Thanks to Google and the ongoing efforts of hundreds of people in libraries around the world, more and more scholarly works for the late 19th and early 20th centuries are becoming available online. Biblical scholarship is one of the beneficiaries of this information explosion. You can now access many commentaries on each book of the Bible, including in-depth commentaries. Upper-level commentaries for the Old Testament are identified by “(Hebrew)” and those for the New Testament are identified by “(Greek)”. This means that they refer to the Hebrew or Greek text, often without providing an accompanying English translation. If you don’t know these languages, I would recommend that you study with an
Hebrew-English interlinear for the Old Testament or a
Greek-English interlinear for the New Testament. These commentaries might also make free use Latin, German, and French, other languages biblical scholars are presumed to know. Despite these challenges, you will find a much more detailed discussion, a weighing of alternatives, and a marshalling of evidence often lacking in the easier commentaries.
A word of caution is in order, however: biblical scholars have a wide range of opinions, especially with regard to issues of “higher criticism,” such as authorship, compilation, and dating of the biblical books. Unless you are trained to weigh the evidence in these areas, I recommend that you steer clear of such discussions. Certainly you should refuse to accept a position that the commentator just assumes and does not prove with sound arguments (this is known as “The Obvious Fallacy,” error #15 in our list of “
Common Bible Interpretation Errors“). The main value of these commentaries is to help you understand individual verses, catch the flow of the context, or gain insight into the historical background of the original readers. Part of “going deeper” is developing discernment regarding when to accept what a commentator is telling you and when to reject it. A third option is to suspend judgment until a later time, when you have developed more critical judgment of your own.
Most of these commentaries are available because they are so old that their copyrights have expired, placing them in the public domain. Many of them, however, still have tremendous value. I recommend that you read the evaluations of C. H. Spurgeon, the great Victorian preacher, in his
Commenting & Commentaries (1876). With a few notable exceptions like
Our Man in Heaven, an exposition of Hebrews by Edward Fudge, as well James Burton Coffman’s
Commentary on the Entire Bible, more recent commentaries are not available online. You may purchase them however, as indicated at the end of the list for each book. If you need guidance for the more recent commentaries, you might want to purchase one of the following resources:
Commentary & Reference Survey (2007) •
OT Commentary Survey (2013) and
NT Commentary Survey (2013).
Thanks to Google and the ongoing efforts of hundreds of people in libraries around the world, more and more scholarly works for the late 19th and early 20th centuries are becoming available online. Biblical scholarship is one of the beneficiaries of this information explosion. You can now access many commentaries on each book of the Bible, including in-depth commentaries. Upper-level commentaries for the Old Testament are identified by “(Hebrew)” and those for the New Testament are identified by “(Greek)”. This means that they refer to the Hebrew or Greek text, often without providing an accompanying English translation. If you don’t know these languages, I would recommend that you study with an Hebrew-English interlinear for the Old Testament or a Greek-English interlinear for the New Testament. These commentaries might also make free use Latin, German, and French, other languages biblical scholars are presumed to know. Despite these challenges, you will find a much more detailed discussion, a weighing of alternatives, and a marshalling of evidence often lacking in the easier commentaries.
A word of caution is in order, however: biblical scholars have a wide range of opinions, especially with regard to issues of “higher criticism,” such as authorship, compilation, and dating of the biblical books. Unless you are trained to weigh the evidence in these areas, I recommend that you steer clear of such discussions. Certainly you should refuse to accept a position that the commentator just assumes and does not prove with sound arguments (this is known as “The Obvious Fallacy,” error #15 in our list of “Common Bible Interpretation Errors“). The main value of these commentaries is to help you understand individual verses, catch the flow of the context, or gain insight into the historical background of the original readers. Part of “going deeper” is developing discernment regarding when to accept what a commentator is telling you and when to reject it. A third option is to suspend judgment until a later time, when you have developed more critical judgment of your own.
Most of these commentaries are available because they are so old that their copyrights have expired, placing them in the public domain. Many of them, however, still have tremendous value. I recommend that you read the evaluations of C. H. Spurgeon, the great Victorian preacher, in his Commenting & Commentaries (1876). With a few notable exceptions like Our Man in Heaven, an exposition of Hebrews by Edward Fudge, as well James Burton Coffman’s Commentary on the Entire Bible, more recent commentaries are not available online. You may purchase them however, as indicated at the end of the list for each book. If you need guidance for the more recent commentaries, you might want to purchase one of the following resources: Commentary & Reference Survey (2007) • OT Commentary Survey (2013) and NT Commentary Survey (2013).