Tip: Categorize your commentaries

Mark Barnes
Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum

Many users categorize their commentaries for ease of use, but if you're not familiar with your commentaries it can sometimes be difficult to know which categories to use. I keep a list on my Logos Tutorial site, but I thought some people might find it more easily if it was here. (If you're not sure why this might be useful, my tutorial video on the Library explains, starting at around 14:20).

(If you find this post in a few months time there'll always be an up-to-date version of this list at http://www.logos4training.com/documents/suggested-commentary-tags/ which should include most if not all new releases.)

Of course, I realise that everyone will have slightly different opinions as to what categories should be used, and which commentaries go in each category - but this is only a guide. If you disagree, that's fine!

 

Technical Commentaries

Typically, technical commentaries will be detailed, fairly academic,
and emphasise aspects of language and grammar (often using
untransliterated Greek and Hebrew). They’ll frequently discuss several
possible interpretations of a passage, weighing the different views.
They’ll concentrate almost exclusively on what the text would have meant
to the original readers, and won’t be concerned about contemporary
application.

Intermediate Commentaries

Typically, intermediate commentaries will discuss the meaning of the
Bible text, in a serious but not overly-academic way. They’re likely to
transliterate Greek and Hebrew. They may acknowledge different
interpretations of a passage, but probably only in footnotes. They’ll be
some application for the contemporary church, but that’s unlikely to be
a main emphasis.

Expository Commentaries

Typically, expository commentaries will discuss the meaning of the
Bible text at a fairly simple level. They’ll be simple to read, with
plenty of application and illustrations — a bit like a printed sermon.
They’ll be hardly any footnotes, and hardly any Greek and Hebrew.

Historical Commentaries

Historical Commentaries in my collection are commentaries that are
Medieval or older. Normally they’ll have been written by the men we now
call the Church Fathers.

Background Commentaries

Background Commentaries don’t commentate on the overall meaning of a
passage, but provide insights from the historical and cultural
background wherever that’s appropriate.

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!

Comments

  • Justin Cofer
    Justin Cofer Member Posts: 222 ✭✭

    Mark Barnes said:

    Many users categorize their commentaries for ease of use, but if you're not familiar with your commentaries it can sometimes be difficult to know which categories to use. I keep a list on my Logos Tutorial site, but I thought some people might find it more easily if it was here. (If you're not sure why this might be useful, my tutorial video on the Library explains, starting at around 14:20).

    (If you find this post in a few months time there'll always be an up-to-date version of this list at http://www.logos4training.com/documents/suggested-commentary-tags/ which should include most if not all new releases.)

    Of course, I realise that everyone will have slightly different opinions as to what categories should be used, and which commentaries go in each category - but this is only a guide. If you disagree, that's fine!

    Technical Commentaries

    Typically, technical commentaries will be detailed, fairly academic,
    and emphasise aspects of language and grammar (often using
    untransliterated Greek and Hebrew). They’ll frequently discuss several
    possible interpretations of a passage, weighing the different views.
    They’ll concentrate almost exclusively on what the text would have meant
    to the original readers, and won’t be concerned about contemporary
    application.

    • Anchor Yale Bible
    • Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
    • Charles Ellicott Commentary
    • Classic Commentaries on the Greek New Testament
    • Continental Commentary
    • Eerdmans Critical Commentary
    • Evangelical Exegetical Commentary
    • Exegetical Summaries
    • The Expositor’s Greek Testament
    • Forms of the Old Testament Literature
    • Hermeneia
    • International Critical Commentary
    • JPS Tanakh Commentary
    • Lange’s Commentary
    • Letters and Homilies
    • Mentor Old Testament Commentary
    • New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament
    • New International Greek Testament Commentary
    • Socio-Rhetorical Commentary Series
    • Word Biblical Commentary
    • Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
    • Individual volumes
      • The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Brown)
      • The Book of Isaiah (Young)
      • Commentary on the Apocrypha of the Old Testament (Charles)
      • The Epistle to the Ephesians: A Commentary (Schnackenburg)
      • Genesis: A commentary (Waltke)
      • The Prophecy of Isaiah (Motyer)

    Intermediate Commentaries

    Typically, intermediate commentaries will discuss the meaning of the
    Bible text, in a serious but not overly-academic way. They’re likely to
    transliterate Greek and Hebrew. They may acknowledge different
    interpretations of a passage, but probably only in footnotes. They’ll be
    some application for the contemporary church, but that’s unlikely to be
    a main emphasis.

    • Ariel’s Bible Commentary
    • Baker New Testament Commentary
    • Believers’ Church Bible Commentary
    • Bible Lessons International
    • The Bible Speaks Today
    • Black’s New Testament Commentary
    • Calvin’s Commentary
    • Charles Hodge Commentary
    • College Press NIV Commentary
    • Cornerstone Biblical Commentary
    • An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Owen)
    • Expositor’s Bible Commentary
    • Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Abridged Edition
    • Focus on the Bible Commentary
    • Godet Commentary Collection
    • International Theological Commentary
    • Interpretation Commentary
    • IVP New Testament Commentary
    • Lenski’s Commentary on the New Testament
    • Luther’s Works
    • New American Commentary
    • New International Biblical Commentary
    • NIV Application Commentary
    • Old Testament Survey Series
    • Preacher’s Commentary
    • Pulpit Commentary
    • Reading the New Testament
    • Roy Gingrich’s Commentaries in Outline Form
    • Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary
    • Sheffield Bible Guides
    • Social Science Commentaries
    • Standard Reference Library Through-the-Bible Commentary
    • The Two Horizons Commentary Series
    • Tyndale Commentaries
    • United Bible Societies’ Handbooks
    • Weslyan Bible Commentary
    • Individual volumes
      • Basics for Believers: An Exposition of Philippians (Carson)
      • Bible History: Old Testament (Edersheim)
      • Commentary on the Old Testament (Keil & Delitzsch)
      • Commentary on Romans (Haldane)
      • Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey (Moo)
      • The Epistle to the Romans (Moule)
      • Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels (Strauss)
      • The Life of Christ: A Study Guide to the Gospel Record (Mills)
      • Luther’s Commentary On Galatians (Luther)
      • Message of the Prophets: A Survey of the Prophetic and Apocalyptic Books of the Old Testament (Hays)
      • The Psalms: A Historical and Spiritual Commentary with an Introduction and Translation (Eaton)
      • Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 (Carson)
      • The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Schnittjer)
      • Wuest’s Word Studies in the Greek New Testament (Wuest)

    Expository Commentaries

    Typically, expository commentaries will discuss the meaning of the
    Bible text at a fairly simple level. They’ll be simple to read, with
    plenty of application and illustrations — a bit like a printed sermon.
    They’ll be hardly any footnotes, and hardly any Greek and Hebrew.

    • Africa Bible Commentary Series
    • Barnes’ Notes on the Old and New Testaments
    • Boice’s Expositional Commentary
    • Daily Study Bible Series
    • Everyman’s Bible Commentary
    • An Exposition of Ephesians (Lloyd-Jones)
    • Focus on the Bible Commentary
    • Following God Workbooks
    • For Everyone Bible Study Guides
    • High Definition Commentary Series
    • Holman New Testament Commentary
    • Horae Homileticae
    • J. C. Ryle Collection
    • The Lectionary Commentary
    • Life Application Commentary
    • MacArthur New Testament Commentary
    • Opening Up Commentary
    • Preaching the Word
    • Romans: Donald Grey Barnhouse
    • Studies in the Book of Acts
    • Summarized Bible
    • Swindoll’s New Testament Insights
    • Synopsis of the Books of the Bible
    • Teach the Bible
    • Treasury of David
    • Welwyn Commentary Series
    • Wiersbe’s “Be” Series
    • Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines
    • Works of H.A. Ironside
    • Individual volumes
      • Each of the commentaries from the A. W. Pink Collection
      • Expositions of Holy Scripture (MacLaren)
      • Open Door on John (McFadyen)
      • Open Door on Mark (McFadyen)

    Historical Commentaries

    Historical Commentaries in my collection are commentaries that are
    Medieval or older. Normally they’ll have been written by the men we now
    call the Church Fathers.

    • Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture
    • Catena Aurea
    • A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica
    • Early Church Fathers

    Background Commentaries

    Background Commentaries don’t commentate on the overall meaning of a
    passage, but provide insights from the historical and cultural
    background wherever that’s appropriate.

    • IVP Bible Background Commentary
    • Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary
    • Individual Volumes
      • The New Manners and Customs of the Bible

    Great list!  You might want to add the Pillar set though.  Thanks for your hard work!

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303065#Comment_303065

    Justin Cofer said:

    Great list!  You might want to add the Pillar set though.  Thanks for your hard work!

    Whoops - I don't know how I managed to leave that off. It's a great set. I've added it under technical.

    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!

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,108
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303076#Comment_303076

    Very useful.But did you mean to omit Brown's Death of the Messiah? I was also a little surprised at the omission of the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament. But it covers all but around 80 of the items tagged as Bible commentaries by Logos. [Y][:)]

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303157#Comment_303157

    MJ. Smith said:

    Very useful.But did you mean to omit Brown's Death of the Messiah? I was also a little surprised at the omission of the Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament. But it covers all but around 80 of the items tagged as Bible commentaries by Logos. YesSmile

    Thanks for this. Brown was simply an oversight, having forgotten that his two volumes have different names! Augsburg I don't know - and the first draft of this list only included commentaries I owned. Finding sets I didn't own is more difficult than it should be. But there are page samples on logos.com so I've added it now under intermediate.

    However, I've lost my edit rights so the updated list is only available on http://www.logos4training.com/documents/suggested-commentary-tags/

    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!

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 16,252
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303264#Comment_303264

    Mark,

    thank you for this. Would you mind sharing your collection rules? I copied the rules from http://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections (Academic, Intermediate, Historic, Expository) sometime ago but found I was not so happy with the categorization.

    A nice thing is the "Unclassified" collection which reminds that there are resources to be put into the other collections.

    Mick 

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,108
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303265#Comment_303265

    Thanks. If it's any help here are the books I own that M.P. has classified that are not in your lists.

    image

    image

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,194 ✭✭✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303267#Comment_303267

    Here is Morris Proctor's classification scheme (doesn't have some of the more recently released commentary sets). It used to be available on his website, but I haven't been able to find it there since the site was reorganized. Fortunately, I had downloaded it before then.

    6443.Commentary Collections.doc

  • Mark Barnes
    Mark Barnes Member Posts: 15,432 ✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303265#Comment_303265

    NewbieMick said:

    thank you for this. Would you mind sharing your collection rules? I copied the rules from http://wiki.logos.com/Example_Collections (Academic, Intermediate, Historic, Expository) sometime ago but found I was not so happy with the categorization.

    I simply tag now and create the collections from the tags. I used to use the complicated collection rules (in fact, I think I wrote most of them!) but tagging is so much simpler. If you filter your library to just show commentaries then sort by series, you can get everything tagged pretty rapidly.

    NewbieMick said:

    A nice thing is the "Unclassified" collection which reminds that there are resources to be put into the other collections.

    Absolutely.

    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!

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,108
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/303269#Comment_303269

    Rosie Perera said:

    . It used to be available on his website

    It's in the alumni section so I wasn't sure that it was publicly available. Thanks for the Logos link.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

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