Craig Keener's Galatians Introduction

I don't usually read commentaries from beginning to end, but it could happen with Craig Keener's new Galatians commentary. Here are thoughts on the introduction.

Introduction
I really liked his introduction and found myself in agreement with almost everything. Here are some notes:

• "Ancient authors did not always follow hierarchical outlines" (xlvii). I actually think Galatians has a pretty clear outline, but I take his point.
• Some argue that Galatians was more about "staying in" than "getting in." Not sure I agree with that.
• "Paul envisions gentile believers as spiritual proselytes." but not physical ones. Yes
• "Most scholars in Luther's day thought that Galatians abridged Paul's earlier argument in Romans, whereas most scholars today deem Romans the later, more mature work." (4) Interesting. I did not know this and the contrary seems so obvious today.
• Themes in Galatians: gospel, law, promise, Spirit. (6)
• A common median for the dating of Galatians is 51. (7) So Keener also dates it to about 50-52 (13, perhaps from Corinth then?). 
• He dates it to after the Jerusalem Council because he thinks the similarities between Galatians 2 and Acts 15 are too many for them to be different events. I agree in general. (e.g., 11)
• However, he fairly treats the theory that Galatians 2 relates to the famine trip of Acts 11. I agree with him and others like Lightfoot that the timing would be too scrunched for that.
• I personally prefer a date while Paul was at Ephesus, around the time of 1 Corinthians, ca. 54ish.
• Paul's audience is Gentile. His opponents probably Jewish. Keener favors a group of people connected with Jerusalem. (e.g., 25-26)
• He favors south Galatia. I came to agree between the first and second editions of my New Testament Survey book. Older commentators thought it was north Galatia because they only knew the classical references and early Christian commentators weren't aware of the Roman boundaries of a previous day. A large majority agree today. What clinched it for me was the common sense that Acts talks a lot about south Galatia.
• Interesting that Galatians would have filled up about half a standard papyrus roll. Two copies would have cost about 6.56 denarii or today $722.

My New Hebrews Devotional/Commentary Is Out!

I was grateful to be asked to write the Seedbed "OneBook" volume on Hebrews. It has just been published and can be purchased at Seedbed.com. It is the only devotional and commentary I have published on Hebrews.

Here is an excerpt from the book and one of the videos I did for the project. It is obviously designed for Bible studies.

So if you are wanting to lead a Bible study on Hebrews, this is a good option.

P.S. Can you tell from the video that I got up very early in the morning to drive to Wilmore to do the recording? :-)

Blessed with Craig Keener's volumes on Acts!

I'm trying to get my head around the magnitude of even the first two volumes of Craig Keener's commentary series on Acts with Baker Academic. I'm jealous that Asbury has biblical scholars of such exhaustive and profound knowledge! The third volume (and he will not have finished Acts yet even with that), is currently scheduled to come out in October.

I tell you the truth, thus far I had not found a resting place, a base camp commentary for the book of Acts. This will now be the first one I pick up. I have added it to my astore of resources. I am just completely dumbfounded at the immensity of his work here!

Thanks to Craig and Baker Academic for the copies! I inaugurated them this morning with Acts 13:2 and the connotation of leitourgeo. He has four pages with copious footnotes on just this one verse! He's almost at 2200 pages at the end of Volume 2. Each volume even comes with a CD-ROM with copious sources and indices.

I think I'm going to go work in a factory in Mother Russia.

Schenck's Commentary Faves 2

Colossians Recommendation

It's been over two years since I made a commentary recommendation.  For Wesleyans, I've recommended the NIV Application Commentary series if you are going with a series.  But ideally, you would buy commentaries a la carte, one by one.

Anyway, I'm willing to recommend Joel Green's 1997 commentary on Luke as my first choice for Luke, if you want to buy just one Luke commentary.



I'm also willing to recommend Robert Jewett's 2007 Romans commentary as the best one commentary to buy on Romans (although it will put you out a pretty penny).



See you in two years with more... :-)

Commentary Series Recommendation for Pastors

This is a recommendation for evangelical pastors.  I'm often asked about what commentary series to buy by Wesleyan pastors and seminary students.  The usual scholarly answer is less than helpful, even if it is accurate.  You'll hear things like, "You really should buy commentaries based on the author and specific commentary rather than by the series."

Certainly that's true.  The authors in a series are not all the same.  Some are better than others.  Some are better at one book than another.  But how do you know which to pick?  Certainly David Bauer's Annotated Guide is good.

Another thing scholars will do is recommend a series out of the reach of most pastors.  For example, the Word series is excellent.  The Hermeneia is probably the most scholarly of all.  But these commentaries are not the most helpful to the typical pastor who may not know the original languages or not know them well.  Also, these commentaries are not oriented around application but around the original meaning.

So for the typical evangelical pastor, I have generally settled on recommending the NIV Application Commentary series for the following reasons:

1. It does not require knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.
2. It addresses the kinds of questions that evangelicals ask and answers them from an evangelical perspective.
3. It does a fair job of making you aware of the kinds of background information you could not really get from the text itself.
4. It is accessible.  The format is friendly to the "get it quick" user.
5. It is hermeneutically aware.  Sections have clear distinctions between interpretation and application.

The main drawback for Wesleyans is that there are no authors from the Wesleyan tradition in this entire series.  This is our situation in general.  The Wesleyan tradition neither has the publishing power of other traditions nor general interest in publishing/buying these sorts of books. That means the most you will get at best is a broadly Arminian perspective from the NIV Application series.  For some that's a strength; for Wesleyans, it means opportunities are missed.  I hope to look at the new Nazarene series some time soon to see if it fills in some of these gaps.

The same goes for instances where evangelicalism is out of sync with majority scholarship.  For example, Moo's IVP Application Commentary on 2 Peter/Jude tries to argue that Jude is dependent on 2 Peter.  This is an attempt based purely on ideological rather than exegetical concerns.  But you could argue that it is exactly this sort of interpretive perspective evangelical pastors are looking for, so that could be a strength rather than a weakness.

Schenck's Commentary Faves 1

Now that I find myself the Bible professor (at least for the moment) at a new seminary that is mostly online, the question of what commentaries to use surfaces repeatedly.  Online students can get any books they need in a day or two through Off Campus Library Services (which are excellent here at IWU).  But many would like to know what commentaries to buy on Logos or in hard copy.

Bible teachers almost always stumble at this point.  If you're Ben Witherington, you've written a commentary on everything and can just recommend your books.  I used to recommend they buy David Bauer's Annotated Guide to Biblical Resources for Ministry, since he catalogs everything and gives good advice.  But I've heard Hendrickson won't let him revise it since they think everything's going online with such things.  As much as I'd like to stick it up their nose, they're probably right.

So I was working in Colossians this morning and thought to myself, "Yes, Dunn's Colossians commentary is the one.  Forget all the other mamby pambies and go buy his."  Scholars will always say, buy by the author more than the series and even then the same author is usually better at some things than others.  But who has the money for that?!  If you want to be more scholarly, I suppose go with the Word Biblical Commentary.  If you want it more for preaching, go with the NIV Application series (realizing it does lean Calvinist at points).

So here's the first of what might turn out to be eventually a list of "Schenck's Faves." 

Colossians and Philemon
James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).   

People sometimes think I'd be able to tell you right off which one I'd pick for Romans and Hebrews, but alas, I can't decide yet.  Ask me to write them and I'll tell you :-)

The online biblical commentary to come...

You've heard it all before--why do we need all these commentaries? It's the same question people in the pew ask about Bible translations, why do we need all these versions? New commentaries survive only because of niche markets and the playing out of new hermeneutics.

What's worse, they get longer and longer and longer. So now we can't cover 2 Corinthians in one commentary. We have to have two or even three!

I can see what is coming. Someone will create an online commentary resource with endless layers. If you want to dig deep, you click. But the surface is big picture and majority position oriented. Since the resource will be owned by some arbitrator--a university or the Society of Biblical Literature, individual writers will not get the final say on some position taken. The resource will record and map all the positions.

Of course someone could create a Wiki for this. That would be better than nothing. Maybe a person would have to have a bona fide masters degree in some area of biblical studies to post. But then you would effectively eliminate most biblical scholars, who undoubtedly won't be doing any blogging or wiki-ing any time soon, let alone Facebook :-)

How 'bout it, guild. A publisher could of course do it, but most of them have partisan leanings too and dark popes controlling what gets published. And besides, as I think someone somewhere will post Monday, publishers are at an end.