Jimmy Akin

Several folks asked in the combox down yonder for some more info on what commentaries on the Scriptures that I like/recommend.

So here goes.

The Jewish commentary on Genesis that I mentioned is the volume on Genesis that is part of the Jewish Publications Society’s JPS Torah Commentary, edited by Nahum Sarna. The volumes I’ve read from the JPS Torah Commentary are good, and I really like the volume on Genesis, which Sarna also wrote.

These are expensive, so if you order one, make sure that Sarna’s name is attached to it. (The JPS also had an older Torah commentary which Sarna was not involved in. That’s not the one I’m talking about.)

I haven’t read enough of Sarna’s Understanding Genesis to comment on it, but his commentary on Genesis is top notch material.

Also good is Rashi’s commentary on Genesis. Rashi was the greatest Medieval Jewish Scripture commentator, but Rashi is very expensive and rather technical, so I’d only recommend him for someone who’s really wanting to do some intense work on Genesis.

A couple of folks asked what I think of the Navarre commentary series, and the answer is . . . It’s okay. It’s certainly theologically orthodox, but it is hampered for me by two things: (1) It’s hasn’t been available in a single, complete set and (2) it has a devotional angle rather than a scholarly angle.

This means that it’s not that suited for the kinds of uses I put commentaries to. I don’t really need a commentary that has footnotes with lots of devotional quotes from John Paul II and St. Josemaria Escriva (which the original volumes on the New Testament had). For anything that’s going to be a multi-volume set, I need something that’s going to survey the breadth of scholarly opinion and the arguments in favor of different positions.

The same consideration applies to the Ignatius Study Bible. It’s also hampered for me by not being available (yet) in a complete edition and not having the kind of technical orientation that I need, so I haven’t read enough of it to comment, really.

This points up something that is quite relevant here: I may not be the best person to recommend commentaries for most folks since most folks don’t put commentaries to the uses that my job requires me to.

When I want a quick take on a passage, I just go to Orchard, since that’s a decent 1-volume commentary that reflects traditional Catholic interpretations and which was written before Catholic biblical scholarship went hog wild for hypercritical speculations.

If I want more than a quick take, I go for much more detailed commentaries that many folks wouldn’t be interested in, so I don’t really spend a lot of time reading or using other non-technical commentaries (e.g., Navarre, Ignatius Study Bible).

One "lighter" set that I can recommend is IVP’s Bible Background Commentary, which is now available for both the Old and the New Testaments. This isn’t so much a commentary attempting to tell you what the text DOES mean but a resource for telling you the cultural and historical background that MIGHT help explain what the text says. It’s helpful and easy to read, though it has a singificant limitation in that it doesn’t footnote the background it provides. It leaves that for other, more detailed commentaries. Still, it’s very useful for what it attempts to do.

When it comes to those longer, technical commentaries, I tend not to buy complete sets (too expensive) but only the volumes for whatever book I’m studying at the moment. I do, however, have favorable impressions of certain sets.

For example, I’ve generally found the volumes of the Word Biblical Commentary to be quite good. (It’s also Protestant.) I know Fr. Mitch Pacwa also likes this series.

Certain volumes of the Sacra Pagina series are also good. (That’s a Catholic series, but this means that some volumes–since I haven’t read them all–may be heterodox.)

I’ll sometimes use the Expositor’s Bible Commentary (an Evangelical set) for the New Testament and the Keil-Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament (a 19th century Protestant set).

I’d love to have some good Catholic commentary sets to recommend, but Catholics haven’t really been producing multi-volume commentaries of an in-depth nature (except Sacra Pagina) in recent years. They have been contributing individual volumes to some scholarly sets, but not whole, multi-volume commentaries by Catholic authors.

There are other commentaries I turn to as well, but these are of an even more technical nature and likely wouldn’t be of interest to any but a tiny number of people.

And then there’s the problems of heterodoxy and hypercriticalism.

The problem is that every commentary is going to have some flaws, multi-volume sets included. You can’t check your brain at the door when reading biblical commentary. You have to treat it as "idea starters" and figure out what you think the evidence best supports. That means that, regardless of whether the author you are reading is Catholic or non-Catholic, whether he is older or newer, you’re going to have to question and challenge what he says, because in the world of biblical commentary, heterodoxy, hypercriticalism, and plain ol’ ordinary being wrong are all over the place.

Unfortunatley, God has not given us an infallible, inspired Bible commentary. Instead, he is glorified by our efforts to use the reason that he gave us to wrestle with the text and try to figure out how to follow his thoughts behind him.

A reader writes:

I listen to Catholic Answers Live as much as possible (on the Internet).

I have a question for you….I currently use the RSV:CE Bible but would like a commentary that explains what the Scripture passages mean.  I don’t want to misinterpret the Scripture like our Protestant brothers and sisters do.  What do you suggest?  I once heard you say not to use the "Collegeville" commentary which I promptly threw out.  However, I cannot recall what you did recommended. 

I guess I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

First, I’m afraid that I can’t recommend a resource that will prevent you from misinterpreting Scripture passages. The Church has not established the correct interpretation of the great majority of Scripture passages. It has taught that Scripture and the faith do not conflict, so if you know your Catholic faith well then that will help you discern what a particular passage of Scripture DOESN’T mean, but it normally will not help you identify precisely what it DOES mean.

Consequently, there is always risk of error in Scripture interpretation. We can’t eliminate that risk.

What we can do is seek to minimize it, and to that end we can recognize the limits and stay humble and flexible about our interpretations of Scripture. Although I feel more confident of certain interpretations than others, in my own study of Scripture I try not to get overly wedded to particular interpretations and to be aware of what else a passage MIGHT mean, in addition to what I think it MOST LIKELY means.

If you listen to when people call in on the radio and ask me what a particular passage means, you’ll note that I often point out a range of possibilities regarding what a passage may mean. I may not even express a personal opinion, or I may say which option I think most is the most likely interpretation in my personal view, but I seldom tell people that a passage definitely DOES mean something, because I don’t like to go beyond what the Church teaches and make people think that my personal opinion is the only one there is.

Another part of minimizing the risk of error is reading what others think about the passage. Others may have had things occur to them that would not occur to us when we read the passage, and they may have good arguments for or against particular interpretations. Reading what the Church Fathers said on a passage is particularly important. Commentaries also can be helpful, and the more voluminous the commentary the better. I like big, multi-volume commentaries because they can cover so much more, giving so many more possible interpretations and the arguments for and against them.

It’s also good to read multiple commentaries by different people with different interpretations–and not just by Catholics. Non-Catholics have brains, too, and sometimes they have really good insights.  In fact, my favorite commentary on Genesis isn’t a Christian commentary: It’s Jewish.

I therefore don’t write off a commentary just because the author isn’t Catholic. Instead, I use critical thinking to try to correct non-Catholic elements in the commentary as I read it.

One volume commentaries that try to cover the whole Bible in a single volume are of some use, but they can’t go into a great deal of detail because there is so much in the Bible to cover. They are of some use, though, particularly when you’re just getting your feet wet with biblical interpretation. A key in using them, though, is to remember that because of the highly compressed way they have to treat Scripture, they won’t be able to lay out a range of options and the arguments for them in any detail. So don’t get wedded to what a one volume commentary says.

Having said all that, the one volume commentary that I most recommend is the 1950s edition of A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture by Bernard Orchard. Unfortunately, it’s out of print

BUT YOU CAN OFTEN GET COPIES OF IT HERE.

OR HERE.

A reader writes:

What is the difference between Scripture and the Bible?

Let’s start with the earliest term: "The Scriptures." This term literally means "the writings" and it’s used of a specific set of writings–the divinely inspired ones that you find between the covers of a Bible today. Originally, they weren’t all in a single volume. They were a collection of scrolls, so they were viewed as different writings. Hence: "The writings." The is the way that the term "the scriptures" is used in the Bible.

You’ll also find a similar term in the Bible: "scripture." It doesn’t have "the" in front of it (or, at least, it doesn’t ALWAYS have "the" in front of it). The key, though, is that it’s SINGULAR rather than PLURAL.

This term means something different.

When you encounter "scripture" in the singular in the Bible, it tends to refer to some PARTICULAR writing, not the collection of sacred writings as a whole.

For example, when John 19:12 says:

So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be"; this was to fulfill the Scripture: "THEY DIVIDED MY OUTER GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND FOR MY CLOTHING THEY CAST LOTS."

John has in mind one particular writing–one particular scripture: the book of Psalms, and specifically Psalm 22:18, which is where the quotation is from.

But when John 5:39 says

"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me"

what is meant is the body of sacred writings as a whole: "the Scriptures."

Over the course of Church history, "the Scriptures" got bound in a single volume, which led folks to think of them more as a single unit rather than a collection of writings, and so the word "scripture" (in the singular) came to be used as a collective noun referring to all of them.

You’ll notice this usage particularly in Protestant circles. Protestants will often talk about "Scripture" where Catholics would say "the Scriptures" (though Catholics may also sometimes use "Scripture" collectively).

Now for "Bible": It’s a synonym for "the Scriptures."

"Bible" is adapted from the Latin word biblia, which was adapted from the Greek ta biblia, which means "the books." Way back when, books were the same things as scrolls, which is again related to the idea of the Bible as a collection of writings (books, scrolls). That’s the way the sacred writings/books were experienced in the Old Testament: as a collection of scrolls.

It was only with the introduction of Christianity that the modern form of book–the codex (which has a spine)–became popular. This was what made it possible (in the fullness of time) for all of the sacred scrolls to be bound together in one book.

Nobody would want a scroll with all of them, because you’d have to laboriously roll through a couple thousand pages of material, and the scroll would tear and get poorly wound and things like that. But with a codex (a book with a spine) you could flip to whatever passage you want quickly.

Codices are thus random access where scrolls are linear access: Kind of the same difference between computer disks and computer tapes or between DVDs and VHS. You can get just where you want to go much more quickly in the former than the latter.

And so codices replaced scrolls the way DVD is replacing VHS.

This replacement led to the creation of collective terms for the sacred writings: "Scripture" instead of "the Scriptures" and "Bible" instead of ta biblia.

The rest is history.