New Bible Commentary: Volume 2

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.

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.

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.

Widely regarded in Sydney circles as THE one-volume commentary on the Bible, it is no surprise that this commentary is an excellent one. Bringing together some of the best evangelical scholars for each of the books means that the commentary is generally first-rate.Most of the authors contributions represent a condensed version of their other writings (for example, Guthrie on The Pastoral Letters appears to be based somewhat on his Tyndale commentary) providing an excellent intro to the book at hand.Entries on Approaching the Bible, Biblical History, The Pentateuch, Apocrypha, Reading the gospels and Reading the letters gives an introduction to wider issues in reading the bible that may not be examined in a commentary on a specific book of the Bible.All in all, well worth the investment. Highly recommended.