H. D. M. Spence (1836–1917)

This is the first volume of a set of 52 volumes of commentaries covering both the Old and New Testament. This volume includes an extensive 94 page introduction to The Old Testament and the Pentatuech. Then, as an illustration of how comprehensive all of these volumes are, 543 pages are devoted to the book of Genesis.

The structure of the commentary is somewhat unique. There is the commentary itself, or the "exposition" as it is called in this work. This is what you would normally expect from a commentary, except perhaps more scholarly -- including historical and cultural contexts, cross-references to other Biblical and classical text, references to Greek and other ancient text, etc.

Following the "exposition" is a section of "homiletics", apparently with the intent of providing topics and other guidance for those who would preach about a particular segment of text. Finally, there are excerpts from the actual homilies of various authors (preachers).

Overall, the serious student of the bible will find here a work that, although somewhat dated in some respects, is a very scholarly approach to Genesis.

John Hornbeck, GHTC Library, June 2008… (altro)