{"id":1025,"date":"2010-04-06T21:59:59","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T02:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2010\/04\/06\/some-observations-on-commentaries\/"},"modified":"2010-04-06T21:59:59","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T02:59:59","slug":"some-observations-on-commentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/06\/some-observations-on-commentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Observations on Commentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote two sermons yesterday and one this afternoon. \u00a0 My hopes to write the fourth (and final) this evening have run aground on 2 Chronicles 32:24ff. \u00a0 I can’t figure it out and the dozen or so commentaries I’ve checked so far aren’t even asking the right question, let alone answering it.<\/p>\n

But I was struck by a few things in tonight’s study. \u00a0 First, Chronicles has really not done well by commentators. \u00a0 Often the two books are covered in a single commentary, which is really unbelievable considering how many chapters are in Chronicles (65). \u00a0 The book is quite the stepchild.<\/p>\n

But that raises, second, another issue. \u00a0 I went to www.bestcommentaries.com<\/a> to see what I might be missing. \u00a0 Along the way I came to the conclusion that another commentary should never be written. \u00a0 That sounds at odds with what I wrote above, but just peruse the list of commentaries written on any given book. \u00a0 Then<\/em>, look at all of the forthcoming commentaries. \u00a0 Truly amazing. \u00a0 I really don’t think another book-length commentary not already in process is necessary. \u00a0 If there’s something new, put it in an article. \u00a0 It’s highly unlikely that you have that much<\/em> new to require a book. \u00a0 What pushes all of this? \u00a0 Obviously publishers make money. \u00a0 And professors get to stuff their resumes. \u00a0 But we don’t need at least half of what’s being produced.<\/p>\n

My third observation concerns Anchor Bible commentaries. \u00a0 This series actually gave a separate volume to 1 and 2 Chronicles. \u00a0 But the type is so big, the margins so wide, and the translation occupies a huge part of the content. \u00a0 You can see something similar in the AB commentary on Matthew, written by Albright and Mann (and purchased by me for 25 cents once in Pennsylvania; I thought I had gotten a real steal!). \u00a0 Chronicles was published in 1965 and Matthew in 1971. \u00a0 Matthew’s 28 chapters gets 350 pages, and they really could fit in less than half of that. \u00a0 By contrast, compare the AB volume on Amos, written by Andersen and Freedman and published in 1989. \u00a0 Within those 18 years, AB changed their style dramatically, and Amos’s nine<\/em> chapters gets nearly 1,000 pages. \u00a0 Sometimes you hear that a series is “uneven”; well, I think that AB is the definition of “uneven.”<\/p>\n

I haven’t done a poll in a while, so here’s one for fun.<\/p>\n