From: c stirling bartholomew (cc.constantine@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 14:04:53 EDT
Thanks Kevin,
A few comments on your comments:
on 6/1/01 7:51 AM, Kevin W. Woodruff wrote:
> Since I teach exegesis of 1 Timothy I bought Quinn and Wacker when it first
> came out. It was the first volume of the Eerdmans Critical Commentary . One of
> the most obvious problems with the book is that anything that is coverd by
> both 1 Timothy and Titus is covered in Quinn's Titus volume in the Anchor
> Bible, which is in a whole different series. He merely refers to it and tells
> you to see the dicussion there.
This is sort of a marketing technique, he is trying to sell you his AB book
on Titus.
>
> The other pet peeve that I have is that each pericope is broken into two
> sections, "notes" and "comments." to get a full discussion you have to keep
> flipping back and forth between the two. "Notes" are the lexical and textual
> comments and "comments" are the commentary proper.
WBC series does this also and it is distracting.
>
> The other thing I don't like about it is that it insists on transliterating
> the Greek into English (Latin) characters which makes it difficult to read
> when you are used to dealing with Greek characters.
Where did publishers ever get the idea that someone who cannot read Greek
could read transliterated Greek? This is a silly idea. Even those who can
read Greek have trouble reading transliterated Greek. This is a marketing
issue for sure. What Eerdmans is doing is trying not to offend the customer
with ancient language scripts.
LETS MAKE THIS CLEAR, I have no problem with commentaries targeted at
English Bible students. I use them myself all the time (e.g. Pillar, NICNT,
AB, ktl.). There are some very valuable titles in these series. What I do
have a problem with is commentaries which make a claim that they are
targeted for a professional readership but the publishers simply do not have
the <offensive anatomical term deleted> to print the ancient languages
scripts because they fear that joe bible student or john pastor will be
offended and they will loose potential sales.
> I found the Bill Mounce's volume on the Pastorals in the Word Biblical
> commentary was much more servicable and covered the ground much better in a
> shorter commentary.
Yes, bigness is not always a sign of a serious work, it can be a sign of
inadequate editing. ECC on Timothy looks a lot like Darrel Bock's on Luke (2
vols., Baker) which "interacts" with every obscure journal article that has
been published in the last 200 years.
Both the Eerdmans Critical Commentary and Baker Exegetical series look like
they are targeted at the English Bible Student. Again, there is nothing
wrong with this as long as they are explicit about it. The only point in
bringing this up here on b-greek is that someone might purchase one of these
books "blind" thinking they were going to get something like the classical
ICC books (Plummer, Sandy & Hedlam, etc.) and be very disappointed when they
started using them.
Thanks for your comments.
Clay
--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
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