Types of commentaries
What is the best way to categorize your commentaries? How do you know which one is more expositional, exegetical, homiletical, or devotional. I am not very familiar with my commentaries so it is not easy for me to categorize them.
Comments
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Blair Laird said:
How do you know which one is more expositional, exegetical, homiletical, or devotional.
perhaps this site: http://www.bestcommentaries.com/category/genesis/
It has them categorized using this legend
i would guess that Technical = Expositional, Exegetical; Pastoral = homiletical??; Devotional
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You have two basic options: tags, or collections. I chose collections, and they're listed below. To tag, you'd sort your library by series, then put type:commentary in the filter, then create your collections from tags.
Ideally, you should really get to know your commentaries and come to your own conclusions. You'll need a feel for quality as much as categories.
(There's an updated version of these rules now available.)
Commentaries, Technical
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 312
- Rule: type:bible-commentary AND(series:("New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament", "New International Greek Testament Commentary", "Eerdmans Critical", "Anchor Yale Bible", Hermeneia, JPS, Pillar, "socio-rhetorical", "word biblical", "Baker Exegetical", "Continental Commentary") OR (series:"international critical" AND pubdate:>1970))
- Manually Included Items: none
- Manually Excluded Items: none
Commentaries, Historical
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 175
- Rule: type:bible-commentary AND (series:(“Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud”, “ancient christian commentary”, “Classic Commentaries on the Greek New Testament”, “Early Church Fathers”) OR (series:”international critical” AND pubdate:<=1970) OR author:(“hodge, charles”, “Luther, Martin”, “darby, John Nelson”, “Spurgeon, Charles”) OR pubdate:<1939)
- Manually Included Items: Several ‘one-off’ commentaries
- Manually Excluded Items: none
Commentaries, Intermediate
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 470
- Rule: type:bible-commentary AND (series:(“zondervan illustrated bible backgrounds”, “expositor’s bible commentary”, “niv application commentary”, “Ariel’s”, “baker new testament”, “bible speaks today”, “black’s new testament”, “book of Isaiah (Young)”, “Calvin’s Commentary”, Ellicott, “Charles Hodge”, “Hebrews (Owen)”, “Holman New Testament”, “International Theological”, “IVP New Testament”, Lange, Lenski, “New American”, Barnhouse, “United Bible Societies’ Handbooks”, “Tyndale Commentaries”, “New International Biblical Commentary”, “Cornerstone”) OR mytag:intermediate OR author:”Calvin, John”)
- Manually Included Items: none
- Manually Excluded Items: none
Commentaries, Expository
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 378
- Rule: type:bible-commentary AND (series:("opening up", exposit, believer, "daily study", horae, "MacArthur New Testament", preach, pulpit, Wiersbe, "college press NIV") OR author:("Pink, Arthur", "lloyd-jones") OR title:exposition*)
- Manually Included Items: none
- Manually Excluded Items: none
Commentaries, One Volume
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 17
- Rule: type:commentary AND subject:”Bible—Commentaries” ANDNOT subject:”Bible—Commentaries—Collected works”
- Manually Included Items: Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
- Manually Excluded Items: none
Commentaries, Unclassified
- Library Size: 4,032
- Collection Size: 227
- Rule: type:bible-commentary
- Manually Included Items: none
- Manually Excluded Items: {Academic Commentaries}, {Intermediate Commentaries}, {Expository Commentaries}, {One Volume Commentaries}
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!
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i like a little of both of the above. (I like "special study" and technical and pastoral/expository, along with some of the other designations Mark has--one volume.
Mark do some of your commentaries overlap? I find certain series might be a little technical and a little expository. I might want them in both. Wonder what your experience was.
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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steve clark said:Blair Laird said:
How do you know which one is more expositional, exegetical, homiletical, or devotional.
perhaps this site: http://www.bestcommentaries.com/category/genesis/
It has them categorized using this legend
i would guess that Technical = Expositional, Exegetical; Pastoral = homiletical??; Devotional
For some reason when I go to the new testament page nothing show's up http://www.bestcommentaries.com/category/new-testament-commentaries/
Maybe I am doing it wrong?
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Dan DeVilder said:
Mark do some of your commentaries overlap? I find certain series might be a little technical and a little expository. I might want them in both. Wonder what your experience was.
I prefer them not to overlap, so I try and make a decision one way or the other. Currently the only one I do let overlap series is the Expositor's Commentary, and that's due to to the mixed nature of that series, and the fact that I don't currently know the individual volumes well enough to place them exactly.
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!
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Blair Laird said:
For some reason when I go to the new testament page nothing show's up http://www.bestcommentaries.com/category/new-testament-commentaries/
Maybe I am doing it wrong?
Think that you need to click on each NT book (one at a time), clicking on the tab NT Books doesn't go anywhere.
EDIT: i also was looking for Logos page on commentary set review, it used to be on the old product page, but i can't locate it now on the new site. It was similar to the site above in that it had markings relative to type of commentary, but was for whole sets. Perhaps someone else knows how to find it on the new Logos.com site.
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I made a separate collection for language commentaries. It includes the Handbook series, The New International Greek Testament series, Word Pictures in the N.T., Word Studies in the N.T. and Wuest's Word Studies in the Greek N.T.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
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What would you consider beets commentaries
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steve clark said:Blair Laird said:
For some reason when I go to the new testament page nothing show's up http://www.bestcommentaries.com/category/new-testament-commentaries/
Maybe I am doing it wrong?
Think that you need to click on each NT book (one at a time), clicking on the tab NT Books doesn't go anywhere.
EDIT: i also was looking for Logos page on commentary set review, it used to be on the old product page, but i can't locate it now on the new site. It was similar to the site above in that it had markings relative to type of commentary, but was for whole sets. Perhaps someone else knows how to find it on the new Logos.com site.
Thanks, I figured I was doing something wrong.. I noticed NICNT was in the pastoral section. I am debating if I should tag it as exegetical or expositional.
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Here is the Logos suggested commentary collections pdf in Microsoft Word.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
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Thanks Jerry! That sure helped a lot. I had organized my commentaries following the recommendation given by Morris Proctor on his "Inductive Bible Study with Logos 4" manual. It's kind of similar, but I managed to re-arrange them a little bit.
Ok now, Can anybody tell me a little bit about Hermeneia. I'm thinking about getting them before the sale price expires. So any feed back as to how technical they are would be helpful.
To make it easy: Would Hermeneia help me with sermon prep.? Or would it be too technical to preach from them? I know that perhaps for Bible studies they can lend themselves for discussion, but wouldn't the members get overwhelmed because of the too technical nature of the series?
Anyway, thanks in advance for your feedback!
Blessings!
Douglas
Ps. By the way, congrats Mark! I read the thread about your milestone. You're a busy man! Thanks for your helpful videos.
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Douglas Alvarenga said:
Thanks Jerry! That sure helped a lot
Your welcome, it helped me too. Hermeneia was discussed earlier today in this thread.
Hermeneia is newly available for download, and on sale for 50% off!! - Logos Bible Software Forums
I don't have it so I can't comment.
"For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power"
Wiki Table of Contents0 -
I ended up breaking up my commentaries in 3 categories / Application, Expositional, and Exegetical. Each commentary category is set up for a different day of the week starting on my 3 day
Day 1 Read the bible book (if possible) in 3 translation theories
Day 2 Read my chapter again Run my cross references, parallel passages, historical research, outlines etc..
Day 3 Read my chapter in another translation theory, look at expositional commentaries
Day 4 Read my chapter in another translation theory, look at application commentaries, systematic theologies, topics, illustrations
Day 5 Read my chapter in another translation theory, look at exegetical commentaries, word studies etc..
Day 6 Read chapter in favorite translation, final prep...
That's what I was able to pull together. Thanks... doing it this way I am able to use all my resources, and not get overwhelmed
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Thanks Jerry,
I read the comments Mark and others left. Not being too technical myself, I may just wait and save money to purchase some of the more practical sets. I don't plan to get on a debate with any scholar. I'd rather try to be scholarly in my studies and not be a scholar if you know what I mean. Thanks!
By the way, here's Mark's quote that made me change my mind about getting a technical commentary:
Mark Barnes wrote: "Personally I find it useful for academic work, but with one or two exceptions only, not really useful for preaching (because it tends to answer questions I'm not really asking in sermon preparation)."
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Blair Laird said:
Day 5 Read my chapter in another translation theory, look at exegetical commentaries, word studies etc..
i like that you are systematizing your study. That will be helpful. I am interested in why you have exegetical and word studies after expositional and systematic studies. Is this a method your were prescribed, or do you see a particular advantage? In my own study, exegetical questions and word studies come pretty near after I have read the text several times (and in a few translations). I find they flow naturally out of it.
I like Apples. Especially Honeycrisp.
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Dan DeVilder said:Blair Laird said:
Day 5 Read my chapter in another translation theory, look at exegetical commentaries, word studies etc..
i like that you are systematizing your study. That will be helpful. I am interested in why you have exegetical and word studies after expositional and systematic studies. Is this a method your were prescribed, or do you see a particular advantage? In my own study, exegetical questions and word studies come pretty near after I have read the text several times (and in a few translations). I find they flow naturally out of it.
No, there is no particular reason at all. I am still trying to work out the best way to set it up. So your observations would be greatly appreciated.. After I posted this I actually set it up
Day 3 application Application's tend not to get to deep but stay on the surface of the text looking at the various topic, which falls inline with the outline I end up doing in day 2. Day 2 I end up outlining the book so to confirm some of those topics in day three was helpful. Also on day 3 I look at the historical people, and things of the text. For the first 3 day's I am basically on the surface of the text.
Day 4 expositional On day 4 I start looking at the implications of the verses, and that ties in with my expositional commentaries, which is a step up from Application.
Day 5 exegetical Then finally on day 5 I really dig into the text looking at the hebrew and greek, and confirm those finding with my exegetical commentaries
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