Commentary

Terrence Green

What are the best commentaries or in the library that gives you more detailed information, basically gives you more meat when studying a text?

Mark Smith

Terrence, welcome to the forums.

Commentaries come in many forms. Some are quite technical and more oriented to academic research. Others are less technical but deal directly with the original languages (and are harder to use for those who don't know those languages). Others are scholarly but deal with the English text. Others are what is called expository, giving the author's insights into the text, but perhaps not dealing with individual words or phrases along the way, (think of sermons on the text). Still others are devotional, focusing on making personal application.

Most lay people would find a good deal of help in the Tyndale Commentaries, which are a good balance of insight into the original text (in English) and explanation of the text, while not being overly long. They are on sale right now for an extremely good price.

Another set that is lay-oriented and well-respected is the Expositor's Bible Commentary. Here you have your choice of the original edition or the revised edition. The original edition is on sale at a very good price.

If you give us a bit more information we might be able to give you a better recommendation.

Mark Smith

By the way, if you do not yet have a Logos base package they are currently at 20% off. Logos 8 Silver has the Tyndale commentaries as well as a host of other helpful Bible study content. Logos 8 Gold adds the New American Commentary and some others. (It is often the cheapest to buy resources by purchasing a base product, but of course, you have to be able to afford the larger package).

Wheatpenny

Which commentary is the "best" really depends on a lot of things. Your level of education or expertise, or Theological position, for example. If you're Reformed/Calvinist then "Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible" is unbeatable. There are commentaries based on the original languages (some of which are written so you don'y have to know Greek or Hebrew to use them.  Basically I'd suggest that you look thru the Logos website and read the descriptions of the various commentaries available and try to get an idea of whether you'd like each one or not.

Doc B

Terrence Green said:

What are the best commentaries or in the library that gives you more detailed information, basically gives you more meat when studying a text?

Yes, welcome to the forums!

You'll have to carefully define "meat," and I'm not being facetious.

Mark's answer was pretty solid...before you can even begin to decide which ones (not 'one') are best, you have to decide if you want academic, original-language, expository, etc.