A Curator’s Guide — An Exploration into Matthew and Mark

On By Daniel B. WallaceIn Contemporary Issues, Exegesis, New Testament Studies7 Comments

img_9080Across the next few weeks, I will be publishing a series of blog posts celebrating the work of Robert M. Bowman, Jr. in creating helpful bibliographies on books of the Bible. Bowman is a very careful and well-researched theologian, exegete, and author, having published many articles and books on religion, theology, and apologetics. In particular, I’d like to highlight a book he co-authored with Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place, which is the most accessible introduction to the deity of Christ published in the last several decades. Each week I will upload new posts with the bibliographies of certain New Testament books compiled by Bowman. This first post will feature the bibliographies for Matthew and Mark, and subsequent posts will provide bibliographies for books up through Revelation. Rob has done his homework and I am grateful for the opportunity to post this bibliography of resource tools for studying the New Testament

Matthew:

Davies, William D., and Dale C. Allison. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew. Volume I: Matthew 1-7. Volume II: Matthew 8-18. Volume III: Matthew 19-28. ICC. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988, 1991, 1996. The best non-evangelical, critical commentary. Both Davies and Allison are renowned scholars on Matthew.

Evans, Craig A. Matthew. New Cambridge Bible Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Best recent commentary, strong on the historical and cultural contexts.

France, R. T. The Gospel of Matthew. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Best exegetical and theological commentary, a stand-out especially in its handling of the Olivet Discourse.

Keener, Craig. A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Most thorough treatment of Matthew’s cultural context, with numerous citations to background literature from both Jewish and Greco-Roman sources.

Quarles, Charles L. Sermon on the Mount: Restoring Christ’s Message to the Modern Church. NAC Studies in Bible & Theology. E. Ray Clendenen, series ed. Nashville: B&H, 2011. Best commentary on the Sermon on the Mount.

Mark:

Bock, Darrell L. Mark. New Cambridge Bible Commentary. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Current, meaty commentary by a leading evangelical scholar on the Gospels, featuring a helpful overview of Markan scholarship and an especially lengthy bibliography of secondary literature on Mark.

Collins, Adela Yarbro. Mark: A Commentary, ed. Harold W. Attridge. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007. The standard liberal commentary, bringing a wealth of background information to bear but depreciating the historical nature of the Gospel narrative.

France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark. NIGTC. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. Conservative commentary striking an excellent balance of exegetical and theological engagement with the text.

Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8 and Mark 8-16. AB 27, 27A. New York: Doubleday—Anchor Bible, 2000, 2009. Arguably the best mainline, non-conservative commentary on Mark.

Stein, Robert H. Mark. BECNT. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008. Detailed evangelical commentary fully engaging textual and literary-critical issues.

NIV Application Commentaries on Sale Now

On By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, Early Christianity, Exegesis, New Testament Studies, Uncategorized6 Comments

For a short time only, every NIV Application Commentary eBook is on sale for $4.99 apiece. Some may wonder whether a commentary with the name ‘application’ in it is really worth it. After all, aren’t commentaries supposed to deal with interpretation?

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Commentaries can be grouped broadly into two categories: critical and popular. The critical (or exegetical) ones focus on the original language text and give detailed interpretation, drawing out the meaning of the text for seminary students, pastors, and others with training in Greek and Hebrew. Popular commentaries tend to be on the lighter side of interpretation but are usually strong on drawing out principles for living out the Christian faith for the layperson.

Too often popular commentaries are written by pastors who do not have the training, time, or tools to investigate the biblical text in depth. And critical commentaries hardly relate to the person in the pew. What is unusual about the NIV Application commentary series is that the same scholars who wrote exegetical works now bring such insights to all Christ-followers.

Take Doug Moo’s commentary on Romans for example. He has written a massive work on this great epistle (over 1000 pages!), definitely not something for the faint of heart. But he’s also written the NIV Application Commentary on Romans. One can be confident that this superb scholar’s insights are also to be found in the more accessible commentary in the Zondervan series. Further, Moo frequently packages things in a way that is memorable, pithy, even at times inspiring. And the reader can be sure that the commentator has done his homework.

The commentaries by the other scholars in this series are of the same ilk. It’s a great opportunity to get any one of these excellent tools as an eBook. The sale is from November through November 13. See the details here.

Finally, an Awesome Backgrounds Bible!

On By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, Early Christianity, New Testament Studies, Uncategorized10 Comments

One of the great publishing delights of 2016 is the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. Zondervan, of course, is the publishing house. The NIV 2011 is the translation employed, one that is faithful to the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew and communicates clearly to English-speakers of the 21st century. This is truly a landmark publication; the subtitle says it all: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture. The dense, nearly 2400-page Bible is packed with notes, graphs, photographs, sidebars, tables, charts, maps, and cross-references. It would be difficult to find two more qualified general editors than John Walton and Craig Keener. These two scholars live this stuff. They are giants in the field. Kudos to Zondervan for signing them on for this project. Their names alone are a solid recommendation of this Bible.

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Virtually every page brings fresh illumination to the text of Holy Writ. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible makes accessible the best of evangelical biblical scholarship.

This should make a terrific Christmas present for just about anyone on your list. You can order your copies here: http://media.harpercollinschristian.com/page/cultural-backgrounds-study-bible.

500th Anniversary of the Book that Changed the World

On By Daniel B. WallaceIn Bible Translation, Contemporary Issues, CSNTM, Early Christianity, New Testament Studies, Textual Criticsim, Theology4 Comments

A new journal, Unio cum Christo, just published my article, “Erasmus and the Book That Changed the World Five Hundred Years Ago” (Unio cum Christo 2.2 [Oct 2016] 29–48). Erasmus published the first Greek New Testament on March 1, 1516. This article honors him and discusses the impact that his Novum Instrumentum Omne (a book that is almost completely unknown except by biblical scholars) has had on western civilization and the world.