Customer Reviews

New Bible Commentary

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First published in 1953, the New Bible Commentary has been revised and updated 4 times. It has been and still is, the best one volume Bible commentary available. To cover all 66 books of the bible means that some detail must be sacrificed, but the authors capture the flow of the argument in each book well, and also have time to discuss important and controversial issues.

Many of the articles are written by people with best-selling full-length commentaries on the books they were assigned. So you get G J Wenham on Genesis and Peter O'Brien on Colossians, for example.

Highly recommended.

If you would like this book at a bargain price, with 17 other helpful books, including the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Sinclair Ferguson's New Dictionary of Theology, the New Bible Dictionary and the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Amazon also sells the Essential IVP Reference Collection CD ROM.

I really do like New Bible Commentary (NBC) for years. It has been my favorite one volume commentary thus far. So naturally, I was excited when they decided to update (or revise) the 3rd edition of NBC to 21st century edition. But when I got it, I was little disappointed. Compare to the previous edition, it lacked the devotional and spiritual emphasis. In review:
1. This NBC is more updated due to recent archaelogical findings and newer intepretations.
2. NIV version of the Bible has been used as main text. This can be pro or con depending on individual's preference.
3. Type-setting is actually more bothersome to the eyes than the previous edition.
4. While it is updated in scholastic area, but it has lost the devotional character of the 3rd edition.

I gave away my 21st century edition, because I still use the 3rd edition. Since the 3rd edition is out-of-print, you have to find it in used books. Amazon.com actually carries sellers who sell used NBC.

I refer to this commentary all the time in my study; both devotional and for sermon prep. You would be hard-pressed to find a finer collection of today's evangelical scholars/commentators as is assembled here. Each book of the Bible is given thorough treatment in lay language by a scholar who has immersed himself in that book for years. This is money very well-spent. Highly recommended.

Unless you have a commentary on every book of the bible including Obadiah and Esther just for general life you need a commentary that covers the whole bible. They have their disadvantages and advantages because of their size but every Christian should have one. A good bible and the new bible commentary are the basics you need.

This is the best one-volume commentary by far (in the UK, at least, nobody even considers buying another), with an stunning list of evangelical contributors. Purposely concentrates on the flow of a text, which is always sensible, especially when space is so limited, as it inevitably is with just one volume. Most of the New Testament is verse by verse and in the OT bigger chunks are taken at once. The scholarship is very up to date and they rarely dodge difficult questions, although as would be expected they don't have enough space to be thorough. There is, however, so much information in this book that it is worth several times the list price. There are a few articles with titles such as: 'the Pentateuch', 'reading the letters', 'approaching the bible' etc. which are all very good, and all the books have introductions dealing with authorship, date, etc. The editors also recommend single commentaries for each book of varying difficulty which is very useful when you need to have a commentary with more detail than any one-volume can supply.

Please, for the sake of your spiritual growth, buy this book, and now not tomorrow.

This is a great commentary for someone starting out in studying the Bible. (Much better than, say, the Bible Knowledge Commentary or Wycliffe.) The introductory article "Approaching the Bible" is a must read for all Christians, young and old alike. Donald Carson is an erudite scholar who has a tremendous ability to bring material from the seminary classroom to laypeople avoiding both overly technical language and a condescending attitude. He is truly a gifted teacher.
I have a pretty decent library of commentaries. My approach to the Bible is conservative, although I do read and benefit from commentaries outside of this discipline. I have given this commentary as a gift a number of times to new believers, and recommend it highly.

I was given this commentary as a gift fairly recently, and it has already proved to be very useful. My nascent theological library includes more detailed commentaries on a few of the more prominent NT books; but that doesn't help me when I come across a verse in Hosea that I find really puzzling. This Bible commentary does. The articles it includes are also nice, factual overviews. In short, this is a really handy reference from some very prominent Evangelical scholars. Highly recommended.

I have nearly all one volume Bible commentaries, you name it, I have it!!!!. I am a real Bible commentary lover. In my opinion, this is one of the best one volume Bible commentaries that I have had. It contains more detail and it is much easier to read and be digested than any other one volume commentaries. Only one drawback is that there are only a few technical terms (Hebrew and Greek )that sometime we need to know more what the original words seem to speak for. If you can have only one or two one volume commentaries, you may try this very one and the KJ Bible Commentary. I think King James Bible Commentary will be the best one volume commentary that you will ever find in the market!!!!

I had used an older edition of this book and realized that it was a must for my library. This new edition is easy to use and filled with information about each book of the Bible. The authors wrote their commentaries in a method that is easy to read and understand. If you want good Biblical commentaries, this is the book. -- Kenneth Whitman

This is one of the most comprehensive, thorough commentaries I own. It has little doctrinal error, which is easily sorted through and has a wealth of good summaries. Recommend to bible students everywhere.

I only just started using this one and have not read any of the other versions, so I can not give an overall review.

But I will stand by the grade I listed above.

Why a B- for content?

In the few sections I have read so far, I see this commentary ever-so-slightly leaning toward the liberal point of view. It hides behind words such as, "seems" or "suggest."

It may just be me, I'm human, but it reads like the writers take a more modern - "enlightened" - view of the scriptures.

Again, this is not to say this is not full of insight, and it certainly gives one things to ponder. But it fails to make exacting statements where it should and is a little too lax where it should not.

I have not decided yet if I am going to keep this in my library. It's not that it does not say what I want to hear. It's that it reads as if they are trying to be "politically correct" at times.

In my humble opinion you either believe The Word or you don't. The Word does not "seem" to say this or "appears to suggest" that.

I may not agree with other commentaries on all subjects, but I respect their stating what they interpret over the "not sure what we think because it might offend" approach taken here.