Luke

Carson says Bock’s comprehensive treatment of Luke’s Gospel is “well-written and intelligent.” Bock gives a careful exposition of the Greek in its historical context, and he engages with all the scholarly questions about Luke’s historicity and sources. This set is the standard for serious students with knowledge of the original language. [Full Review]

A two-volume tour de force by arguably the preeminent Lukan scholar in the world. If you’re serious about studying this gospel, then you need this set. The layout of the BECNT series is easy to use, which makes this commentary great for those looking for both technical discussion and exposition. Bock discusses the Greek often, but it never feels unnecessary. He also does a great job of drawing out the OT implications of Luke’s gospel. [Full Review]

Fantastic resource. [Full Review]

Bock’s commentary on Luke was one of the first offerings in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament and is an extremely useful commentary for preaching and teaching. Each section begins with a few paragraphs of summary followed by a section entitled “Sources and Historicity.” Here Bock deals with “historical Jesus” issues as well as how Luke handled his sources (Mark, Q, “special sources.”) These sections are not long, and I find his comments on Luke as a historian helpful. After the sources is the exegesis proper, beginning with fresh translation of the text. Greek words and phrases appear with transliteration. More technical matters are relegated to the “additional notes.” Each section concludes with a “summary,” drawing out the contribution of the pericope for the overall theology of Luke. I have used several volumes in this series and have found them stimulating, but I find myself frustrated with the combination of in-text citations and footnotes. While it is not particularly distracting, I do not like the use of gray-scale boxes behind some sections of the text.

After you do your initial reading of and prayer through the text, this is probably the best place to go first. Read my full review (and why I say the above) at the link. [Full Review]

Massive volumes don't always have to be splendid work. You have two big volumes in size in your hands with the work of Bock on Luke. But, it's not as good as Bovon or Fitzmyer in my eyes. The historical value of events in Luke gets a lot of attention, but it reduces the attention on literary or historical-critical points and also a comparison with the other synoptics is reduced by it. Already mentioned below is his tendency to name a lot of opinions of authors on the text, and then 'picking one out' as his own opinion. It's certainly a good work by Bock, but it lacks depth in the whole line of exegetical approaches.

Hefty work, and full of useful stuff but I didn't feel like it lived up to the hype given it to previous reviewers. Can't put my finger on the reason, but somehow felt like I should have gotten more out of it based on the size of the books. Solid, if unspectacular.

The clear and unanimous leader in the field is this 2,100-page two-volume set by Darrell Bock. It receives accolades for being thorough but not dense, for being conservative, and for having plenty of theological discussion that makes it especially useful for sermon preparation. D.A. Carson praises the volumes for being “recent, comprehensive, well written, and intelligent.” Do note that Bock has written two other volumes on Luke but that if you own these, you will not need the others. [Full Review]

The gospel of Luke has much to say to us today. Our diversity can divide and destroy us and we are quick to fight for our individual identities as a culture. The book of Luke discusses these problems and prejudices through Jesus. The life of Jesus was God-breathed and made the disctinction between Jew and Gentile moot. Luke’s gospel’s central application is that God,through the incarnation of Jesus, can pull a fractious world together. Darrell Bock (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is coeditor of a contributor to Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church, and the author of a two-volume commentary on Luke. [Full Review]

For a dissenting view. I was greatly disappointed in this commentary on Luke. Bigger is not necessarily better. Bock lists lots of views of previous commentators and acts as a sort of judge or referee. Though it is not necessarily wrong to do this it makes reading very burdensome after a while. Yes, there are lots of details here so perhaps for more in depth study one will find helpful information, but on a whole I found much more insight on the passage as a whole from shorter commentaries like Tiede and Miller. Indeed, even with all this information, I often felt like some of the main or key issues of the text were left unaddressed. I am still waiting for a longer commentary which is really great on the book of Luke. For this one, however, I found longer is not better.

Yes, the second one I consult is Darrell Bock. These two scholars are my contemporaries and friends and have been involved in Lukan studies their entire careers. [Full Review]

Bock is a preeminent scholar on Luke. These two gigantic commentaries are to be preferred to Marshall. There is a great deal of theological comment in these volumes which make them very useful for sermon preparation. However, Bock does not always come down on one side in issues of controversy. He is a progressive dispensationalist.

My first choice, hands down, is Darrell Bock's BECNT (1994, 1996). It's fairly comprehensive, well-reasoned, easy to read, aware of all the scholarship, and generally conservative. He handles theology more fully than most detailed commentaries (e.g. Marshall, Fitzmyer, Nolland below) and spends a little time on what Luke would have wanted us to take away from the text, which you won't get in very many academic commentaries. This commentary is strong on the flow of argument, taking larger blocks of text to comment on and explicitly thinking in terms of the larger flow at various points, although this usually stops short of what many think of as literary analysis (on which several commentaries below are very strong, sometimes at the expense of everything Bock does well). He does interact a little with Robert Tannehill's work in that area in volume 2, but it's still not a lot. Bock has also written the Acts commentary in this series, but his work on Luke is much more detailed, filling up two volumes, both bigger than the Acts volume. Bock is well-known for his work countering the claims of radicals and skeptics who write about the life of Jesus with the kind of scholarship liked by the History Channel. He's also been very influential in developing and defending progressive dispensationalism, a view that I think is still a little too far in the direction of dispensationalism but is really a different animal and is much more defensible than traditional dispensationalism. I place him solidly in the conservative evangelical camp, and he's taken some criticism for this in reviews, mainly from people who assume historicity and theological agendas are incompatible, something Bock spends a great deal of time arguing against. His scholarship is top-notch. If he's weak anywhere, it's in favoring commentaries over journal articles. Bock has also written the IVPNTC and NIVAC volumes on Luke, but I don't think there's any need to look at the shorter two if you have the BECNT, which you should. [Full Review]

One of the best available commentaries on the Gospel of Luke is the massive two-volume set by Darrell L. Bock, a professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. Weighing in at over 2,100 total pages, this commentary is certainly comprehensive. Thankfully, it is also clear. Most readers will also find the layout of the Baker Exegetical series very reader friendly. [Full Review]

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