Your Thoughts: IVP Tyndale Comm VS College Press NIV Comm
I want to add a commentary set on the whole Bible to my Library. I'm considering the IVP Tyndale set and the College Press NIV set and would appreciate your thoughts/observations regarding the strengths and weaknesses of these two sets.
I realize commentary sets are developed for many different reasons and serve a variety of purposes and audiences. Hence what's good for one person may be useless for another. I'll just say I'm a layperson with an evangelical/conservative background, who is hoping to make a more informed choice regarding what might work best for me, based on the thoughts and observations of others already familiar with these two commentary sets.
Comments
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RAusdahl said:
thoughts/observations regarding the strengths and weaknesses of these two sets.
My preference is for the Tyndale set. But I'm biased...I've used a paper Tyndale set for twenty-plus years. I think the list of authors for the Tyndale set is significantly higher quality.
I'm not a huge fan of CP, either. If you are a member of the Church of Christ, you may prefer the CP set.
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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RAusdahl said:
I'll just say I'm a layperson with an evangelical/conservative background
Okay, that matches with me.
I own the IVP Tyndale set and just recently gave it some sort of recommendation in another thread. Currently it's on sale and for a whole-bible commentary set the price is very seductive.
It's over 12'000 pages of scholarship and it often ranks high on Bestcommentaries.com even though this site tends to favor the bigger, more technical commentaries (like NIC and WBS). I bought it for the aspect "whole bible", but actually I found that I'm much more of an NT guy and only rarely looked into the OT works. The TNTC features some very renowned scholars, such as Guthrie, Morris, Bruce, Marshall, Stott, Moo, Grudem, NT Wright - the author list reads like a who-is-who of evangelical scholars from the UK and US, many of whom have produced outstanding longer commentaries in other series. If there's one issue with it (this may count as an additional plus for others): as the name "Tyndale" may give away, the commentary may lean more towards the reformed side.
As I said, I can't comment much on the TOTC part of it - the author's names are oblique to me and I didn't find I use it as much as I thought - this will tell more about me than about the commentary set.
I own the College Press NIV NT set also - unfortunately in another software package, which eclipses my usage of it to a great extent (I find I'll rather pick a physical book than open this SW - which is a pity for the resources in it). This commentary comes from the restoration movement (i.e. will more often take a non-calvinist stance) and I must admit that besides Jack Cottrell I hadn't heard any author's name before. Actually I bought it as a kind of antidote to the plethora of reformed-leaning commentaries I own... When I go over to use it, I often like what I read.
Togeter with the College Press NIV OT Set the CPNIV will add up to 13500 pages, but at least in the NT the treatment of exegetical issues and questions seems to be less in-depth. The additional space may come from a slightly less concise, more "preachy" tone of writing (at least that's what I thought to feel when I just sampled a couple of pages).
You will encounter more Greek words in TNTC than in CPNIV, though both don't require understanding Greek. All in all I can't really understand why CPNIV is so much more expensive - it should be the other way round.
One major plus for CPNIV: you may now buy individual resources from Logos, thus my recommendation would be to get Tyndale while it's on sale and buy the occasional volume from CPNIV for your studies.
Hope this helps - if you want, I could post the treatment of a passage you're interested in.
Have joy in the Lord!
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The TNTC and TOTC are a very solid set of commentaries and I recommend them over the College Press series. If you go here you will find that several volumes of the Tyndale set are top rated over other more expensive sets.
http://www.bestcommentaries.com/topseries/
14 of the OT volumes are in the top 3 commentaries.
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I think of both of these series' aas good and resources that I would recommend to someone who desires to teach an adult Bible class.
As in any multi-author series, both sets have "greater" and "lesser" volumes.
If funds are not an issue, I would go for the College Press series. I realize that I am biased because some of the authors were my insturctors. But I think that they give greater detail overall. I realize that there are volumes that are not very good however.
For "bang for the buck" it would be tough to beat the Tyndale series while it is on sale. Generally, I would say that the volumes will give one a good, broad understanding of the Biblical books without much depth. Again, some volumes have more depth than others.
Just my opinion. I hope it helps.
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Well, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion as to the better set of commentaries, and yours will be the opinion that matters. But since you asked, I would be happy to put in my two cents.
I think the IVP Tyndale is one of the best sets of commentaries (especially for the price) that can be purchased.
I have used it for years, and it is superb. For what it is worth, the bestcommentaries.com site names a good number of the Tyndale commentaries as the best or second-best commentaries on their particular books, and that rating includes all available commentaries. I would completely agree with them on that.
The scholarship is top notch.
This is not to put down the College Press NIV, which I also have. It is okay, but it is not up to the Tyndale set, in most opinions.
(Opps, I see John Fidel beat me to pointing to the bestcommentaries.com web pages.)
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
I recently got the Tyndale set and like it. I will point out that if you purchase the L3 CD-Roms then you can get them for considerably less than even the sale price currently on Logos. You could look online at your favorite Christian book website. I chatted with a representative at Logos and asked him to activate in in my account, gave him the serial number, and he did it very quickly.
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
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I'd recommend both commentaries as they are both, in my opinion, not technical commentaries. They're both good for a quick surface reading of the text and as others have stated, some volumes are weak others are strong.
In my opinion some of the stronger volumes of CP are: Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Minor Prophets and Romans. Tyndale I like: Ephesians, Galatians, and Proverbs. In reality both are not that great, the only reason Tyndale gets more reviews it's because it's been around more and it's known more than CP (Plus, people get bias when it comes to church of Christ material) other than that if you really want a good set I'd say go with the EBC older version or new version. Both are in my opinion better than Tyndale and CP.
DAL
By the way, I do agree that CP it's over priced, but I totally disagree that Tyndale should cost more due to the fact that it's too concise with not much meat in it.
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Thanks to all who have responded. In light of Logos' 30 day return policy, I decided to actually purchase both commentaries and give them a look-see. So far, I've been looking at Genesis and Romans--all the prelim/intro/background/author types of material for the books as a whole, then looking more closely at the detail provided for the first couple of chapters in Genesis and also at chapters 8-11 in Romans. My thoughts so far are shared below.
The IVP Tyndale set offers a lot of material for the price and seems well written. I was a little surprised at the authors position in Genesis regarding evolution, and there were a few places in both Genesis and Romans where the coverage seemed a bit on the light side compared to the CP NIV, but still, for the price, range of coverage, and overall quality of the material looked at so far, it does seem like one of the better bargains out there.
The CP NIV set is also very good in regard to the range of material covered, and is well written, but seemed to have more depth of coverage and didn't throw me any surprises in Genesis. But to be fair, the Romans commentary is a two-volume set with almost exactly double the pages of the commentary in the IVP Tyndale set, so I would expect it to have more detail for Romans.
If granted my wish-list, I'd like to have both sets. If allowed to have just one, I'd choose the CP NIV set. But I don't get to have one, I have to buy one, and the CP NIV set is more than three times as expensive as the IVP Tyndale (both on sale). Adding to the price dilemma is that fact that purchasing just the CP NIV set would cost me more than upgrading from my current L5 Starter package to the L5 Silver package, and there are some things in the Silver upgrade that I'd like to have (e.g. The NAC Commentary set and the Calvin Commentary set; Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible; Early Church Fathers.) Other commentary sets that I'm less sure about, but that are included in the Silver upgrade include: Keil and Delitzsch OT (10 vols.), Lange's (63 vols.), Pulpit (77 vols.) There are quite a few other resources in the Silver upgrade that I don't currently have, but I don't know how useful the would be to me.
So it's a bit of a dilemma. I like the IVP Tyndale, but want something with a little more depth. I like the CP NIV and would go with it in a minute if it was in the $350-$400 range, but at $740 ($590 on sale), I can't help but feel a wee-bit taken advantage of. I have a feeling I'm going to wind up going with the upgrade to L5 Silver, hope that overall, I'll be satisfied with the NAC commentary set, and then look at focusing on the purchase of some individual commentaries if I want to beef-up the commentary on select books of the Bible.
Feel free to voice your thoughts. [:)]
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RAusdahl said:
hope that overall, I'll be satisfied with the NAC commentary set, and then look at focusing on the purchase of some individual commentaries
The NAC set is very good.
If you are more particular (like I am) about certain theological viewpoints, then you are right; individual commentaries are a better choice, even if you end up spending more money that way. That's the approach I now use, over buying full sets.
Eating a steady diet of government cheese, and living in a van down by the river.
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