Hermeneia

[Notthemama1984]

I was recently told that this is the only commentary set needed.

What are your thoughts on the set (besides being terribly expensive)?

 

[Phil D.]

Paging Rev. Keister....paging Rev. Keister.... We have a clean-up in aisle 7...

 

[Notthemama1984]

Should I be scared?

 

[greenbaggins]

Ha-ha, Phil. Very funny. The Hermeneia series is, like most other series, a hit or miss series. They do not tend to be conservative. Some of them are so hideously liberal as to be unusable (for instance, Collins on Daniel ripped the text into unusable tatters. I read it. Surely I'll get out of many years of purgatory for doing so). Others are more than usable, they're great, in spite of liberal leanings. Here I'm thinking of Achtemeier on 1 Peter and Attridge on Hebrews. There is no commentary set that would qualify as the only one you'd ever need. As to this one, many of the volumes are worth having, but you have to be able to read critically in order to filter out the liberal biases that are usually present.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Boliver -

Here is my opinion: The best commentaries will reference or glean from whatever good might be in some of the better Hermeneia volumes. Your time is precious and unless you're needing a footnote for a class paper, you'd be wise to select the best 3 or 4 commentaries on a given book and stick with those.

 

[Prufrock]

Mixed bag. Generally speaking, a highly technical and critical series, and often quite liberal; and they have published translations of several notable European commentaries. Not really a series that a Reformed person would read and say, "Ah, yes; this truly points out the meaning of scripture." That being said, there are some useful works if used properly (though I can only speak for the NT volumes). Jewett on Romans is often quite suggestive grammatically and structurally (and it's a pretty massive commentary); Bovon and Luz's volumes are highly useful at times. Honestly, I never found Betz's work on Galatians as helpful as its popularity would seem to suggest, but precisely because of its popularity and influence, it's useful to be acquainted with it. Attridge and Achtemeier are both frequently insightful. There are translations of both Strecker and Bultmann on the Johannine epistles - but if you want to read one of the more prominent German's on these letters, I think your time would be better served by Schnackenburg than either of these. Conzelman and Dibelius are certainly "historically" important, though probably less relevant for a confessional Reformed reader.

In other words, mixed bag, but always useful for a good example of current critical trends in scholarship, even more so since German volumes are made available to those for whom they would otherwise be inaccessible. I will say I find the formatting slightly annoying: in several of the volumes, the "footnotes" actually seem to take up more space than the actual text and to be the more important part of the book. The constant moving from top to bottom of the page gets tiring.

Edit
So while I was writing this, far more learned and experienced people answered. Stick with what they said.

 

[greenbaggins]

Boliver -

Here is my opinion: The best commentaries will reference or glean from whatever good might be in some of the better Hermeneia volumes. Your time is precious and unless you're needing a footnote for a class paper, you'd be wise to select the best 3 or 4 commentaries on a given book and stick with those.

Sometimes this is true. I haven't found everything good in Achtemeier, however, to be quoted in the other commentaries. In fact, most of the time, the reference is to page number only, and it won't give the context or the reasoning behind the quotation. Beware of commentaries, by the way, that simply list names in support of a particular position. The commentators may not all support the position to the same extent, or for the same reasons. I would hate to be limited to 3 or 4 best commentaries on a passage. I have usually found the best meat further down the list of the commentaries I read.

 

[SolaScriptura]

I would hate to be limited to 3 or 4 best commentaries on a passage.

You must not be as busy as me.

But I suppose different strokes for different folks. Me, I do my own exegesis and I even write out an exposition first. Commentaries are consulted for me to test my work.

 

[Notthemama1984]

So if it is a mixed bag, then it is not going to be worth the 1,200 for the series.

 

[greenbaggins]

So if it is a mixed bag, then it is not going to be worth the 1,200 for the series.

I wouldn't pay that much for it, and I certainly wouldn't advise purchasing the whole set if other, more important series are not up to date. Here are the volumes of the series that are worth having: Klein on 1 Chronicles, Hossfelt/Zenger on Psalms, Murphy on Song of Songs, Baltzer on Isaiah, Holladay on Jeremiah, Zimmerli on Ezekiel, all the volumes on the Minor Prophets, Luz on Matthew, Collins on Mark, Bovon on Luke, Pervo on Acts, Jewett on Romans, Conzelmann on 1 Corinthians, Lohse on Col/Phi, Attridge on Hebrews, Dibelius/Greeven on James, Achtemeier on 1 Peter, and Strecker on 1-3 John. Most of these you can buy used. The volumes are all bound extremely well, so used volumes are almost as good as new ones.