Best critical commentary
Having already WBC and NICOT/NICNT, I want to buy a good critical commentary set. As far as I can see, Hermeneia is the best there is at the moment. Or are there other commentary sets worth considering?
Comments
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I'd rate ICC above Hermeneia for many volumes, particularly in the newer editions. I don't mind critical scholarship, but for my tastes, Hermeneia too often veers into sceptical scholarship, and often spends so much time dealing with background issues, the text is barely dealt with. There are exceptions of course (Hebrews, for example is excellent in Hermeneia). Anchor is also better than Hermeneia in my opinion, though I'd be hard placed to choose between it and ICC.
But if you don't mind NT only, then I'd rank NIGTC above both. Most volumes are excellent, the rest are also pretty good. Baker Exegetical and Pillar would then be a very close second and third. They're all comparable to NICOT/NICNT in style and quality, though none of them are complete (though I think there's a few additional Pillar commentaries on prepub). So, my view would be something like this:
Ultimately, of course, it depends what you're looking for. What do you want in a critical commentary set?
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Simon Lagendijk said:
Having already WBC and NICOT/NICNT, I want to buy a good critical commentary set. As far as I can see, Hermeneia is the best there is at the moment. Or are there other commentary sets worth considering?
As an overall set, and this is just my opinion, Hermeneia is the current leader when it comes to critical commentary series.
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Thanks. Having Logos 4 Platinum, I already have NIGT, Baker Exegetical and Pillar. Have bought WBC seprately, and am going to buy NICOT/NICNT (I'm already feeling myself very blessed with so much good resources)
I want to buy a critical commentary for academic use, and later on (read eclectic) for sermon preparation.
About ICC: Aren't some of its editions a bit outdated? I remember some are from the early 1900's.
About Anchor: It is quite expensive (even with academic discount), nearly double the price of Hermeneia. Is it worth it? And are all editions of the same quality?
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I would place Hermeneia at the top of the critical commentary list. Some of the scholarship is even considered groundbreaking. Always thought-provoking, even if you don't agree with the conclusions.
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Mark Barnes said:
I agree with Mark here. One small tweak would be that I would place WBC above ICC. There are WBC volumes that I think are not very useful at all, but several are outstanding.
Fred Greco
Senior Pastor, Christ Church PCA, Katy, TX
Windows 10 64-bit; Logos 7.1 SR-2 (Reformed Platinum)0 -
For what it's worth, here are Don Carson's comments on Hermeneia:
Hermeneia (SCM/Fortress) is a full-scale critical commentary series that devotes considerable attention to parallel texts. Unlike the ICC, allowance is made for readers without a classical education by providing translations (usually from the Loeb edition) of cited Greek and Latin authors. Several of the volumes are translations of German works, and initially this included some extremely dated books (e.g., Bultmann on the Johannine Epistles), but these are being replaced (in this instance by a major commentary written by Strecker). Haenchen on John, however, should have been put out to pasture long ago. “Parallelomania” (to use Sandmel’s famous expression) and a naive appeal to history-of-religions assumptions frequently surface in the volumes of this series, but the series remains invaluable for the serious exegete and expositor. A few volumes are outstanding (e.g., Attridge on Hebrews).
And on ICC
The International Critical Commentary, a project more than a century old, is now being renewed. The old volumes include some major commentaries that still set a high standard, even if they are now seriously dated. Greek and Latin texts are cited without translation: this will prove a drawback to many modern readers. Only a few volumes of the modern updating have appeared, but they are of exceptional quality (see notes on Cranfield on Romans, Davies and Allison on Matthew, Barrett on Acts)—though so pricey as to be beyond the reach of many students and pastors.
And Anchor
The Anchor Bible (/Doubleday) is a decidedly mixed series. It is ecumenical, moderately critical, and designed to extend through both Testaments, including the Apocrypha. Each volume offers introduction, a new translation, linguistic and exegetical notes, and sometimes a more detailed exposition. But the length and complexity of the treatment vary enormously: e.g., Brown on John and on the Johannine Epistles is immensely detailed, while Albright and Mann on Matthew have produced a volume with a lengthy introduction and almost no exegesis.
Carson obviously rates Heremeneia, but I still put ICC above it because (a) the history-of-religions assumptions drive me crazy, (b) I'm British like ICC (!), and (c) the newer commentaries in ICC are generally very good (in addition to those Carson mentions, Thrall on 2 Corinthians, and Marshall on the Pastorals are both really excellent).
But all of these three series are very mixed. I bought ICC and Hermeneia on pre-pub, and passed on Anchor. I'm not sure I'd buy any of them at current prices.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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My Ranking
1. Baker Exegetical (if only they could do the same for the OT, well rounded and a good starting point. the fact that many of the volumes are recent helps)
2. NICOT/NICNT (first choice for a series covering both testaments)
3. Pillar
4. NIGTC
5. WBC (if it was not for the highly "reprehensible" format. this series could get more love from me)
6. Anchor (mix bag but contains some gems, the minor prophets are the best group)
7. ICC (volumes worth buying are mostly NT newer volumes)
8. ECC (Eerdmans Critical Commentary, cannot wait to see Dozeman on Exodus added to Logos' existing volumes)
9. Hermeneia (not well rounded, but very useful when consulting it for its strengths, also I am not a great fan of "German scholarship").
As a rule, series or volumes that spent too much time on diachronic issues (history of composition and the alleged various layers behind the text…) are less useful to me. Series or volumes that primary deal with the final form of the text (the text we have today) are more useful to me. A theological sensibility is also a welcomed. One needs to make sense of the parts and how they contribute to the overall message of the book.
It is good to know the strenghts and weaknesses of each series/individual volume and make purchases accordingly nothing beats reading reviews and them sampling some of the volumes. sometimnes it is more cost effective to buy individual volumes (ICC NT) and sometimes the whole series makes more sense (NICOT/NICNT, Anchor).
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Alain, I like your list although I may switch #s 6 and 7. Thank you for posting your comments/explanations. I particularly agree with your sentiments on #9.
Blessings
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If I were to vote for the best critical commentary that hasn't made it through the Prepub process yet, I'd give a shout out to the Continental Commentary.
http://www.logos.com/products/prepub/details/5179
It mostly English translations of some of the best European commentaries originally written in German or French (Milgrom's Leviticus is the odd man out, being originally written in English by an American scholar. The volume is also a bit unusual in that it complements, rather than replaces, Milgrom's 3 volume treatment of Leviticus from the Anchor Bible series.)
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Alain, very nice list. Would be very similar to mine.
Jacob Hantla
Pastor/Elder, Grace Bible Church
gbcaz.org0 -
It is likely blindingly obvious, but for the sake of random people finding this thread, it should be noted that many of these rankings being published all just happen to have all the evangelical or orthodox-perspective series at the top and all the critical commentaries at the bottom.
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Simon said:
Having already WBC and NICOT/NICNT, I want to buy a good critical commentary set. As far as I can see, Hermeneia is the best there is at the moment. Or are there other commentary sets worth considering?
I have many of these commentaries and have been disappointed here or there by all of them. For example: Charles' ICC commentary on Revelation is at the same time one of the best and one of the worst commentaries. His scholarship is impeccable, and you will find much in his introduction that you will find nowhere else. When it comes to his commentary, however, the man drives me absolutely crazy with his critical comments on the text. He tends to reconstruct the text based on how he thinks the book should have been written with very little evidence to support his reconstruction. I don't particularly appreciate commentaries which don't directly interact with the original language of the text so some fail in that regard. Then there are commentaries which do interact with the original text but do so in transliteration. That may make things easier for the publisher since they don't need to use a foreign font, but I find myself trying to figure out what the stupid transliteration is supposed to represent. "Of the making of books there is no end" possibly because they all fail in some respect.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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Hint: this thread is three years old!
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george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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In this post I'll talk about technical critical commentary sets from which I have more than one volume.
- I have 3 ICC volumes:
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Vol. 1 by Thrall ... it's on chapters 1-7 ... I bought it when it still cost $110 together with the Good News Translation on a 3-month payment-plan. The regular price was reduced to $55 a few months later. I managed to return it and get a refund and buy it for the reduced regular price.
A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles by Marshall and Towner ... it's on a sale right now, the price is $41.95!
Isaiah 40-55 volume 2 by by Goldingay and Payne ... as printed matter. Pre-pub upgrade set: International Critical Commentary Upgrade Collection (6 vols.)
... all those 3 are excellent! In the future I'm probably also going to get the Jn chapters 1-4 volume separately, and I'll try to copy from Philemon in college. - Then I have most of Hermeneia also. (One volume as printed matter too: Mt chapters 8-20.) (I'm interested in the Upgrade 3 also, but might try to get the volumes I want, 2 Mc and Lk 19:28–24:53 individually, perhaps buy waiting until the Upgrade is split up in Logos, or in Accordance, or as printed matter. I'll get the whole Upgrade 3 (3 vols.) in Logos if I get it for the pre-pub price. I have a pre-pub order, but Logos, quite unexpectedly, wants to charge me an additional 10% for manual labour because my bank requires additional security, that I give the 3 digits from the back of my card (CVC/CVV2 -code). I'm thinking right now what I will do and am going to look up prices today.)
Hermeneia has a volume on 2 Corinthians chapter 8-9.
I think Hermeneia is good! The main drawbacks are that some of the volumes are beginning to get a bit old, and that the set is incomplete (if that's a drawback). If You compare the number of pages, remember that all the pages in Hermeneia are very large.
Disclosure!
trulyergonomic.com
48G AMD octacore V9.2 Acc 120 - I have 3 ICC volumes:
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Wohoo! I managed to get the Hermeneia Upgrade 3 (3 vols.) for the pre-pub price $134.95!! [mo] [:)] I guess it helped that I added an item from the Saturday sale (which I'm going to return if it proves to overlap the end-of-2011 Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible that I have as printed matter)? This nudges me towards getting LSJ in Logos instead of somewhere else (Accordance or through the online interface (I don't have internet so online is a problem)). I've heard that it can be used for Lk, and I will be studying classical Gk the first thing I do in college in 2014. (There's a discussion about different LSJ solutions in: LSJ with or without the 1996 supplement?.)
Bovon is the author of the Lk volumes in Hermeneia, I like him! I've read through the first volume on Lk, included in the Hermeneia set, ~ half a year ago. Included in the Upgrade 3 set is also a volume on 2 Mc by Attridge - that book of the Bible has had some interesting influence and I will want to look up some passages:Unix said:(I'm interested in the Upgrade 3 also, but might try to get the volumes I want, 2 Mc and Lk 19:28–24:53 individually, perhaps buy waiting until the Upgrade is split up in Logos, or in Accordance, or as printed matter. I'll get the whole Upgrade 3 (3 vols.) in Logos if I get it for the pre-pub price. I have a pre-pub order, but Logos, quite unexpectedly, wants to charge me an additional 10% for manual labour because my bank requires additional security, that I give the 3 digits from the back of my card (CVC/CVV2 -code). I'm thinking right now what I will do and am going to look up prices today.)
Disclosure!
trulyergonomic.com
48G AMD octacore V9.2 Acc 120
