What commentaries are best?

Larry,

What I'm rapidly discovering in my time on this board is that there is a huge gulf between clergy who did their graduate and professional work at mainstream Christian or baptist seminaries and those who did it at conservative evangelical ones. On another thread, when I named preachers like John Claypool and Fredereic Buechner, the respondents didn't know who I was talking about.

In answer to your concerns that I am "uninformed" on these issues, I think it might be more accurate to say that my years of formal theological training were based on a sufficiently different paradigm that it takes some effort for us to find a common ground for dialogue. I do hold an earned M.Div. from a baptist seminary, and did additional graduate work in Rhetoric and Language. Yes, I read constantly and widely.

Nevertheless, I didn't recognize a single one of the names you mentioned.

 

Joshua,
You say you hold an M.Div., yet do not recognize Leon Morris, D.A. Carson, James M. Boice, or Merrill Tenney? What about Bruce Metzeger, F.F. Bruce, or Carl F.H. Henry, who wrote the introductory material? And the sources quoted you haven't heard of, such as Stott, Calvin, et.al.? This isn't one of those M.Div degrees-by-mail from a school out of "Sword of the Lord" is it?
Just kidding around. All joking aside, this is a bit like saying someone's a football fan but never heard of the Dallas Cowboys. Or a golf fan never hearing of Arnold Palmer or Tiger Woods. If you do not know these names, maybe you are not as widely read as you think. I'd broaden my horizons a bit and take in some of these works. Failure to do so is a disservice to your intellect and most of all to the people to whom you minister.

 

Metzger I of course know, and Bruce I recognize although I have looked at any of his material in years.

No, it was a rigorous M.Div. at Mercer, with considerable work in biblical studies and in particular literary criticism. All I can say in my defense is that there seem to be two totally different bodies of scholarship between "higher criticism" baptists and "interrantist" baptists.

Joshua