Friday, October 15, 2010
Grant Osborne's Commentary On Matthew
Some readers may be interested in knowing that Grant Osborne's commentary on Matthew in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series, which went through a lot of delays, just came out. My copy arrived yesterday from amazon.com. It's more than a thousand pages long, but the print and spacing are somewhat large, so the page length is misleading. I haven't had time to read much of it yet. My initial impression is that it goes into moderate depth. It doesn't seem as good as, say, Craig Keener's or R.T. France's for my purposes. The intention of the Zondervan series is to produce what I would call a moderate level commentary, one in which interaction with "critical scholarship" "does not dominate" (back cover). Regardless of whether it "dominates", I'd prefer to see more of it than this commentary provides. It's a good commentary written from a conservative Evangelical perspective, but don't let the length of it mislead you.
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I received my copy yesterday and have had the same impression as well. I enjoyed Osborne’s shorter commentary on Romans, and so, I had high hopes.
ReplyDeleteThe explanations of the passages are very short and do not go much into the weighing of alternative options. After seeing this, I was hopeful that the theological/ethical application sections would be more in depth to make up for what was not stated in the explanation section. I was especially hopeful for the Sermon on the Mount sections. I wanted to see careful nuance of what is and is not the proper application of Jesus' difficult statements. E.g. Does Jesus's teaching entail pacifism? Especially, does it entail pacifism in national considerations? Should we simply allow lawsuits to take away everything that we have?
He goes into some of this but not with any depth, and the “Theology in Application” sections are very short paragraphs that anyone who has heard any explanation of the Sermon on the Mount already knows.
It seems that this commentary is somewhat mediocre. He briefly summarizes what other scholars have already said. If you want a scholarly conservative commentary, go to the suggestions Jason mentioned above.
Although David Turner’s commentary (BECNT) is short, it at least goes into some great depth as to the use of the Old Testament in Matthew, and so, I found Turner’s very helpful in that regard.
If you want a starting commentary on Matthew that has a little more depth than a shorter commentary, Osborne’s will probably be helpful.
Saint and Sinner made a couple of good points that I want to expand upon.
ReplyDeleteA commentary, especially one in which the publisher has allowed you more than a thousand pages, provides a good opportunity for helping people sort through difficult issues. Addressing the most difficult issues in a book of the Bible, and advancing the discussion of those issues rather than just repeating what others have said, should be high on a commentator's list of priorities.
On the other hand, there's merit in repeating what others have said in some contexts. As Saint and Sinner mentioned, Osborne does often summarize the findings of other scholars. And, from what I've read so far, he seems to often frame the discussion in terms of scholarly majorities. As a result, it looks like his commentary should be useful as a source of information on scholarly trends.
One of the issues that concerns me about Matthew commentaries, including Osborne's, is how poorly they tend to address the issue of authorship. Some of the best evidence for Matthean authorship is frequently ignored or underestimated, and there's some of it I've never seen mentioned by even a single commentary. If scholars who believe in Matthew's authorship of the gospel want to see their position gain more ground in modern scholarship (and in other places), they need to think and write more deeply about the subject.
Jason said
ReplyDelete"One of the issues that concerns me about Matthew commentaries, including Osborne's, is how poorly they tend to address the issue of authorship. Some of the best evidence for Matthean authorship is frequently ignored or underestimated, and there's some of it I've never seen mentioned by even a single commentary. If scholars who believe in Matthew's authorship of the gospel want to see their position gain more ground in modern scholarship (and in other places), they need to think and write more deeply about the subject."
That is a good point and Authorship and Authority of the Bible seem to be challenged. I know I have struggled with this, more for emotional then rational reasons. I E you read this book, read that blog, here that speaker and you "question" the Authority of the "Bible" or the authorship of a book in the Bible. Often it is born out of issues of the heart, not the mind. But that is just me.
I have a hard time thinking of Keener's commentary as all that in-depth, especially compared to France's NICNT but even compared to Carson's EBC. It's certainly got more to it than Blomberg's NAC or France's Tyndale, but on most questions when I look something up for a particular question, he doesn't give me enough information, whereas Carson and France usually do. It sometimes has useless information that doesn't affect the end result of explaining the text. But most of the time I didn't think it was very detailed, which was surprising given the length. If Osborne's is even less so, then I probably don't want it. That's disappointing given how well-received his Revelation commentary was for being pretty good at giving the main lines of reasoning for all the views (as opposed to just listing the views and saying what the consensus view is).
ReplyDelete