Bible Commentaries - a plea for sanity (or, in praise of eisegesis)

It's got to stop...


I was just checking through some Bible Commentaries yesterday and I was astonished at the proliferation of mighty tomes that have been published in the last few years. Ephesians is a case in point, with several major commentaries being published in the last decade - including the daddy of them all Hoehner's 960 page volume. Or, take the case of the Book of Revelation: Aune's three-volume account is matched by Beale's 1245 page effort!

This phenomena is fairly recent, I think. In the sixties and seventies, perhaps one major commentary would be published per decade (correct me if I am wrong). But with the computerisation of academia and the growth of theological education in the US especially, the steady flow is now an avalanche of commentary. Library shelves are heaving with the things: and the books themselves get bigger and bigger...

I don't think this is a sign of health. The sheer size of commentaries indicates that commentators are still working with an encyclopeadist's mentality, accumulating references and knowledge, and trying to provide as comprehensive an account of the field as possible. No article or monograph is left unreferenced; no alternative argument left unconsidered. Each new commentary pleads to be considered the one-stop-shop for all your Ephesians needs - until the next one comes along, and like an upgrade of Windows, makes everything before it redundant.

There seems to be a tacit assumption that more information equates to better knowledge and greater enlightenment. It doesn't. The commentator operates still with an objectivist mindset: the assumption being that the skill of exegesis means the removal of all personal touches from the commentary whatsoever. That is to say: exegetes assume that textual interpretation is best served by a quasi-scientific distance and dispassion. It isn't!

Further, this tendency heightens the impression (long fostered by those in the field of biblical studies) that expert knowledge is utterly indispensible for any comprehension at all. It is just impossible for a non-specialist to get accross it all - you could give a life time just to reading commentaries on the book of Romans written since 1980! In addition, the experts are under pressure to come up with some new way of reading in order to make their name professionally and so get a nice job and some recognition. Now, I don't want to be too cynical or obscurantist here, but this leads to crackpot theories getting more airtime than they ought, just because they are novel (here's a particularly egregious example). Or you find the commentator almost wondering aloud whether he/she has anyting new to say: I found Douglas Moo on Romans to be one of the least helpful on this score: he can't decide between various readings, so he blends them all together, leaving you even more confused than you were before.

My first degree was in English literature. I was trained in the art of reading - reading texts closely, and in relation to other texts. When I began my theological studies, I had assumed that I would find Biblical Studies the sub-discipline that attracted me most. I was quite dismayed to find that the art of reading texts had nothing to do with biblical studies by and large. The two disciplines were not at all related - despite some hokey attempts around the 80s and early 90s to introduce 'literary criticism' in to the field. These were pretty much like seeing your old dad dancing at your 21st...

The best commentaries, to my mind, aren't by exegetical specialists but by people who were preachers, theologians and churchmen. The commentaries of Calvin, for example: meant as a companion set with his sermons and the Institutes. Luther's landmark work. Barth on Romans. Augustine. What is different here? Well, partly, it is that there is no hint of an attempt at pseudo-objectivity. In each case, the context and personality of the commentator is unashamedly in evidence. You could correct the reading of each in numerous ways - but then, they are not attempting to be comprehensive and definitive for all times. You need to be an eisegete in order to be an effective exegete. That's how reading texts works. This isn't postmodern relativism: this is just how texts work!

So, a plea to Biblical Studies boffins: stop and delate all those major commentaries you were working on. They aren't helping! We don't want them! Rather: let's have more wood and fewer trees. Let's have a disciplined limit on the length of commentaries (if we must have them) - no more than 250 pages please. And, liberated from that task, get on and do something that serves the church.

And to preachers: stop purchasing the things! They aren't helping your sermon preparation - and they certainly aren't helping your sermons. They are high-cost high redundancy items. Find the absolute classics in each book and stick with those. Buy some theology instead, or read a novel or two, or a biography, or philosophy. Make your Greek better and read the text for yourself! Spend more time in prayer even. Your spouse will appreciate the space you save by not buying commentaries, too.