[B-Greek] What makes a good Greek Commentary?

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Apr 21 07:34:22 EDT 2009


On Apr 20, 2009, at 9:31 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:

> I've been reading through the Iliad using several commentaries.
> It's been frustrating, and the experience has reminded me that
> I never really found a good commentary to the Greek NT.  This
> got me thinking about what makes a good Greek commentary.

It becomes evident very quickly as we read through the criteria  
presented here that they are, to a considerable extent, subjective.  
And since there are real differences of opinion about what a  
commentary ought to be and do for a reader of a Greek text , i.e.,  
what sorts of information and assistance a commentary should offer to  
render the Greek text more intelligible to the reader, (a) there will  
be differences of opinion about which commentaries are "the good  
ones," and (b) there will always be room for alternative commentaries  
on any particular text that is generally admitted to be worth reading.  
I'd respond to some of the specifics below as follows.

> Three things:
>
> 1.  IT HAS TO BE COMPLETE.   A commentary has to give you
> help with ALL the diffficult passages.  It's frustrating to come
> across a difficult word or construction and look it up in several
> commentaries and find nothing on it.  A good commentary has
> to somehow anticipate which passages will cause the reader
> trouble and hit them all.  It should probably offer a literal  
> translation
> of all the really difficult passages.

The problem with this criterion is that one person's very difficult  
passage is another person's no-brainer. I have encountered repeatedly  
in several decades of teaching students who needed explanation of  
something that seems clear even at the surface level, and I have also  
often spent considerable class time explaining something that I  
thought sufficiently complex to deserve a full accounting, only to be  
asked afterwards,  "Why did you spend so much time on that matter."

A "literal translation"? Is it not enough for a commentator to say,  
"this is roughly equivalent to ... "? I fear that what underlies this  
demand for a "literal translation" of a difficult Greek passage is the  
old (and dubious) pedagogical notion that understanding a Greek text  
means ability to translate it into one's native language.

>  2.  IT HAS TO BE CONCISE.  This is a balancing act with criterion
> one.  The commentary has to stick to the Greek, giving background
> informaton only when it is necessary to understand the Greek.  A
> commentary cannot be wordy because the point is to give you the
> info quickly so you can get back to the text.  NT commentaries in
> particular drive me crazy when they get into theology or homiletics--
> good things on their own but not what I need to unpack Greek.  A
> good commentary cannot be longer than the text it helps explain.

Well, I think that there are different kinds of commentaries. My  
experience has more to do with secular Greek and Latin literary texts  
than with NT texts, but I have to say that some of the finest  
commentaries I have ever used have been voluminous explorations of  
questions arising in seminar discussions of a text, notably Eduard  
Fraenkel's commentary on the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and W. S.  
Barrett's commentary on the Hippolytus of Euripides, Cyril Bailey's  
commentary on Lucretius' De Rerum Natura. As for the Iliad, which  
seems to have touched off this set of reflections, I personally don't  
think there's any more valuable student's commentary than A.R.  
Benner's Selections from the Iliad: it's the textbook I used for Homer  
in my sophomore year at Tulane (when I first encounered PARA QINA  
POLUFLOISBOIO QALASSHS), first published in 1903 and currently  
available in a paperback published in 2007 for less than $20. I still  
have my dog-eared hardback (with pages coming loose) purchased in  
1953. It has stood the test of time pretty well.

>  3.  ITS FORMAT HAS TO BE USER FRIENDLY.  This really means the
> commentary has to be beneath the Greek text.  One pet peeve of mine is
> when a commentary says stuff like "See the note on page 101 above,"
> Why not just repeat the essence of the note?  maybe condensed, but I
> hate having to flip back to the prior note.    You should be able to  
> go from the
> commentary to the Greek text and back again as smoothly as possible.

This, it seems to me, is the lamentation of one who is used to reading  
digital texts on a computer or text-reader. I think we are all  
impatient with some of the measures employed by print publishers to  
cut down on the costs of preparing copy-ready text-formats. I have  
long deplored the use of end-notes where foot-notes would be so much  
easier for the reader, but I don't doubt that the same book produced  
with footnotes would have to be much more expensive. And wouldn't it  
be silly to repeat the entire explanation of a usage that recurs  
several times in the Greek text? "User-friendly" is the jargon of  
computerese; can we really expect to read something like A. T.  
Robertson's big tome on NT Greek Grammar in a "user-friendly" digital  
format? YES, now we can, and it seems to me that the same great  
service could be performed for commentaries like A.R. Benner's  
Selections from the Iliad: imagine a hypertext of that commentary with  
instant access to "the note on page 101 above" and the lexicon with  
its lovely illustrations of what Homeric "things" looked like and the  
concise summary of features of Homeric grammar. That, it seems to me,  
is what we need today rather than least-common-denominator printed  
commentaries. But I don't regret having been born in the Gutenberg era  
and I only wish I had more shelf-room for more of the great print  
classics.

>  The good news is I have found one commentary on the Iliad that meets
> all three criteria, a 2002 effort by Pamela Draper.  The bad news  
> is, it
> only covers Book 1, and I found it only after working through Book 1  
> several
> times with other commentaries.  Draper's really does set the  
> standard in
> my mind.  She is complete AND concise and the format is great.

Yes, and I'm told there's a great commentary on the first three  
chapters of Genesis that leaves one yearning for the sequel.

>  So, what about NT Greek commentaries?

That necessarily involves a considerable number of additional criteria  
over which there are considerable differences of judgment and taste.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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