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Theological Bible Commentary

Author:	Gail R O?Day and David L Petersen (Editors)
Published By:	Westminster John Knox ((distributed in the UK by Alban Books of Edinburgh))
Pages:	478
Price:	£32.99
ISBN:	9 780664 227111

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This commentary describes itself as a resource that “puts the best of scholarship in conversation with the theological claims of the biblical texts”. It offers reflections on each of the books of both Old and New Testament and in a volume of this size can only do so in a relatively cursory way - Micah for instance has two pages and Colossians five. Each of the authors (bar one - Katharine Dell) is a university teacher in the United States or Canada.

Inevitably in a work of this sort, there is considerable variety in the treatment of the biblical text, and the introduction presents this as a strength of the volume, suggesting that, “careful literary analysis, acute attention to historical and social issues, concern for gender, ethnicity and other dimensions of social location, concern for the formation of biblical literature and its traditions can all yield theological insights.”

While that is undoubtedly true, I cannot see this volume being a first or second port of call for most busy ministers. I was intrigued by the section on Jeremiah for instance, which is written from a radical feminist perspective with a critique of the negative feminine images in Jeremiah’s conceptual world. It did send me back to look at Jeremiah again, but that has never been at the forefront of my thinking about the book. On the other hand, I valued the treatment of Mark’s gospel as an oral narrative to be performed, heard and responded to, so that Mark’s audience can “continue the gospel story in its life, in its communities, and in the face of the powers-that-be in its world”. I was also pleased to see that the pages on Revelation focus on the problem for the seven churches not firstly being persecution under Domitian, but rather the more insidious dangers of accommodation to the cult of the Empire.

Commentary on each book ends with a short bibliography of four or five titles, although many of these are not easily accessible to a British readership. When (and I use that word deliberately) browsing in a theological library, this would be an interesting book to take down and see what it has to say on a given book of the Bible. I’m not sure that it will find its way on to the shelves of many in pastoral ministry.