Douglas Stuart's "4 Basic Yardsticks of Commentary Evaluation" provides a useful basis of comparison between general and technical commentaries.
The following tables set out his criteria in detail, providing examples matching each commentary category.
The final criterion (Yardstick of Theology) is omitted from these tables, not because ideological/theological slants are unimportant.
But as tools for independent analysis of the text, the quality of textual analysis takes precedence over the doctrinal commitments of the interpreter.
Even Stuart concedes that a liberal commentator can produce a valuable commentary (30).
Size | Detail | Level | Theology |
One-to-all | Summary | Popular | Evangelical |
One-to-several | Semi-detailed | Serious | Conservative-moderate |
One-to-one | Detailed | Technical | Liberal |
In-depth |
Source: Douglas K. Stuart. A guide to selecting and using Bible commentaries. (Dallas: Word, 1990): 23-30.
Size | Description | Examples | |
One-to-all |
|
One volume commentaries: New Jerome Biblical Commentary. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1990). | |
One-to-several | "A commentary on several books of the Bible." |
Collected commentaries on small Bible books: minor prophets, pastoral epistles, catholic epistles. Examples: Grace Emmersons's Minor Prophets II: Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. (New York : Doubleday, c1998.) and Risto Saarinen's The Pastoral Epistles with Philemon & Jude (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Brazos Press, c2008). |
|
One-to-one | "A commentary that itself is a single book, written on a single Bible book (or portion of a Bible book, or group of short books)." | Volumes from commentary series: Word Biblical Commentary, Hermeneia Commentary series. |
Source: Douglas K. Stuart. A guide to selecting and using Bible commentaries. (Dallas: Word, 1990): 23-26.
Detail | Description | Examples |
Summary |
|
Barclay's New Testament commentaries |
Semi-detailed |
|
Reading the New Testament series |
Detailed |
|
Harper's New Testament Commentaries |
In-depth |
|
Hermeneia and Word Biblical Commentary |
Source: Douglas K. Stuart. A guide to selecting and using Bible commentaries. (Dallas: Word, 1990): 26-27.
Level | Explanation | Example |
Popular | "...assume virtually no knowledge of the biblical material, and try to explain ... what the text says in the simplest of terms." | Bible Study Commentary |
Serious | More detailed coverage than popular, but avoiding technical matters like "...wording of the original languages, the complications of textual matters, and extensive reference to scholarly literature." | Tyndale Old and New Testament Commentaries |
Technical | "...address in detail the issues of textual accuracy, forms, structure, and cultural setting, and also tend to interact substantially with the opinions of other scholars." | WBC, ICC, Hermeneia |
Source: Douglas K. Stuart. A guide to selecting and using Bible commentaries. (Dallas: Word, 1990):27-29.
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