I Wonder if Commentaries are Changing?

Or, I just haven't noticed.

My new AYB Genesis volume is taking a hard look at the hebrew (not just in-verse exegesis). It's almost its own monograph on linguistic pattern analysis.

My new WBC Acts doesn't even bother with the usual author/dating/background discussion. It launches into a detailed MSS discussion, primerily the 'Western' text patterns. Another almost-monograph.

And my new ICC 1Peter similarly launches into MSS discussions, but this time, inscriptio patterns … another monograph-level discussion.

It's been (repeatedly) mentioned, the need for isolating commentary translations (MJ).

I get the feeling similarly isolating extremely in-depth commentary discussions might be similar. They're quite good, if slow going.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Lew Worthington

I always thought Anchor pretty much let the scholar choose their own method (Dahood and Betz are strong examples, and these are decades old), so that's not entirely surprising. Also, as historical critical methods continue to become tiresome to many, what else can you say about traditional introductory matters? If a scholar supplies a few statements about provenance, etc., just to situate their work and give a setting for the rest of the commentary, it almost seems pointless to do a deep dive into those kinds of things these days. So I think you're right: a shift is happening, but I don't think this is a new phenomenon.