ChristMyth

Hey, all. Just had a quick question.

I am looking for a good set of commentaries that I might purchase that cover the entire bible one book at a time. I noticed that both HarperCollins and the New Jerome were recommended, but I can't afford a single volume commentary right now and am afraid that, being a single volume, it would not go as in depth as I would like. Does anybody know of a good collection of commentaries that is not too expensive book by book and covers what I'm looking for? Thanks.

ChristMyth

Wallener

Unless you break it into (at least) two books (for Hebrew texts & Christian texts), you are unlikely to get anything but fairly orthodox and very concise christian commentary. An alternate way to start...the Artscroll Stone Edition Chumash

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...ternetinfidels

This covers Torah, the first five books. For an interesting translation with very extensive commentary on the subject matter and the translation, you might try Everett Fox's The Five Books of Moses. This is my very favorite English version, and it just begs to be read aloud.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...ternetinfidels

Dr. Fox has also done a translation of Samuel called Give Us a King!, which I have no yet had the pleasure to read.

Apikorus

For the Hebrew Bible, I very much recommend the Jewish Study Bible published by OUP. The Artscroll chumash (Stone edition) is excellent for what it presents: traditional (Orthodox) commentary on the Torah, but it is obviously quite tendentious (indeed, laughably so, to any secular reader) and even the English translation is sneakily tendentious in isolated cases. The Artscroll Tanakh I would not recommend because it doesn't contain much commentary at all (just a few thin footnotes on each page). Artscroll does publish a more extensive commentary series on individual books of the Tanakh -- I don't think the set is complete -- but that suffers from the same limitations as the Torah commentary. The Jewish Study Bible, on the other hand, is a real scholarly achievement.

Peter Kirby

The Sacra Pagina commentaries are mainstream (not overly conservative), detailed enough (but not greatly so), and relatively inexpensive (under $30 per hardback volume).

The Anchor Bible commentaries and the Hermeneia commentaries are also collected by me.

I have the Word biblical commentaries on CD-ROM from Logos software and hope to get the International Critical Commentary as well. Less than $20 per volume is good (when bought together), as is the storage space saved. Word is definitely conservative, while ICC is mainstream.

There are some less conservative commentaries, but I am not aware of any series that is consistently so. There are few radical commentaries (in such a format).

What books do you want to study first? I can probably recommend some NT commentaries for a given book of the NT.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby
(who just got back from Yosemite)