COMMENTARIES. Every great work that is included in world lit. has given birth to an extensive list of commentaries, but no book has produced anything like the vast amount of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. While such a work is not a mere collection of sermons, an extensive series of homilies, such as those of Chrysostom, may approximate a commentary. The actual nature of a commentary depends on a number of factors, such as the attitude of the writer toward the Scriptures, his knowledge of the original languages, the purpose of his writing the commentary, and the subjects of his major interest. Commentaries vary radically in purpose and in kind. Some, like that of Skinner on Genesis in the International Critical Commentary series, are devoted almost entirely to the discussion of grammatical and critical matters in the original text; others, like that of Marcus Dods on Genesis in the Expositor’s Bible are practical and inspirational.

No attempt has been made to estimate the number of commentaries that have been written on the Bible. In Calmet’s Dictionary of the Holy Bible (1722) at least 1400 titles are listed, some of them extending to many volumes. In addition, there are hundreds of titles on related subjects, which occupy thirty-two columns of text. A cent. and a half later, in an article on “Commentary,” McLintock and Strong’s Encyclopedia (1867-1881) contains a “chronological conspectus of professed commentaries on the whole canonical Scriptures” listing 165 commentaries covering the entire Bible. In the article on the NT 114 more are listed. There are also separate lists of commentaries on all the books of the Bible; e.g., 105 commentaries on the Book of Daniel. About that time Spurgeon (1876) published his famous Commenting and Commentaries in which he listed 1437 titles. Nearly a cent. later Professor Guthrie in his New Testament Introduction listed more than 800 titles, most of which were published since the lists of McLintock and Strong and of Spurgeon.

Ancient commentaries were numerous also. C. H. Turner, in a lengthy article on “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles” (Hastings DB, vol. V, pp. 484-531), lists 115 titles down to the 8th cent., and there were others on the gospels, Acts, and general epistles.

1. The Church Fathers. The earliest Christian commentary is that on the Gospel of St. John by the heretic Heracleon, a follower of Valentinus, founder of an influential Gnostic sect in the early part of the 2nd cent. The content of this book is known only by some quotations from it in Origen’s commentary on John. Early in the 3rd cent. an important commentary on Daniel was written by Hippolytus (c. a.d. 204), which is recognized as the earliest extant exegetical treatise of the Christian Church. It has survived only in fragments, in Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, etc. Hippolytus wrote about forty different works, including commentaries on Genesis, Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Revelation, and others. Goodspeed refers to him as “the foremost figure of Greek Christianity in the West.”

In the same period (185-274) lived the greatest Biblical scholar of the Early Church, Origen. Origen believed that the Bible was written under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and held to the unity of the Scriptures, taking every part of the Bible as a word from God. He emphasized the threefold method of interpreting the Scriptures: “The individual ought to portray the ideas of Holy Scripture in a three-fold manner upon his own soul...for as man consists of a body and soul and spirit, so in the same way does Scripture, which has been arranged to be given by God for the salvation of man.” Origen wrote more extensively on the Bible than any other writer in the early centuries of the Christian Church. Of the works which he composed, the greater part have been lost, as Quasten indicates: “Origen also composed thirteen books on Genesis, forty-six on forty-one Psalms, thirty on Isaias, five that Eusebius knew of (Hist. Eccl. VI, xxiv, 2), fifteen on Luke, five on Galatians, three on Ephesians, besides others on Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Hebrews, Titus and Philemon. Of all these only small fragments have survived in catenae, Biblical manuscripts and quotations by later ecclesiastical authors. Out of 291 commentaries 275 have been lost in Greek and very little is preserved in Latin. Fragments of a Greek commentary on the Books of Kings were found at Tours in 1941. A commentary on Job attributed to Origen and extant in a Latin translation in three books is not authentic” (J. Quasten: Patrology, Vol. II, p. 51).

At times Origen dictated to seven amanuenses who relieved each other in successive periods. Jerome said of his writings, “Which of us can read all that he has written?” In spite of Origen’s belief in the full inspiration of Scripture, in some instances he dogmatically rejected the historic literalness of a certain passage; e.g., he insisted that the Gospel report of the cleansing of the Temple could not be believed. His allegorical treatment of Scripture had an enormous influence over subsequent commentators, and without any guide lines, as a recent scholar has said, “This method has become so flexible that by many virtually any conclusion could be drawn from any passage in the Bible.”

Dionysius of Alexandria (d. 264) wrote a commentary on the Book of Revelation, not now extant, in which he confessed that he could not interpret the book literally, and stated that it most prob. should be interpreted allegorically. Of the many commentaries written by Victorinus (d. 304), the only one that has survived is his work on the Apocalypse, which became very popular in the Early Church. Eschatological subjects greatly appealed to the early commentators.

The great church historian, Eusebius (a.d. 260-340), late in his life wrote a huge commentary on the Book of Isaiah, based on the LXX and deriving much material from Origen, a work that extends to some 450 columns in Migne (Vol. XXIV, 77-526). Jerome tr. this work almost verbatim without any acknowledgment of the source. Of Eusebius’ commentary on the Psalms only excerpts remain, though Lightfoot says that this volume “stands in the first rank of patristic commentaries.” There are also remaining fragments of his works on Luke, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Daniel, etc.

Since the majority of the Church Fathers used the method of allegorical interpretation, the warning of the latest authority on Eusebius may be pertinent: “If the Scriptures are so treated, the words of the sacred writers are in themselves not necessarily important or even true, and may be disregarded after the Holy Ghost, leading the reader into all truth, has revealed to him the true meaning of what he has read, which may not have been present in the mind of the author when he wrote. Scripture thus treated is a fairy story with a moral, and such exegesis is the death of history” (D. S. Wallace-Hadrill: Eusebius of Caesarea, p. 73).

In the middle of the 4th cent. an excellent commentary on the Psalms, surviving only in fragments, was written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria (a.d. 296-374). The passion of Athanasius was to indicate the deity of Jesus Christ, and consequently he found types and prophecies of Christ and the Church everywhere in the Psalms.

In the last half of the 4th cent. appeared the exegetical works of Didymus the Blind (a.d. 313-398), “the last great teacher of the Alexandrian Catechetical School.” Nothing but fragments of his commentaries on Matthew, John, Job, Proverbs, some Pauline epistles, and the Catholic epistles, and extensive portions of his commentary on Isaiah 40:66 remain. The earliest Gospel commentary in the Western church in Lat. was the work on Matthew by Hilary of Poictiers, which was frequently quoted both by Jerome and Augustine. Hilary’s Commentary on the Psalms shows that he was a follower of Origen.

Basil the Great (a.d. 330-379) wrote commentaries on almost all the Scriptures. His most celebrated work was his commentary on the Hexameron, which was extensively used by Ambrose of Milan and by Augustine. Ambrose’ work (339-397) borrowed heavily from Basil, and has only recently been tr. His work on the Psalms covers about 500 columns in Migne, and there are extant also extensive portions of his work on Luke. Also within the 4th cent. was Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus (d. 390), champion of the Nicene faith and the head of the theological school in Antioch. Most of his numerous works have perished, leaving only parts of his writings on Hebrews, the catholic epistles, and the Apocalypse. At this same time the influential commentary on Revelation by Tyconius (d. 400) was written, in which he claimed that the first resurrection (Rev 20:4, 5) was the experience of regeneration.

During the first thirty years of the 5th cent. Biblical interpretation reached its greatest heights for that age. The great orator Chrysostom (a.d. 347-407) wrote the oldest complete commentary on the first gospel that has survived the patristic age. Fifty-eight of his homilies on the Psalms and fifty-five sermons on the Book of Acts have survived. Of the later Quasten says: “...The only complete commentary on Acts that has survived from the first centuries.” About half of his extant homilies are devoted to the epistles of Paul, and his thirty-two homolies on the Epistle to the Romans have been called “the most outstanding patristic commentary on this Epistle and the finest of all his works.” While Chrysostom knew no Heb. and often was inaccurate in his historical references, as Professor Riddle has said, “Where the exegesis deals with the human heart, its motives, its weakness, or with the grace and love of Jesus Christ, there Chrysostom rises and remains the Master in Israel.”

If Chrysostom was the great commentator for the Gr. church, Jerome was the supreme commentator for the Lat. church and ultimately for the Church universal. He has rightly been called Doctor Maximus sacris Scripturis explanandis. His first commentary on Obadiah has not been preserved. His important commentary on Daniel, with many references to works now lost, has recently been tr. into Eng. (1958) by Gleason L. Archer.

Of the gospels, Jerome interpreted only Matthew; of Paul’s epistles he commented only on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon. His last work was on the Book of Ezekiel (see the complete list of Jerome’s works in History and Literature of Christianity from Tertullian to Boethius by Labriolle, p. 537). The great bibliographic work by Jerome on the lives of Biblical commentators, in which he enumerates the writings of 134 authors, has never been tr. into Eng.

Approximately at the same time, but less famous as a commentator, was Theodore of Mopsuestia (a.d. 350-428). Theodore was careful to make a minute study of the context, and paid a great deal of attention to grammar and punctuation and to the aim of the writer he was considering. He shunned the allegorical method. He believed that all of the Psalms were written by David, which forced him into some peculiar interpretations. His commentary on the minor epistles of Paul have been preserved complete in Lat., as well as his works on the minor prophets and on John’s gospel, of which the latter appeared in tr. only in 1940. (For a recent discussion of his works, see the Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. I, pp. 491, 492, 497-510.)

Augustine, the greatest of all the Church Fathers (a.d. 354-430), exercised a greater influence through his theological works, esp. The City of God, than through his commentaries. His first book, written at the age of forty, was a commentary on the early chs. of Genesis. Probably his greatest work of this type, apart from his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, was on the Psalms. He wrote 121 homilies on the Gospel of John and an unfinished commentary on Romans. His attitude to the Scriptures was revealed in a letter to his son: “Such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures that even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else from early boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and talents greater than I have, I would still daily be making progress in discovering their treasures.”

Gregory Nazianzus (a.d. 370-390), Bishop of Sasima and Constantinople wrote on the Creation narrative of Genesis, two books on the Superscriptions of the Psalms, homilies on Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, and other minor pieces, none of which evince much originality.

Fragments of Polychrenius (d. 430) dealing with Job and Ezekiel have come down to us, but there are no traces of his commentaries on Daniel or on the books of the NT. The great Archbishop, Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), wrote an extensive commentary on Isaiah and a large commentary on the minor prophets (later edited by Pusey), and a commentary on John. There are also remains of some of his commentaries on the Psalms and on the epistles of Paul.

Theodoret (a.d. 393-458) wrote on the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, on the twelve minor prophets, on the fourteen epistles of Paul, and some works on Kings and Chronicles. Lightfoot said that his commentaries on St. Paul have been assigned the palm over all patristic expositions of Scripture.

The oldest Gr. commentary on Revelation was written by Oecumenius in the 6th cent.

“Ambrosiaster,” the author of a number of commentaries on the epistles of Paul, has not yet been identified.

The last of the traditional doctors of the church was Pope Gregory the Great (a.d. 540-604), whose commentary on Job exercised a great influence through the Middle Ages. His homilies on the gospels and his other commentaries have not survived.

The commentaries of the Fathers of the Church down to the beginning of the 7th cent. evince a total belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures. As a corollary, they recognized that their own writings were definitely inferior in authority and penetration to the NT. Again, they insisted that the entire Bible belongs to Christian believers, even though the OT is primarily Jewish and concerns Jewish history and law. The writings of the Fathers were uniformly Christocentric. There was a heavy emphasis on allegory, and a deep interest in eschatological themes. Although there were commentaries now lost which included almost all the books of the Bible, those most frequently considered were Genesis, Psalms, the Song of Solomon, the prophetic books, the gospels of Matthew and John, the epistles of Paul, and Revelation. The existence of these commentaries indicates a great passion in the Early Church for Biblical study which exceeded even that for the defense of the Christian faith in the numerous controversies of that period.

2. The Middle Ages. The commentators of the Middle Ages were for the most part not gifted with great originality. Undoubtedly the most important of them between Augustine and the beginning of the 12th cent. was the Venerable Bede (673-735). He devoted his entire life to the study of the Scriptures, and though his works have been carefully studied by numerous scholars, many of them still remain untranslated from the Lat. His commentary on Genesis was taken largely from Basil, Ambrose, and Augustine. He wrote other commentaries on Samuel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and Habakkuk, and in the NT on Mark, Luke, the catholic epistles, and the Apocalypse. It is still true that “a critical edition of...the Biblical work of Bede is still a desideratum.”

As a commentator in the first half of the 12th cent. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) had an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of the Scriptures, and has been designated by some as the last of the Fathers. Farrar has well said, “There was one book of the Bible which left scope for imagination to revel in thoughts which seemed to be innocent because they were supposed to be Scriptural and which gratified those yearnings of the human heart which are too strong and too sacred to be permanently crushed. It was the Song of Solomon.” This was true both for Jewish exegetes and these medieval mystics. Bernard published eighty-six sermons on the Song of Solomon with the threefold interpretation of historical, moral, and mystical.

The monastery at St. Victor was the chief home of medieval mysticism. There Hugo of St. Victor (1097-1141) and Andrew of St. Victor (d. 1175) wrote their mystical interpretations of parts of the Scriptures. The work of Andrew has been rescued from undeserved oblivion by Miss Smalley in her notable Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Andrew wrote extensive commentaries on the Octateuch, frequently quoting from Origen, Augustine, and Jerome, and extensively from his predecessor, Hugo. He wrote also on the major prophetical volumes, the Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes.

At the end of the 12th cent. appeared the first Biblical commentator in Britain since the Venerable Bede. Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote glosses on the Octateuch in which he referred frequently to Andrew of St. Victor, the result of lectures given in the schools at Paris. He wrote also on most of the prophets and on the Song of Solomon.

The most famous of all Biblical writers in the Middle Ages was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), though his theological works were far more extensive, and certainly more influential, than his commentaries. It has been estimated that in his Catena of the Gospels he quoted from twenty-two Gr. and twenty Lat. writers. He wrote commentaries on Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Psalms, Job, and esp. the Pauline epistles, a work extending to more than 700 pages. Because he was under the domination of the idea that all Scriptures had four different meanings, he did not advance an understanding of them despite all of his vast learning.

Nicolas of Lyra was called by Farrar “the Jerome of the fourteenth century.” Of this writer Luther said, “I prefer him to almost all interpreters of the Scriptures,” presumably because Nicolas adhered to a literal interpretation. He was fully acquainted with Jewish expositors. His famous work, Postillae Perpetuae in Universam S. Scripturam, which was the first Biblical commentary to be printed, had a wide influence. It is generally acknowledged that after the death of Nicholas of Lyra “There was no important addition to the study of Scripture till the dawn of the Reformation.”

3. The Reformation. With the coming of the Reformation, this basically important area of Christian lit. underwent an enormous change. Luther and Calvin made a revolutionary return to the study and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures based on their literal meaning and emphasizing the preeminent theme of Christ in both the OT and NT. Martin Luther (1483-1546) once said, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.” In his famous Table Talk he said that at least beginning with the year 1532 he read through the Bible twice every year. Luther insisted on the necessity for grammatical knowledge and on a serious consideration of the times and circumstances in which a book was composed, on the need of faith for understanding the Scriptures and on the preeminence of Christ in both the OT and NT. “The literal sense of Scripture alone is the whole essence of faith and of Christian theology.” Strangely enough, the only book of the NT on which Luther wrote a complete commentary was the Epistle to the Galatians, which became the most frequently reprinted of all Luther’s exegetical works. Because there was so little about Christ in the Epistle of James he called it “an epistle of straw,” and for the same reason, in his early years, he thought the Book of Revelation did not deserve a place in the canon. His commentaries on Genesis and the Psalms are classics of the classical age. G. H. Gilbert is no doubt right in saying, “Although Luther as an expositor was more largely occupied with the Old Testament than with the New, it is obvious that the spirit of the New was more deeply grasped by him than was that of the Old.” Luther’s printed works also include his lectures on part of Romans and part of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Luther rejected the authoritativeness of the Lat. text and worked from the Heb. and the Gr. VSS. In spite of the enormous amount of lit. that has appeared concerning this great Reformer, and in spite of the many trs. of Luther’s exegetical works, there are still a number that have not been tr. out of the original Ger. At present Concordia-Muhlenberg Publishing House is publishing a new tr. of Luther’s works in fifty-five volumes.

The greatest commentator of the Reformation and in some ways the greatest commentator of modern times was John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin published his first commentary on the Epistle to the Romans when he was barely thirty years of age in 1540. Isaiah appeared in 1551; Acts, the following year; Genesis, in 1554. Eng. trs. of Calvin began to appear as early as 1578. Calvin’s works in the Corpus Reformatorium embrace Vols. 23-55. In the epochal fifty-three-volume set of Calvin published by the Calvin Translation Society (1843-1855), forty-three of the fifty-three volumes were taken up with his commentaries. Calvin did not write commentaries on 2 Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ruth, Esther, Nehemiah, Ezra, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and the Book of Revelation. His weakest area of interpretation was eschatology. In his two volumes on Daniel, his long exposition of Daniel’s self-discipline in ch. 1 is no doubt the finest interpretation of this one passage that has ever been written. His discussion of the difficult chronological prophecies of Daniel 8 and 9 involves some strange interpretations which no one today, whatever his eschatological views, would think of accepting. A new tr. of Calvin’s works in forty-five volumes is now in process of publication by Eerdmans.

5. The seventeenth century. Only one commentary from the first half of the 17th cent. deserves mention, that of Joseph Hall (1574-1656). In 1612 he issued his widely used Contemplations on the Old Testament, followed in 1633 by his Contemplations on the New Testament.

Later in the same cent. appeared the famous Critical Commentary by Patrick Lowth in six volumes. The prophetic works were treated by Lowth, and most of the NT by Whitby, and the Book of Revelation by Lowman. In this cent. there was a concentration of what might be called Synoptical Commentaries, beginning with The Critici Sacri, a work in nine volumes published in 1660 written in Lat. It had been preceded in 1657 by the lesser known work of Walton, Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, in six volumes. In the same generation appeared the most famous of all this type of commentary, The Synopsis Criticorum Bibliorum, in five folio volumes (1669-1676) in Lat. by Matthew Poole (1624-1679). It contained the opinions of about 150 scholars. Poole later published Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1683). The work by Poole himself extended only to Isaiah 58. These volumes of Poole were extensively used and recommended by John Wesley, Cotton Mather, Doddrigge, Bishop Tomline, and others. It is said that 3800 sets of the Synopsis were sold. The Banner of Truth Trust has recently published a new edition of Poole’s Commentary in three volumes.

In 1642 Hugo Grotius, the Dutch theologian, published his Annotations. He put great emphasis on philological matters with close adherence to the ecclesiastical tradition, but with a varying repudiation of the inspiration of Holy Scripture.

6. The eighteenth century. The most widely used of all Eng. commentaries appeared first at the beginning of the 18th cent. when Matthew Henry published his Exposition of the Old and New Testaments (1708-1710). Matthew Henry prob. did not write beyond the Book of Acts; the rest of the work was done by men of similar convictions. This commentary has continued to be published for more than two hundred years, and recently a one-volume ed. (1968) of nearly 2,000 pages was issued in which all the repetitions of the commentator have been removed and everything essential in his own words has been retained.

Also at the beginning of the 18th cent. appeared the Family Expositor by Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) in five volumes. The first ed. in six volumes was published in London (1760-1762), and many ed. following included a one-volume, super royal (1825). In 1778 Thomas Scott (1747-1821) published his Holy Bible with Explanatory Notes which went through many edd., the fifth appearing in 1822. It was the first large commentary to be reprinted in the United States from 1808-1819. A famous Calvinistic Baptist preacher, John Gill (1697-1771) published his Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, nine volumes, folio, London, in 1763.

Two outstanding commentaries of that era were published on the continent of Europe: A. A. Calmet’s Commentaire literal sur tous les livres de l’Ancien et du Nouveau Testament, in twenty-three quarto volumes from 1707-1716, and the Gnomon Novi Testamenti of J. A. Bengel in 1742. The Eng. tr. appeared in 1857.

7. The early nineteenth century. Although limited to only one portion of Scripture a valuable work, now almost forgotten, was produced by Edward Greswell: An Exposition of the Parables and of the Other Parts of the Gospels, in six volumes at London (1834-1835). It contains the profoundest study of Matthew 13 that has prob. ever appeared in Eng.

Toward the middle of the cent. began to appear the still valuable commentaries by Henry Alford (1810-1871). His Greek Testament with Critical and Exegetical Commentary (1853-1861) was issued in five volumes. Within ten years it passed through six edd., and recently a corrected ed., bringing the material up to date, was published by Moody Press under the editorship of Dr. Everett Harrison.

In the last half of the cent. the commentaries multiplied. John Eadie’s (d. 1876) works on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Thessalonians are still valuable. An entire series of massive commentaries were published by Macmillan: Bishop Lightfoot (1828-1889) on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon; Bishop Westcott (1825-1901) on John, Ephesians, Hebrews, and the Johannine Epistles. C. J. Ellicott (1819-1905) produced The New Testament Commentary for English Readers in eight volumes, and later the corresponding Old Testament Commentary. Albert Barnes (1798-1870) contributed his Notes in twelve volumes, published in America, which have had a circulation of more than a million copies. It was written progressively from 1832 to 1851, and in 1868 was revised by the author. It has been tr. into a number of languages, and has been twice reprinted in the present generation.

The most widely used and frequently published commentary of this period was the Commentary Critical, Experimental, and Practical on the Old and New Testaments by Robert Jamieson (1802-1880), A. R. Fausset (1821-1910), and David Brown (1803-1897). Fausset and Brown were prolific authors of books that are still valuable. This work was published in 1864-1870 in six volumes, and contains approximately three million words. It has been republished in numerous editions, the last by Eerdmans in 1945. The work by Fausset was esp. valuable.

Several series of commentaries appeared late in the cent. The Speaker’s Commentary, edited by F. C. Cook, was published in ten volumes betwen 1871 and 1881. Parts of it were contributed by some of the leading Biblical scholars of the day, such as R. Payne Smith on Jeremiah, W. Alexander on the Epistles of John, Lee on Revelation, and Westcott on John. It was the outcome of the consultation with several bishops to produce a commentary that would defend the Scriptures against the attacks of prevailing skepticism.

In 1877, under the editorship of Bishop Perowne and A. F. Kirkpatrick, was begun the production of the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges. The Cambridge Greek Testament under the editorship of Bishop Perowne, was begun in 1888, and publication continued into the next cent. Both contained work by experts, and have been widely used. The Cambridge Greek Testament has been partly rewritten in recent years.

The forty-eight volume Expositor’s Bible was begun in 1887. Many of the outstanding divines of the period contributed to it: Dods on Genesis, Chadwick on Exodus, Kellogg on Leviticus, Maclaren on Psalms, George Adam Smith on Isaiah and the Minor Prophets, Dods on John, and Plummer on the pastoral epistles.

The International Critical Commentary, begun in 1895, has never been completed. Most of these volumes are highly technical, but a few of them have proved to be milestones of Biblical interpretation; e.g., Allen on Matthew, Plummer on Luke, R. H. Charles on Revelation, and esp. Sanday and Headlam on Romans. Another work that never received due recognition was the Popular Commentary on the New Testament edited by Philip Schaff in four volumes (1879-1883).

The widely used Pulpit Commentary in 49 volumes, edited by H. D. M. Spence and J. S. Exell (1880-1896) was largely homiletical in purpose. It contained numerous excellent individual works by noted scholars; some of the introductions are superb.

The Expositor’s Greek Testament (1897-1907) was launched at the end of the cent. under the editorship of Robertson Nicoll. It was designed to succeed Alford’s work. A series of short but rich commentaries was issued under the direction of Marcus Dods and Alexander Whyte entitled Handbooks for Bible Classes. The volumes on Hebrews, by Davidson, Acts by Lindsay, and John by Keith are esp. valuable.

Apart from these excellent and widely differing series of commentaries there were innumerable commentaries on separate books of the Bible issued in the last cent. A few of these deserve special mention: on Genesis, R. S. Candlish (1852) and J. G. Murphy (1864); on Leviticus, A. A. Bonar, fifth edition (1866); on Judges, the rare but valuable work by A. R. Fausset; on Job, Samuel Cox (1886); on Ecclesiastes, C. H. Wright (1883); on Isaiah, T. R. Birks (1873); on Ezekiel, A. B. Davidson (1892); and on the minor prophets, a three-volume work by G. C. Findlay (1896).

In the field of the NT we have Ryle’s Notes on the Gospels, Broadus’ Commentary on Matthew, H. B. Swete on Mark in the Macmillan series (1898), and Godet on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. Westcott’s two-volume work on the Gr. text of John was published posthumously. Charles Hodge (1889) published an important commentary on Romans; Delitzsch wrote on Hebrews (1889), and Mayor’s very thorough commentary in Gr., also in the Macmillan series, appeared in 1893. Especially valuable on the Epistles of John were the lectures by R. S. Candlish (1866).

In the last half of the 19th cent. appeared three series of Ger. commentaries that exercised a strong influence in Europe, Great Britain, and America. The first was edited by John Peter Lange (1802-1884). Publication began in 1864, and continued in twenty-two volumes, bearing the title, Theologischehomiletisches Biblewerk. Lange himself wrote Genesis to Numbers, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, John, Romans, and Revelation. It was tr. by a number of scholars, and was edited by Philip Schaff. The notes of some of the American editors are as valuable as the original text; e.g., the notes on John by Schaff and on Revelation by E. R. Craven.

The second was the product of two of the greatest Semitic scholars of their generation, the Commentary on the Old Testament by J. K. F. Keil (1807-1888) and Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890). It has never been completely superseded, and is still being published in an Eng. tr. of fourteen volumes.

In 1829 began the publication of the monumental work by H. W. Meyer (1800-1873), The Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar uber das Neue Testament, containing sixteen volumes, and completed in 1852. It appeared in an Eng. tr. in twenty volumes in 1873, and has been frequently revised. Its treatment of the Biblical text was exhaustive.

8. The twentieth century. In the 20th cent. the proliferation of commentaries on the Bible presents an almost bewildering array of material. The Westminster Press published an excellent series of handbooks by Charles R. Erdman that covered the devotional study of the text. On a larger scale was the eleven-volume work by the late R. C. H. Lenski, written from the Lutheran point of view. The Moffat New Testament Commentary in seventeen volumes was published from 1926 to 1950. The Westminster Commentary Series included some distinguished scholars, represented by Driver’s liberal commentary on Genesis (1926) and Rackham’s superb work on Acts (1906), which was one of the best in its field. The series was never completed for the entire Bible.

The largest cooperative venture in this type of lit. was the Interpreter’s Bible in twelve quarto volumes under the general editorship of G. A. Buttrick, with the assistance of 126 consulting editors and 36 contributing editors, though some served in both capacities. On each book of the Bible is an extensive commentary, accompanied by an expository interpretation of the text. The early volumes were quite liberal in theology and criticism, but some volumes of the NT were in places comparatively conservative.

The editions of Bible commentaries during the last thirty years have been so numerous that prob. the best way to list them is in alphabetical order. The most extensive work of this decade is the Anchor Bible published by Doubleday & Co., under the general editorship of the late W. F. Albright and David N. Freedman. Albright states in its Introduction that “It’s method is to arrive at the meaning of Biblical literature through exact translation and extended exposition and to reconstruct the ancient setting of the Biblical story as well as the circumstances of its transcription and the characteristics of its transcribers.”

In 1962 the Lutterworth Press began their publication of Bible Guides to extend through twenty-two volumes under the general editorship of Wm. Barclay and F. F. Bruce. The series of thirteen volumes known as Black’s New Testament Commentary is identical with the Harper’s New Testament published in America beginning in 1957. Oxford Press began the publication of The Clarendon Bible in 1929. Moody Press issued a small series under the title of Everyman’s Bible Commentary. The John Knox Press is publishing the Layman’s Bible Commentary, with contributors such as Fritsch of Princeton and Filson of McCormick. The Westminster Press is publishing a learned series with the title, The Old Testament Library. The Seventh Day Adventist Bible Commentary first appeared in 1953, with thirty-four contributors, a work that emphasizes archeological studies, and that carries the comments of Ellen G. White at the end of each chapter.

Some briefer commentaries, like the Torch Commentary of Macmillan, edited by J. Marsh and A. Richardson (1960), the Shield Bible Study of Baker Book House, and the 19-volume series of Tyndale Bible Commentaries (1960-) of Eerdmans, edited by R. V. G. Tasker and D. J. Wiseman have also appeared.

9. One-volume commentaries. A large number of useful one-volume commentaries have been made available during this cent. One of the most widely used works of this kind was the Commentary on the Holy Bible by J. R. Dummelow (1909). A. S. Peake, with a number of contributors, issued his Commentary on the Bible in 1920 with the aid of such men as Moffatt, Oesterley, and the Moultons. The SPCK published in 1928 a volume that was highly approved in Anglican circles, A New Commentary on Holy Scripture, edited by Bishop Gore. The Abingdon Bible Commentary was published in 1929. Harper produced in 1932 a Twentieth Century Bible Commentary, revised in 1955. The SPCK in 1952 issued A Concise Bible Commentary of one thousand pages, written entirely by one author, W. K. L. Clarke. The best conservative Bible commentary of the century, The New Bible Commentary, with 140 contributors under the editorship of J. D. Douglas, was sponsored by Inter-Varsity in 1962.

The most important Catholic commentary of this type is the large volume, A Catholic Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (1969). Moody Press issued in 1962 the Wycliffe Bible Commentary under the editorship of C. F. Pfeiffer and Everett F. Harrison. In 1971 Abingdon Press produced the Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible with the assistance of some seventy contributors including two eminent archeological authorities, G. Ernest Wright and J. B. Pritchard.

A number of commentaries were written during the 20th cent. on separate books of the Bible. The list here can be only selective, and the titles are merely listed: on Genesis, Leupold (1942) and the three-volume work in the Devotional Commentary by W. H. Griffith-Thomas; on Deuteronomy, the volume by George Adam Smith in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges; on the Psalms, the work of J. J. S. Perowne (1910), the Roman Catholic work in two volumes by E. J. Kissani (1953-1954), and that of H. C. Leupold (1959); on Daniel, in addition to Montgomery in the ICC there are important volumes by R. H. Charles (1929), E. J. Young (1947), and H. C. Leupold (1949); on the twelve minor prophets, George Adam Smith (1927), and esp. the work of Theo. Laetsch, The Minor Prophets (1956). The work on Zechariah by David Baron (1908) is a classic. In the field of the NT, on Matthew, by Plummer (1909), by G. Campbell Morgan (1929); on Mark by H. B. Swete (1902) and by Vincent Taylor (1955); on Luke, G. Campbell Morgan’s work is among his best, and Geldenhuys’ volume in the NIC is excellent. Commentaries on the Gospel of John are both numerous and important. Among the best are the ICC in two volumes by J. C. Bernard (1928), C. K. Barrett (1955), C. H. Dodd (1953), Wm. Hendriksen (1953), and the most recent issue of the NIC by Leon Morris (1970), a massive volume of 936 pp. which is both comprehensive and conservative.

The best of modern works on Acts is the volume in the NIC by F. F. Bruce. On Romans, the work by Barth, frequently rewritten, was the introduction to his theology (1933); the three-volume work of W. H. Griffith-Thomas in the Devotional Commentary Series (1946) is one of his finest products, and the book on Romans by Nygren, (1952) represents the Swedish school of theology; on James, the work of H. Maynard Smith (1914) is almost unknown, but worthy of reading; and on the Johannine epistles Robert Law (1909) and G. C. Findlay (1955) are useful. Commentaries on Revelation are endless. Probably the two most extensive in this cent. are those of H. B. Swete in the Macmillan series (1911), and of I. T. Beckwith (1919). The most thorough of recent works is that of John Walvoord (1969).

Bibliography Three of the most important bibliographies of commentaries have already been mentioned, esp. the great list in Calmet’s Dictionary of 1732, the long article in McLintock and Strong of 1867 (vol. II, pp. 427-474), and the list in the Dictionary of Theology by Hurst (1895; pp. 71-117). The most thorough treatment of this subject down to the beginning of the 20th cent. is F. W. Farrar’s History of Interpretation (1886). The two massive volumes of James Darling’s Cyclopedia Bibliographica (1854-1859) contained in Vol. I an alphabetical list of authors and in Vol. II a topical list of subjects. W. E. Sonnenschein’s Best Books, second edition, 1891, Part I, pp. 80-114, contains a valuable catalog of commentaries. The most extensive article on commentaries in the 20th cent. is by J. Orr (1915) in ISBE, Vol. II, pp. 680-684.

For the early period of the Church see The History and Literature of Christianity from Tertullian to Boethius (1925). On the medieval period, Dr. B. Smalley’s Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (1941) is unequalled. Others containing some material on this subject are: G. H. Gilbert, Interpretation of the Bible (1908); E. C. Blackman, Biblical Interpretation (1957); and J. D. Wood, The Interpretation of the Bible (1958). There are also valuable discussions of commentaries in various chapters of the scholarly Cambridge History of the Bible (3 vols., 1963-1970). For a list of Jewish commentaries one might consult Jewish Biblical Commentaries by W. Resenau (1906).

A good conservative list of commentaries may be found in A Guide to Christian Reading published by the Inter-Varsity Fellowship of London (second edition, 1961). Several seminaries in America have issued bibliographies of Biblical and theological lit., one of the best of which is A Bibliography of Bible Study by Princeton (1960). The latest survey of commentaries is in the Bulletin of the Theological Students’ Fellowship (London, Spring and Fall, 1970).