First Peter - Lorin

II. Commentaries
Commentaries come in all kinds of strips and colors, some good and some terrible. For a detailed discussion
of different types of commentaries go to my online discussion, “Explanation of Commentaries” (http://
cranfordville.com/NT-BiblioComExp.html) in the “Annotated Bibliography” section of cranfordville.com. One should
always remember that commentaries are secondary sources of information about the text, never primary.
Consequently a combination of multiple commentaries should be consulted rather than depending on one or
two Interpretations of the scripture text.
Commentaries in the modern era will represent a variety of perspectives. The theological assumptions
about the nature of the scripture text will reflect the full range of views from one end to the other of theological
understanding of the Bible. More importantly, however, is the trend over the past century of commentary
writing. Most commentary publishers in today’s highly competitive market look for a distinctive contribution
niche for their publications before they are willing to invest the millions of dollars necessary to produce a set
of commentaries. For good or evil, the sales market exerts tremendous influence globally over the publishing
of commentaries in the contemporary world. One of the more common angles of commentary production
recently has been the adoption of a distinctive set of interpretative guidelines for exegeting the scripture text.
With the explosion of alternative methods of Interpretation over the past century entire sets of commentaries
now will tend to reflect the dominance of an interpretive method, e.g., a socio-literary reading of biblical
texts.
The value of these different approaches in today’s market is that each volume or each commentary set
will provide distinctive understanding of the scripture text that can be gleaned from reading the text a certain
way. Typically the publisher will contract with scholars who have established skills in using the adopted methodology
by the series. Each approach will be limited in that no single method of interpreting biblical texts can
glean all the insights present in sacred scripture.
Also important is what the commentary seeks to accomplish. Commentaries have very different objectives
that range all the way from devotional goals to very technical studies of the biblical text. Between these
goals will fall expositional commentaries that are more detailed but only mildly technical. More complex will
be the exegetical commentary. The visible difference between these two can usually be seen in whether or
not the Hebrew and Greek texts are printed in the original languages or not.
Speciality commentaries will fall into this range at different points, depending on their complexity. These
kinds of commentaries include homiletical commentaries, theological commentaries, biblical background
commentaries, and a host of others. Such commentaries are targeting a specific readership such a preachers
needing sources of sermon ideas with the homiletical commentary.
Also contained in the above range of commentary types with be a shift in interpretive focus. The devotional
commentary will usually center on contemporary application of scripture texts to the life of the modern reader.
The technical commentaries will tend to focus dominantly, if not exclusively, on the historical meaning of the
scripture passage with minimal attempt to apply that meaning to today’s world.
Listed below is a wide range of different types of commentaries on First Peter.
a. Single Volume Commentaries
Many commentaries are very summary in nature and will contain only a single volume that covers either
the entire Christian Bible or one or the other testaments. Because of very limited space for each document
in the Bible, the comments will be very brief and usually of a summary nature that just touches on the major
emphasis of a document or of passages inside each biblical document. Although such secondary sources will
seldom answer questions arising from detailed text study, they will provide wholistic summations of the contents
of individual scripture documents. Often in the Interpreting process, such a wholistic picture is important
to gain in order to have a context for detailed understanding of specific passages inside the document.
Such commentaries will tend to follow one of two major directions. First, they will seek to summarize the
major themes of a biblical document, as they reflect the writer’s assessment of these themes. Or, second,
they will seek to summarize the history of the Interpretation of the biblical document, so that the reader will
better grasp the interpretative alternatives of the scripture text as they have emerged over the centuries of
Interpretation. Both types of commentaries have merit for the student of the Bible.
Bible Study: Page 380