of source reconstructions among those who spend their time making what flimsy consensus there is even less of a consensus.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Eerdmans Critical Commentary series. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

Only three volumes of the ECC are out now: Psalms, I-II Timothy, and Philemon. The latter two were intended to be Anchor Bible volumes, but the authors died without finishing them, and AB reassigned those volumes to other authors. The editor of the Anchor Bible series began this series with the completion of their work by students of theirs who shared the style and viewpoint of their teachers. Only one further volume has been completed beyond those two, but the list of contributors suggests that this series will be similar to the more recent Anchor Bible entries in quality and perspective, with top-notch scholars ranging from moderate to pretty skeptical.

My impression of this series so far is that it's much too detailed for non-scholars to spend much time on. At least the NT volumes so far seem this way. They've got lots of information, but it's too much for expositors who don't reserve most of their week for sermon preparation. Detailed academic commentaries exist that don't drown the reader with this much information. Even so, the academic can't ignore this series, and well-trained preachers with a large budget might use it as a reference. It will end up being one of the most important scholarly commentary series as it develops. The one OT volume so far seemed to me not to answer any of the questions I was interested in. Surprisingly, it didn't seem anywhere near as detailed as I expected given what the NT volumes are like, but what it did have focused on things that weren't as helpful as, say, the Word Biblical Commentary trio of volumes. I tried to use it when I was leading a Bible study on the Psalms, and it was virtually no help. So I'm not sure what to say about that one. I've read lots of reviews that rave about it, but it just didn't seem useful to me. The volumes in this series are also extremely expensive. Several names in the list of contributors lead me to think their work will become the standard on the books in question, but I wonder if I will end up with many in my library due to the prohibitive cost and painstaking level of detail.

Volumes Released So Far:

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Apollos Old Testament Commentary series. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

The Apollos Old Testament Commentary (AOTC) series is an interesting venture. The publisher and editors are evangelicals, but I'm not sure how conservative all the authors will be. I get the sense that some of them are only moderately evangelical. This is not a full-scale academic conmmentary, but it's much more than a popular-level exposition. I'd probably place it within the intermediate range, but I've got only the slightest familiarity with the series so far, having looked at only one volume just a little bit without reading much of it.

Only Deuteronomy and Daniel have been published so far, and both are of the highest quality scholarship without the detail of the more in-depth series. The primary purpose, according to the editors, is to explain the text to the contemporary reader, focusing on theology and providing less detail on other elements commentaries often cover. There are enough really stellar people on the projected authors list that I expect this series to be excellent. Given the conservative nature of the publisher and the stated aims of the series, I was a little disappointed at the stance Lucas takes on Daniel's date and content (rejection of an exilic setting and historical basis of the accounts), but the list of names of other contributors suggests a fairly conservative lineup.

Volumes Released So Far:

Leviticus, Nobuyoshi Kiuchi (April 2007)
Deuteronomy, J. Gordon McConville (2002)
Daniel, Ernest C. Lucas (2002)

Forthcoming Volumes:

At Lane Keister's recommendation, I'm listing the information in my Forthcoming Commentaries post by book. The original post lists them by series. I intend to update both posts whenever I get new information.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Tyndale Old and New Testament Commentaries. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (TOTC) and Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (TNTC) are some of the best basic level commentaries out there. The perspective is fairly conservative and clearly evangelical, and the intent is to package careful research into a popular-level commentary that can be read cover to cover fairly easily by someone with no background in academic work in biblical studies. It's not as basic as the NIVAC or BST series, but that just means it's more helpful to someone seeking a little more reasoning behind the exegesis and interpretation taken in the commentary. Many of the authors are top scholars who have also written detailed commentaries, usually on other books.

A few volumes stand out as particularly excellent. All of the ones by Joyce Baldwin are great (Samuel, Esther, Daniel, Haggai-Zechariah-Malachi). Selman's two volumes on Chronicles and Hubbard's lengthy volume on Hosea were allowed far more space than normally happens in this series. Colin Kruse's new one on John is the best basic level commentary on John, and John Stott's volume on I-III John is probably the same for that book. I've seen some refer to I. Howard Marshall on Acts as the best commentary in the series, though I think I'd reserve that for Stott's. Derek Kidner did some fine work for this series too (Genesis, Ezra-Nehemiah, Psalms, Proverbs), though his are probably among the most dated in the series.

The following list is in canonical order. If you prefer to see the volumes in their chronological release order (as best as I can reconstruct), see here.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the NIV Application Commentary. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

The NIV Application Commentaries (NIVAC) are truly of their own category. After what's usually a fairly brief exposition of what the text says in its original context, there's a section raising considerations on how we should bridge from that context to our own, and then a third section presents some ways to apply the text in our own context. This is an admirable aim, since it gives a model for how each person should be reading the Bible with an aim to applying it in our own contexts. The downside is that the author isn't in exactly our context, and we have to do that kind of work ourselves and not allow a commentary to do it for us, or else we won't have truly bridged the contextual gap from the text to our own context. But the model presented in these volumes is often very helpful to begin that work.

There's much of value in these commentaries, even if the exposition itself is fairly brief, since it's not really much briefer than most basic level commentaries, but the additional portions are extra help in matters that commentaries don't often deal with. With caution, they can be quite helpful. The NT is finished, with the OT coming along pretty quickly.

Volumes released:

As with several other commentary series that I've posted that have taken a long time to develop, I wanted to do a separate post for the Anchor Bible in chronological order. For the main Anchor Bible post, see here.

Speiser on Genesis and Reicke on James/Peter/Jude were released same day as each other. Fox on Proverbs 1-9 and Andersen-Freedman on Micah were also released the same day as each other. All others in this list are fully in chronological order as far as my best information indicates. I have not included forthcoming volumes, which you can see a list of in the above-linked post.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Anchor Bible commentary series. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

The Anchor Bible (AB) commentaries are among the most academically respectable scholarly commentaries, though the quality and level of detail can vary from volume to volume. They transliterate the Greek and Hebrew, which helps for someone who doesn't know the original languages, but sometimes the level of detail isn't all that helpful for someone who just wants a little background and doesn't want to wade through pages of scholarship to find that the kind of theological question they're worrying about is hardly treated by a scholar who cares more about the linguistic, historical, and text-critical issues. Not all volumes are like this, but many are. The level of detail will also vary greatly from volume to volume, with later publication dates often signaling much more depth, and some (though certainly not all) older ones are all but useless given what else is out there. Textual criticism, exegetical notes and expositional commentary are separated into separate sections. This makes it difficult to find anything, but it also keeps separate kinds of work separate. I'd rather not have these separated, but some people prefer it.

As with most critical series, evangelicals will be troubled by some of the conclusions of most of the scholars writing in this series (except for the few evangelical contributors). Though evangelicals can supplement the kind of information in these commentaries with what I consider to be much better theological sense and a much higher appreciation of scripture, many evangelical commentaries simply can't compete with the best volumes in this series, at least with respect to historical and sociological background information, lexical study, text criticism, archaeology. etc. Theology is often given short shrift. The series is mostly done, with only Nahum and Philippians not covered and only Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Ezekiel still only partially covered, though some volumes are being replaced (I know of Genesis, II Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, Psalms, Proverbs 10-31, Matthew, the second half of Mark, and Revelation).

Volumes released so far:

As I did with NICOT and NICNT, I've decided to post a chronological ordering of the WBC volumes. I think I'm going to do this with all the long-standing series. I think it's interesting to look through how a series developed.

The two 1982 releases came out the same day. Murphy on Proverbs and the third Aune volume on Revelation came out on the same day. The revised volume 1 on Deuteronomy and vol.2 on Mark were released together. I believe I've listed each of those pairs in canonical order. The rest should all be in chronological order. I'll list the whole series together and then the Old Testament and New Testament separately.

This is a list of the current and forthcoming commentaries in the Word Biblical Commentary. For more series, see my post on commentary series.

The Word Biblical Commentaries (WBC) are an unusual commentary series. They're supposed to be combining an academic approach, based in the original languages in full original language fonts, with an evangelical approach. The reality is less clear. Some of the volumes are less detailed than others, though all do use the original language fonts. The evangelicalism of this series varies considerably depending on the author. Some are clearly theological conservatives who hold to some form of inerrancy. Others don't seem to me to be evangelicals even by a reasonable stretch of the term. They say each author needs to hold to evangelicalism by a fairly loose interpretation of the term, but I think the editors are so loose with it that it's ceased to have any meaning. Some of the volumes are accordingly far removed from what most evangelicals are looking for. Others are solidly conservative and consider the kinds of questions people of faith rather than historians and scholars will ask. I consider Wenham on Genesis, Williamson on Ezra-Nehemiah, O'Brien on Colossians and Philemon, and Lane on Hebrews as the best commentaries on those books, hands down, and Clines on Job, Craigie on Psalms 1-50, Stuart on Hosea-Jonah, Longenecker on Galatians, Lincoln on Ephesians, Mounce on the Pastoral Epistles, and Bauckham on II Peter and Jude are among the very best on those books. The series is nearing completion. Judges, Job 21-42, Acts, and I Corinthians remain vacant. A number of volumes have been contracted for replacements. Only a few such replacements have already appeared.

The format of the series gets mixed reviews. Some find it extremely helpful by separating different aspects of what a commentary does into different sections. Others find it incredibly annoying. I'm in the latter camp. It's hard to find anything, because you have to look at three or four different sections sometimes, only to find that it's not covered at all in some cases. In a normal commentary,