New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition

Rating:
Summary: Still the best one volume Bible commentary
Review: First published in 1953, the New Bible Commentary has been revised and updated 4 times. It has been and still is, the best one volume Bible commentary available. To cover all 66 books of the bible means that some detail must be sacrificed, but the authors capture the flow of the argument in each book well, and also have time to discuss important and controversial issues.

Many of the articles are written by people with best-selling full-length commentaries on the books they were assigned. So you get G J Wenham on Genesis and Peter O'Brien on Colossians, for example.

Highly recommended.

If you would like this book at a bargain price, with 17 other helpful books, including the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, Sinclair Ferguson's New Dictionary of Theology, the New Bible Dictionary and the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Amazon also sells the Essential IVP Reference Collection CD ROM.

Rating:
Summary: NBC, third edition is better.
Review: I really do like New Bible Commentary (NBC) for years. It has been my favorite one volume commentary thus far. So naturally, I was excited when they decided to update (or revise) the 3rd edition of NBC to 21st century edition. But when I got it, I was little disappointed. Compare to the previous edition, it lacked the devotional and spiritual emphasis. In review:
1. This NBC is more updated due to recent archaelogical findings and newer intepretations.
2. NIV version of the Bible has been used as main text. This can be pro or con depending on individual's preference.
3. Type-setting is actually more bothersome to the eyes than the previous edition.
4. While it is updated in scholastic area, but it has lost the devotional character of the 3rd edition.

I gave away my 21st century edition, because I still use the 3rd edition. Since the 3rd edition is out-of-print, you have to find it in used books. Amazon.com actually carries sellers who sell used NBC.

Rating:
Summary: The best one-volume commentary on the market
Review: I refer to this commentary all the time in my study; both devotional and for sermon prep. You would be hard-pressed to find a finer collection of today's evangelical scholars/commentators as is assembled here. Each book of the Bible is given thorough treatment in lay language by a scholar who has immersed himself in that book for years. This is money very well-spent. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The best one-volume commentary on the market
Review: I refer to this commentary all the time in my study; both devotional and for sermon prep. You would be hard-pressed to find a finer collection of today's evangelical scholars/commentators as is assembled here. Each book of the Bible is given thorough treatment in lay language by a scholar who has immersed himself in that book for years. This is money very well-spent. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Really Useful
Review: I was given this commentary as a gift fairly recently, and it has already proved to be very useful. My nascent theological library includes more detailed commentaries on a few of the more prominent NT books; but that doesn't help me when I come across a verse in Hosea that I find really puzzling. This Bible commentary does. The articles it includes are also nice, factual overviews. In short, this is a really handy reference from some very prominent Evangelical scholars. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Really Useful
Review: I was given this commentary as a gift fairly recently, and it has already proved to be very useful. My nascent theological library includes more detailed commentaries on a few of the more prominent NT books; but that doesn't help me when I come across a verse in Hosea that I find really puzzling. This Bible commentary does. The articles it includes are also nice, factual overviews. In short, this is a really handy reference from some very prominent Evangelical scholars. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: THE one-volume commentary, simply brilliant.
Review: Unless you have a commentary on every book of the bible including Obadiah and Esther just for general life you need a commentary that covers the whole bible. They have their disadvantages and advantages because of their size but every Christian should have one. A good bible and the new bible commentary are the basics you need.

This is the best one-volume commentary by far (in the UK, at least, nobody even considers buying another), with an stunning list of evangelical contributors. Purposely concentrates on the flow of a text, which is always sensible, especially when space is so limited, as it inevitably is with just one volume. Most of the New Testament is verse by verse and in the OT bigger chunks are taken at once. The scholarship is very up to date and they rarely dodge difficult questions, although as would be expected they don't have enough space to be thorough. There is, however, so much information in this book that it is worth several times the list price. There are a few articles with titles such as: 'the Pentateuch', 'reading the letters', 'approaching the bible' etc. which are all very good, and all the books have introductions dealing with authorship, date, etc. The editors also recommend single commentaries for each book of varying difficulty which is very useful when you need to have a commentary with more detail than any one-volume can supply.

Please, for the sake of your spiritual growth, buy this book, and now not tomorrow.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: Widely regarded in Sydney circles as THE one-volume commentary on the Bible, it is no surprise that this commentary is an excellent one. Bringing together some of the best evangelical scholars for each of the books means that the commentary is generally first-rate.
Most of the authors contributions represent a condensed version of their other writings (for example, Guthrie on The Pastoral Letters appears to be based somewhat on his Tyndale commentary) providing an excellent intro to the book at hand.
Entries on Approaching the Bible, Biblical History, The Pentateuch, Apocrypha, Reading the gospels and Reading the letters gives an introduction to wider issues in reading the bible that may not be examined in a commentary on a specific book of the Bible.
All in all, well worth the investment. Highly recommended.