Customer Reviews

Romans: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching & Preaching)

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Achtemeier's commentary on Romans is simply the best commentary on the market for the layperson. Commentaries written by academics are often not useful to the general public, since they use Greek or Hebrew and assume a great deal about the reader's background. On the other hand, most of the popular commentaries are simply too shallow. Achtemeier does an excellent job of clarifying the issues for the average reader. If you can only buy one commmentary on Romans, this should be your choice.

I really enjoyed this commentary. This was my first experience with the Interpreation commentaries and I was impressed. Dr. Achtemeier did an excellent job of writing for the lay person as well as the full-time minister. It was very readable, which is, unfortunately, kind of rare in Bible commentaries.

It's good in that it gets straight to the point and refers readers to more in depth works if that is what they need. I personally prepare sermons using both types of commentaries. I like this one because the idea encapsulated in a few pages. Once I have a good round idea of the passage I move onto the deeper works like Schriener, Moo, Fitzmyer, Kaseman, Cranfield, Sanday and Headlam, and the like.

Excellent textbook on cognitive explanations in reading and studying!

This book was debuted in the 1970's and it is out of print I beleive. It sadly made small penetration in the academic community as now many people have come to expect of the allof academic community which in many recent years it has been consumed for its economic gains only. Even MIT cognitive researchers did little fanfare with this book. However, when I read it it confirmed with my personal observations that I have easily refined in recent years researching this fascianting area of human understanding. I often used myself as the "gunie pig" and slowly observed what was I experincing while I underwent such and such learning in a alrge variety of academic topics.

I first brought author Pirozzolo's views in 2003 to VP Carolyn G. Curtis and CIS James Looby at HVCC college in Troy, NY but neither has ever said anything. Educators who are supposedly searching for better ways to learn often are turned off by this entire subject area! It often seeed to me either because they are frightened of it seriousness or they really do not believe anything outside their own personal "academic comfort zone(s)" they have reached in their particular professional lives.

I hope someday to use this Pirozzolo book as a primary reference for my new and long overdue and planned book on this critical and vast subject area of research -- which I just happened to have some Natural interminable interests that even have surprised me over the many years that forced me think in those terms: i.e. is there a time factor that is consistent or fairly constant to all learners ? and what things affect it tremendously positively or negatively.

One key factor this author Pirozzolo states is that simply stated is that it takes a certain amount of time to learn NEW material, and this is pretty much a "constant" among the large population of learners. Some educators even informally call this phenomenon as "learning curve."

However, I strongly beleive, there are some things that may be used with any or all learners to accelerate this learning process and thus reduce this "time constant" a certain amount. Eelctrical engineers speak with huge confidence of certain passive elements having a time constant and various formulas exist to calculate this time constant used to build electric circuits. So electrical engineers are all too familiar and never bother to resist the notion of a material's "time constant".

Ironically, too, Hollywood's famous Directors like Ford Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg clearly seem to come to realize this Pirozzolo factor and use all sorts of visual systems to greatly accelerate the learning or familiarity process, and thus end up reducing this "time constant" that author Pirozzolo seems to introduce in his book. Even physics author Green recently acknowledged that working with Hollywood directors amazed him that they took his 40 pages and reduced the time constant of learning to just a few minutes. At first Green was very skeptical at the entire new process used to present his book to learners but later he conceded to all around him that he was a new believer.

From my personal observations and personal discoveries especially while at HVCC college in TROY, NY and while particapating in the educational system there, I stumbled on the fact that PUBLISHERS play a huge role in this "time constant"; but shockingly to me, very few educators have even bothered to analyze this PUBLISHER's role or even care! They seem allof or some even brain dead on this special cognitive issue, which makes me often very upset.

Educators have essentially accepted "hook, line and sinker" the notion that whatever a sloppy Publisher ends up with or does it's never questioned except by reviewers, like me, who happened to stumble on this huge Pub group, who greatly affects the learning process so directly.

In 2006, I even told CIS Looby one day in a brief telephone conversation that I had to criticize Publishers on my own, with no help from him with all their errors to boot! I told Looby there hasn't been one textbook I read during the past 20 years or so, that I have not found hidden errors in since I began this personal reading odyssey circa 1990's. Then finally, in 2006, Looby changed many Publishers since somehow he realized that what I was telling him and many others at HVCC was correct and that I had both the conviction and courage to speak up to him and many others about these Pub woes.

In fact, in my recent life as freelance columnist in Albany, NY region I sign off as "Social critic" because of the many serious political lies given to the public & also as a "Textbook critic" because of the woes that Pub give to learners and noboy ever questions these Pub!

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