Greek commentaries on the Pastorals (was R.T. France - Mark (NIGTC))
plstepp at juno.com
plstepp at juno.com
Wed Sep 18 21:50:37 EDT 2002
---------- "Brian McCarthy" <mccartbs at utrc.utc.com> writes:
> Now I'm working through I. H. Marshall's NIGTC on Luke,
> and not finding it nearly as enjoyable.
While we're talking about Marshall, and about commentaries on the Greek text, I've just worked through a large handful of commentaries on the Pastorals, side by side, passage by passage.
The commentaries I'm working through are:
Mounce and Marshall (both detailed Greek),
Dibelius/Conzlemann and Johnson (both English based but with a great deal of attention to the Greek), and
Raymond Collins (forthcoming) and Quinn (both the AB and the Baker).
They're ALL very good. After decades of relative neglect (in English, at least: see Oberlinner and Roloff if you read German), the Pastorals are getting some very serious attention of late.
Marshall is particularly excellent. Dibelius/Conzlemann is on its last legs, IMHO--it's been the standard critical commentary for decades, and has FINALLY been rendered superfluous. But it's still worth consulting for the excurses occasionally, even if one tends to disagree with pretty much everything they say.
Johnson, Collins, and Quinn are all useful because they make rather idiosyncratic contributions. The Quinn volume in Baker is almost unusable because of the format--you thought the Word Biblical Commentaries were hard to navigate! Try this one. But still, all three of them will occasionally offer a completely unique insight or suggestion.
Marshall is the best of the bunch, as I've already indicated. Mounce is the most detailed, and fairly easy to navigate, especially in comparison with some of the other WBC offerings. His contributions are in the excurses, some of which are beyond exhaustive--seventy-five pages on women and 1 Timothy 2.8-15, if I recall correctly?
But honestly, if you have Marshall and Johnson or Collins (which hasn't been released yet), you don't really need any of the others. The day is coming and is now here when Dibelius/Conzlemann will be an afterthought instead of a standard. Marshall's commentary is one for the ages.
Perry L. Stepp
Perry L. Stepp,
Ph.D. candidate, Baylor University
"We can only possess what we experience: Truth, to be understood, must be lived." --Charlie Peacock
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