Mike Heiser provides illuminating guidance on what makes an effective commentary. In my thoughts about his notes I also understood where my own laziness keeps me from digging deeper and stretching my comfort zone with my bible study.
Part 1 – Aside from page count, there are many other differences between commentaries. All commentaries are not created equal. Not even close. I have had hundreds of students that simply don’t realize that. They presume that since the commentary exists and has lots of pages, it must be something that really digs into the biblical text. That’s a myth.
Part 2 – Yes, this really is the commentary on 2 Cor 4:1-6. Completely unhelpful. Where is the interpretive beef? It’s hard to know that it’s even the right passage. This is a classic example of talking about the text (loosely speaking) and not giving people the text. At best one could read this after spending some time in the actual passage. But if this is what pastors give their people in the pulpit, they shouldn’t expect them to grow in the knowledge of the Word. They’ll be lucky to find the Word in all that.
In Part 2 Heiser also points us back to his initial thoughts that took him down this road
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn as a professor and in my role at Logos is that most Christians think Bible reading is Bible study. It isn’t. This is followed by the corollary that what most people do beyond Bible reading isn’t going to get them very far into the text, either. That is, what most people think of as Bible study isn’t real biblical research.
He then compares popular commentaries, expositional commentaries, and scholarly commentaries, and the characteristics that make a commentary useful. The note ends with the value of scholarly commentaries that point out patterns, and why patterns are more valuable than exposition.