Question about pastoral and exegetical value of top commentaries

Dear Logos community,

some of the Hermeneia, Anchor Yale, ICC and Library commentaries are listed as top commentaries - could you please inform me on their usefulness for sermon preparation? I own all the other series. I am interested in the following, could you please comment on them:

- Leviticus, Anchor Yale (got his condensed commentary in Continental Series)

- 2 Samuel, Anchor Yale

- 1 & 2 Chronicles, OT Library

- Ecclesiastes, Anchor Yale

- Jeremiah, 3 vols, Anchor Yale (not on sale, but still interested)

- Lamentations, Anchor Yale

- Daniel, Hermeneia

- Hosea, Anchor Yale

- Amos, Hermeneia (by Paul Shalom)

- Zephaniah, Anchor Yale

- Haggai, Anchor Yale

- Zechariah, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- Malachi, Anchor Yale

- Luke, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- John, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- Acts, 2 vols, ICC

- Romans, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

Big thanks!

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Rokas

Anyone?

Paul Caneparo

Anyone?

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Paul Caneparo

Anyone?

My personal take would be ''''.

I typed no, but spell check changed what I typed!

Jacob Hantla

Dear Logos community,

some of the Hermeneia, Anchor Yale, ICC and Library commentaries are listed as top commentaries - could you please inform me on their usefulness for sermon preparation? I own all the other series. I am interested in the following, could you please comment on them:

- Leviticus, Anchor Yale (got his condensed commentary in Continental Series)

- 2 Samuel, Anchor Yale

- 1 & 2 Chronicles, OT Library

- Ecclesiastes, Anchor Yale

- Jeremiah, 3 vols, Anchor Yale (not on sale, but still interested)

- Lamentations, Anchor Yale

- Daniel, Hermeneia

- Hosea, Anchor Yale

- Amos, Hermeneia (by Paul Shalom)

- Zephaniah, Anchor Yale

- Haggai, Anchor Yale

- Zechariah, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- Malachi, Anchor Yale

- Luke, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- John, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- Acts, 2 vols, ICC

- Romans, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

Big thanks!

None of these will focus on pastoral aspect. There will be exegetical value, especially to the ICC volume.

Anchor Yale, in my experience (which is mostly limited to Romans) deal with the text theologically rather than exegetically, and is not that helpful for what it seems you may be aiming at. I've attached a screenshot of a random Romans to help you see what I'm referring to.

Jacob Hantla

If you don't already have it, Rosscup's Commentaries for BIblical Expositors is quite helpful in evaluating potential commentary purchases. https://www.logos.com/product/6259/commentaries-for-biblical-expositors

DA Carson's NT Commentary Survey is also helpful, but not specifically aiming at pastoral/expositional goal: https://www.logos.com/product/151680/new-testament-commentary-survey-7th-ed

Mark Barnes

some of the Hermeneia, Anchor Yale, ICC and Library commentaries are listed as top commentaries - could you please inform me on their usefulness for sermon preparation?

It rather depends on your theological persuasion. As an evangelical I rarely find the Anchor or Hermeneia series useful for preaching, especially in the OT. The ICC commentaries on Acts are pretty good though, and Fitzmeyer on Romans isn't bad.

Clifford B. Kvidahl

- Leviticus, Anchor Yale (got his condensed commentary in Continental Series)

- Luke, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- John, 2 vols, Anchor Yale

- Acts, 2 vols, ICC

- Romans, Anchor Yale

I would say these are worth having. They are excellent in their critical engagement with the text and also quite good on matters of background.

Cliff

Mattillo

some of the Hermeneia, Anchor Yale, ICC and Library commentaries are listed as top commentaries - could you please inform me on their usefulness for sermon preparation?

It rather depends on your theological persuasion. As an evangelical I rarely find the Anchor or Hermeneia series useful for preaching, especially in the OT. The ICC commentaries on Acts are pretty good though, and Fitzmeyer on Romans isn't bad.

Mark

I know this post is old but I was hoping you could expand on your comment on the Hermeneia series. I'm trying to figure out if for an Evangelical the series is worth it as it is quite cheap in Platinum. I already own series like pntc, nac, Tyndale, nicot/nt, nivac, wiersbe and MacArthur. Thank you in advance

Mark Barnes

I know this post is old but I was hoping you could expand on your comment on the Hermeneia series. I'm trying to figure out if for an Evangelical the series is worth it as it is quite cheap in Platinum. I already own series like pntc, nac, Tyndale, nicot/nt, nivac, wiersbe and MacArthur. Thank you in advance

I think it depends on what you're looking for. Some of the Hermenia series can be useful academically (although many of them are dated now), but I've never found them beneficial for preaching. Personally, I would find significantly more value in BECNT, ZECNT, NICNT, NIGTC, and even in WBC than in Hermenia.

That said, Achtemeier's volume on 1 Peter is Carson's "Best Buy" ("with some discretion"!), and he rates Attridge on Hebrews, Betz on Galatians, Lohse on Colossians/Philemon too.

His comments on the series as a whole are:

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 Samuel Sandmel’s famous expression for a mania for adducing doubtful extrabiblical “parallels” that end up domesticating the text instead of letting the text speak for itself) 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 Heb.).

And on the Continental Commentary series:

The Continental Commentary (Fortress) is a series of commentaries on the entire Bible, translated from major liberal scholarly entries originally published in Europe, mostly in German. For example, there are three volumes on Genesis by Claus Westermann, and three on Isaiah by Hans Wildberger. So far, few have appeared on the New Testament. They are noted below. Granted the parameters of the series, some of the choices befuddle expectations, because, for instance, they are astonishingly brief (e.g., see Lührmann on Gal.).

David Staveley

some of the Hermeneia, Anchor Yale, ICC and Library commentaries are listed as top commentaries - could you please inform me on their usefulness for sermon preparation?

It rather depends on your theological persuasion. As an evangelical I rarely find the Anchor or Hermeneia series useful for preaching, especially in the OT. The ICC commentaries on Acts are pretty good though, and Fitzmeyer on Romans isn't bad.

Mark

I know this post is old but I was hoping you could expand on your comment on the Hermeneia series. I'm trying to figure out if for an Evangelical the series is worth it as it is quite cheap in Platinum. I already own series like pntc, nac, Tyndale, nicot/nt, nivac, wiersbe and MacArthur. Thank you in advance

I have all the Hermeneia commentaries and can tell you that they are all Neo-Evangelical: that is, they embrace modern critical study and see value in it, rather than dig their heels in and resist it as if it is an enemy of faith. I have not found any wacky, bonkers theology in any of them.

If you want to see someone exegete a biblical book and do it in dialog with all the important secondary literature you wont find a better series. It's one major weakness, however, is that all of the biblical books are studied in a vacuum - as stand-alone pieces of literature, without any attempt to show how each book relates to the other books of the bible. Thus, there is very little attempt at theology in them. It is entirely an historical-critical pursuit. This leaves the conclusions each scholar makes seem dry, and arid. What they say doesn't always relate to our living faith and theology, and you have to work hard at getting spiritual truth out of them.

EastTN

... Thus, there is very little attempt at theology in them. It is entirely an historical-critical pursuit. ...

I think that's what people are saying when they suggest most Evangelicals won't find these commentaries especially helpful for preaching purposes. For Evangelicals, preaching is an inherently theological pursuit - we're proclaiming the Word of God. The rest is interesting and often useful, but if it doesn't ultimately support the theological enterprise, it's not going to be helpful in our preaching.

Mark Barnes

I have not found any wacky, bonkers theology in any of them.

In fact, you haven't found any theology in them [:)]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with that statement at all. (I agree mostly with your definition of neo-evangelical, but not that these commentaries are neo-evangelical.) If you're trying to say that these commentaries are useful for neo-evangelicals, that's one thing, but these commentaries are not coming from a neo-evangelical stable. Far from it.

The basic perspective of the series is the mid-to-late 20th century European-style of doing biblical studies, with an emphasis on history-of religions and historical-criticism. One of the biggest weaknesses of this approach (in the NT) is an over-reliance on Graeco-Roman 'parallels', usually at the expense of seeing Jewish roots. This takes the series in completely the opposite direction to genuine neo-evangelicals like N. T. Wright.

tomatodew20

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