Customer Reviews

Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (The Anchor Bible, Vol. 1)

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Speiser was one of the greatest experts on Semitic languages of the 20th century. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what the Hebrew really means. There is also a lot of helpful background material (though after nearly 40 years this is no longer up to date) and thoughtful analysis. Speiser was no fundamentalist, and was often prepared to say that the text is not to be taken literally, but he was less "critical" than many authors. He believed firmly in the Documentary Hypothesis, and each passage is carefully dissected into its J, E and P components, but this material can be ignored by anyone (including myself) who rejects that hypothesis. There is probably no single commentary that would suffice for a detailed study of Genesis, but this book should be one of the commentaries at hand for the serious student.

I am far from being a Bible scholar, but I found Speiser's commentary and his trasnlation informative and useful. He is a proponent of the source document theory, and faithfully incorporates this theory in his discussions. While decades have passed since its release, this book remains a valuable source of enlightenment for novices in Biblical studies.

Speiser is an expert linguist and critical scholar. Other reviews comment on his support of the documentary hypothesis, but that is practically universal amongst critical scholars. The question is just how much value one gets from that understanding when interpreting. Spesier belongs to that older school of critical scholarship that tends to believe that having identified source and redactional elements, one's work is done.

Some current scholarship, on the other hand seems to take the view that you can dismiss such considerations and still deeply understand the text. Often either the full acceptance or the dismissal of form, source, and redaction criticism are done without serious consideration.

What Speiser will do for the student of Genesis is point out clearly the more or less standard division of the sources. In many commentaries it is very difficult to tell what is what in source theory of the Pentateuch, and sometimes students dismiss as excessively complex or poorly supported something they have never really been able to see clearly portrayed. Speiser will help with that task.

Speiser's volume is not my favorite Genesis commentary. I personally prefer von Rad Genesis: A Commentary (Old Testament Library). While he also strongly supports the documentary hypothesis, he tends to build on the theological themes more effectively than does Speiser.

I rate this as a good buy for a serious student of Genesis. Don't expect it to lead you directly to sermon points if you're a pastor. It's more for background study that will fuel your thinking and bear fruit later. A more directly theological commentary, such as von Rad, Waltke (Genesis: A Commentary), Brueggeman (Genesis: Interpretation : A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching)), or even the shorter volume by Derek Kidner in the Tyndale Old Tesament Commentary series (Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries)) will be better for Saturday night sermon prep!

E.A Speiser's contribution to the Anchor Bible Commentary is a classic in Biblical Studies and scholarship. This is perhaps one of the most often cited works on the Book of Genesis that is readily available to the general reader. It is scholarly, yet highly readable. Following the Critical tradition, yet it is also very reverential. A masterpiece!

Published in 1964, Speiser's commentary on Genesis exhibits the worst proclivities of modern Biblical scholarship. Speiser is enthralled with the documentary theory - the thesis that the Bible is redacted from several original sources commonly referred to as J, E, P, D, etc.... While I personally have no objection to this approach, Speiser seems content to try and identify which passages are from which sources and then move on to the next passage. Speiser spends so much time chopping up the text and parsing out the sources, that he tells you very little about the text itself. Speiser has no affinity for literary theory - how the telling of the story shapes it meaning - such has been demonstrated so magnificently by Robert Alter in his book, The Art of Biblical Narrative. Moreover, even much of the Higher Criticism theory that Speiser employs in his commentary has become outdated as scholars have refined the theory.

There are many better commentaries on Genesis available and we can hope that one of these days Anchor Bible itself will publish one more enlightening than Spieser's.

I've already reviewed this purchase for Amazon. I was very pleased with the item, the timeliness of receipt, etc. I am only entering this review in the hope that maybe now I will stop getting those annoying emails from Amazon asking me to review this purchase item!