frostymama

Is there any particular reason why these are the best commentaries?

Just to let you know where I am coming from:

My extent of study is that when I was living at home I pretty much wore out a a Bible dictionary (Smith's?), a big dusty Strong's KJV concordance, a Greek/English NT Lexicon, and several different versions of the Bible. I don't really have much experience with commentaries because they were discouraged. I'm pretty sure we had something by Scofeild?, but I wasn't allowed to read it.

I know the Bible very well, and know a bit on the different branches protestant theology. I've also read most of the Christian "classics". That's about it.

Peter Kirby

They are all one-volume commentaries, which is nice for anyone who can't afford to pay thousands of dollars building a library of high quality and very detailed commentaries on the individual books. It also means that less shelf space is used up. And you get automatic "commentary coverage" for those books that you might otherwise not have been interested in getting detail on.

These commentaries follow the rules of academia concerning religious studies: e.g., there is no assumption made by the authors that the texts of the Bible are inerrant. And the individual claims made in the one-volume commentaries typically "checked out" with further study.

Finally, the names of the editors and the names of the individual contributors are immediately recognizable as being reputable scholars to me and to others who spend lots of time reading this kind of stuff.

HTH,
Peter Kirby

Celsus

Hi frostymama,

For the Old Testament, you may like to pick up Boadt's Reading the Old Testament (also in the reading list), although it's a bit dated. It's very easy to read, and a great introduction to OT scholarship. Its only problem is the lack of minimalist and literary-critical views, but these are also quite complicated issues in themselves (i.e., it may be better to get a grasp of the basics first). Somewhat more dated, slightly less readable, but completely free, is Gerald LaRue's 1968 work, Old Testament Life and Literature, hosted here at II. Be careful that a lot of what he writes is no longer taken for granted any longer.

Joel

Edited to add: Much of Biblical scholarship is quite conservative, and there are distinctive "schools" of thought in which the "majority" in that school will agree. For example, "most experts" would agree that David was a historical person, and somewhat similar to the Biblical portrait (e.g., ruled over a united monarchy called "Israel" in which tribes came together to form a nation), but most of these "experts" would also be quite conservative. On the other hand, among minimalists (who are, admittedly, in the minority), "most experts" would agree that David and Solomon were complete myths in which nothing about the historical characters behind the Biblical portraits can be known. I quite dislike documentaries that portray consensus where there is none (i.e. most Biblical documentaries).

spin

This is a field in which you can't trust anyone. This may be called paranoia, but most scholars in the field are, notwithstanding their personal integrity, unable to do certain things, things that you might need done. The reason for this inability is prior commitment to the belief in much of the material they are studying. Certain questions just won't be asked, let alone taken seriously.

Website, no.

Do you really want mainstream theories in religious studies? Do you mean mainstream academic theories or commonly accepted mainstream theories? (Example, the latter mainstream sees Daniel to be a book prophesizing about the coming of the messiah, while the former mainstream understands it as dealing with a historical context involving the Jewish attempt to break away from the Seleucid empire and the lead-up to it.)

Books, you'll find both mainstreams. I think a few of our xian brethren could help you with either.

For a non-mainstream view of the religion before the end of the second temple, read T.L. Thompson, The Mythic Past. The book isn't footnoted, but if that connects, you could try most of the books that he mentions worth reading. His academic work is very heavily footnoted and very exhaustive, and he is considered by the mainstream to be a minimalist, but MP is a good general overview.

If you want to get anywhere in the field, you'll have to learn to do it for yourself. You wan't get help from the mainstream. I don't think it can help you as is. But you can learn what is necessary to pick and choose. I don't think this is a field in which you can depend on anyone.


spin

Yuri Kuchinsky

Happy Holidays, everybody!

Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD) is perhaps the closest to what "the current consensus" is on anything among the academic-oriented biblical scholars. If it's not in ABD, then it's not the consensus. A very worthwhile resource, and it usually gives plenty of references for further study.

All the best,

Yuri.

Doctor X

Well you do have Koester stating that these questions should not be asked in his two volume introduction to the NT. Methinks the conservative scholars find the answers potentially "too dark altogether."

--J.D.

Toto

All the discussion of Giordano Bruno has been split to this thread:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=71987