Convince me: Hermeneia/Continental Commentaries

Joseph Turner said:

Ok, so 50% off on this set is a great deal.  What I want to know is, do I really need it?  How good do you feel it is?  I currently own WBC, PNTC, BEC, NIGTC, NAC, Socio-rhetorical, NIVAC NT, and some other odds and ends, and I have the Hermeneia Enoch vol 1 in hard copy which I like because I like to study extra-canonical literature (which is part of the draw of the set for me).  I WANT this set, but do I NEED it?

Discuss...

I read in another thread (didn't take the time to look it up but I remember what it was said) and Mark Barnes wrote something along this line: "If you're going to use it to do a scholarly paper, yes, they are good; but not very useful for sermon preparation." In other words, for a research paper yes use it, but how many research papers will you be writing; then again, if it's just for sermon preparation, then they're not that useful due to them being to "technical."

DAL

PS. you WBC NIGTC and NIVAC along with BEC should do.  If you have NICOT/NICNT even better - those will serve you more when it comes to sermon prep.

MJ. Smith said:

DAL said:

a scholarly paper, yes, they are good; but not very useful for sermon preparation

Some of us are lucky enough to have homilists who don't distinguish between scholarly and pastoral in researching their homilies. I haven't found the money for ICC yet but Hermeneia was an early absoluter requirement - one I'd been introduced to in parish adult ed.

Due to our different "traditions", I don't use the same terminology, such as "homilies"...but I certainly agree that not drawing a distinction between scholarly and pastoral is a positive. If it matters at all--I mean REALLY matters--then it matters for all. Ignorance of the issues at hand leads to ignorant misunderstandings. I can't think of anything that I know about God that I would ever feel comfortable saying others "don't need to know". Granted, I spend more time in study than anyone I know personally, and most of the people I know "have lives" and thus limited time to devote to scriptural matters. But nevertheless, I still feel they need to be up to speed on the stuff that we "hardcore" Logos users encounter in our scripture-mining and textual wrestling.

In my weekly Bible study sessions, we grapple with the Hebrew and Greek constantly. In studies I lead, I bring up whatever issues I think are germane, which usually means everything I can think of that touches on the issue at hand. I don't ever hold back because I worry I might "be over someone's head" or "might bore someone with too much detail". I feel that it would be both arrogant and a dereliction of duty to not share the relevant material I have encountered and uncovered, regardless of how "challenging" or "difficult" it might be.

As a special ed teacher, I had classroom observers over the years tell me on more than one occasion that I was guilty of talking over my students' heads and using vocabulary they wouldn't understand (even though I always rephrased such statements in simpler terms). I had one young man tell me that mine was the class he had to work the hardest in (in truth, it was probably the only one where he had to do any work at all). He also said my class was the only class in which he had an A. The observers, all of them, were wrong.

I also had a boy promise me that he was going to drop out when he turned 16. On his sixteenth birthday, he did just that. When I was filling out his final report card, I saw all of his grades. He had 4 classes: his grades were 23, 7, and 0...and in my class he had a 100. To get that grade, he had to correctly orally identify on blank maps the correct names of every state, province, and country in the western hemisphere (excepting the smaller Caribbean islands). I never once graded on a curve.

Dumbing down the curriculum, whether it is public school, Sunday school, Sabbath school, or what have you, is a disservice to all, whether they appreciate that or not.

It might boil down to a question on whether:

1. You have time? Most of the volumes are quite elaborative. Despite the search functionality You need to read through a lot to come to the valuable conclusion and the points that make difference (regarding for example the critical ones, You know every critical remark doesn't actually make a difference.) This is so because You want to know which commentary is the best and You don't seem to have one preference which commentary set to use. The recommendation says to read through a commentary once (or twice?) from cover to cover before doing a study. That'll also help You understand how the author is thinking, otherwise You might have presumptions of that.
2. You need this as an electronic version? Considering You focus on for example extra-Biblical books the option is to buy only the volumes You want and actually need, as printed matter + the Hermeneia Upgrade (3 vols.). These commentaries (from what I've seen so far) are organized from first chapter to last chapter, from the first verse to the last verse. If You focus on just one or a few verses at a time instead of doing a search throughout, a print copy serves well.

To have a critical commentary there is not much of an option for many of the books. However, these commentaries delve into more than that. As an example I'll mention that the Mt volumes give You the history of interpretation throughout different Churches both protestant and Catholic. The Gn commentary gives You a full investigation in the Documentary Hypothesis. The Documentary Hypothesis in the form it exists has started to be discarded, but these commentaries still hold to it.

Consider also that some important passages in the Bible are not currently included in these sets and that You are probably going to be tempted years from now when upgrades comes - so in due time You'll end up spending more than the (almost) initial $600.

I would recommend You 2 printed books:

• James by Richard Bauckham, in the New Testament Readings -series, 1999. Originally fgh here on Logos User Forums has suggested that Logos digitalizes it. I have this book since a year as an original book; I got it cheap but would have paid more (the price has gone up). It has a lot of references to extra-Biblical litterature and Sirach, not just brief mentionings but actual comparison. However that includes references to the Targums and Rabbinic Literature. There are 12 references to 1 Enoch, and one reference to 4 Esdras that the author forgot to put in the index. It also discusses the views of some 20th century theologians and quite elaborately a Danish Christian philosopher.
• If You haven't read it allready: The Language and Imagery of the Bible, ©G. B. Caird, 1980. If You didn't know, Caird was a specialist in languages, knew all of the GNT by heart, a reformed, participated in the translation team of the 1989 Revised English Bible (his wife did as well), and finally died of a heart-attack in 1984 (if I remember the year correctly) not that old, 60+. I have this book as hard-cover and am reading it through for the second time, and going to read it thrice to mark up corrections and explanations in the Bibles.

I'm looking for an even better commentary of Ignatius of Antioch.

It has been said that the Hermeneia -set has a more even quality than Anchor (or was it AYB, I keep confusing the two). But the same person wished that there would be a contract for new Jn -volumes in Hermeneia by someone else.

For a commentary on 1 Clem, I have a volume from 1937 by W. K. Lowther Clarke. It's good if You can stand that it's written by a Catholic. It includes a full translation.

DAL said:

I read in another thread (didn't take the time to look it up but I remember what it was said) and Mark Barnes wrote something along this line: "If you're going to use it to do a scholarly paper, yes, they are good; but not very useful for sermon preparation." In other words, for a research paper yes use it, but how many research papers will you be writing; then again, if it's just for sermon preparation, then they're not that useful due to them being to "technical."

I really don't buy that argument.  You need to have a solid foundation in the study of the text in order to provide any true "meat" in a homily.  The fact that so many sermons are milktoast is most probably attributable to the fact that the sermonizers aren't digging deeply enough into the text to actually get to the kernel of the passage.  Relying on "homiletical" commentaries make for poor teaching.

Unix said:

Well do You think the authors of homiletical commentaries in their turn relied on homiletical commentaries or technical critical ones? And what should Turner rely on when it comes to Qôheleth? Personally, I use Believer's Church Bible Commentary for it, and considering purchasing the Ep volume also. George Somsel said:

I really don't buy that argument.  You need to have a solid foundation in the study of the text in order to provide any true "meat" in a homily. [...] Relying on "homiletical" commentaries make for poor teaching.

No comment since I'm not familiar with that set.  I think a good many of those who write homiletical commentaries either rely on other homiletical commentaries or simply don't dig into the text sufficiently.  For them it is enough to state something which sounds pious.

No.  You don't need it. Really you don't. 

I was considering picking up this sale, but the alert about the DocHyp tripe has really made me pull up short. It is probably the biggest load of bilge foisted on Bible readers in the last thousand years. In my experience, it is almost impossible to glean anything of value from any work that is using Wellhausen's baby as its fundamental premise.

David Paul said:

I was considering picking up this sale, but the alert about the DocHyp tripe has really made me pull up short. It is probably the biggest load of bilge foisted on Bible readers in the last thousand years. In my experience, it is almost impossible to glean anything of value from any work that is using Wellhausen's baby as its fundamental premise.

Thanks, I needed a good laugh.  When you (as it says regarding the Prodigal Son) "come to yourself", let me know. 

Well, I my source (save the reviews on Amazon) is that I talked to an extensive Gn Continental user who studies at Uni and has compared a lot of commentaries in the faculty library and he was able to confirm that it's all about the Documentary Hypothesis and he said that it's the standard for the DocHypoth, so that's also a likely reason why You have heard it being endorsed.

Joseph Turner said:

I don't believe that a 3 volume commentary on Genesis includes no information other than the DH.

Unix said:

Watch out regarding the 4 Esdras -volume. As You can see from this page: http://www.logos.com/product/7756/hermeneia-new-testament#026
... it's bundled with the NT. So that likely means that the title regards 4 Esdras 1-12 as a Christianizied book. I oppose that view and suspect those who say that to be the same ones who claim that none of the Gospels can have been written prior to A.D 70 due to that Christ predicts the destruction of the Temple.

And I would say that they are correct.

Unix said:

How come I find in the indexes of all of my print commentaries references to 4 Esdras? If the NT cites 4 Esdras, then 4 Esdras is written prior to Jesus ministry in the '30s in the first century.

Non sequitur.  You're trying to compare the time of Jesus' life with 4 Esdras rather than with the writing of the gospels.

Unix said:

Where do You suggest 4 Esdras was written? Far away?

Long ago and in a galaxy far away. 

Seriously though, that isn't able to be conclusively determined.

Unix said:

Well if it was written in the area of Jesus's ministry in AD '30s first century then why are You saying that the book is dependant on the NT Gospels?

George Somsel said:

Seriously though, that isn't able to be conclusively determined.

Read again.  That's not what I said.

I agree with MJ on Herm being a more evenly presented commentary (vs AYB). I have both now, and there is nothing like an AYB volume jumping into the discussion with one of the most outlandish (and interesting) proposals. Herm, by contrast, does have a somewhat liberal perspective, but tries to keep inside the bounds of 'respectability'. Or from a practical matter, can more easily be discussed at church (!).

I'm just talking humorously but the Barth volume (AYB) absolutely can not be read for more than maybe 3-4 paragraphs at a time without completely stopping and wondering just how he got to be the progeny of his father!