DrRobert

Having enjoyed Block's commentary on Ezekiel in the same series, I was disappointed to find this on Isaiah such extremely hard work. If you want a study of textual variants, disputed authorships and scholarly controversies, this may be for you (although somewhat out of date). But if you want a warm, encouraging, challenging commentary that helps you understand the dilemmas, choices, fear and faith of Isaiah and his contemporaries, and which strengthens your trust in God, then Barry Webb's BST volume is much more helpful. We wait eagerly for the forthcoming volume on Isaiah by Peter Gentry in the Zondervan Exegetical commentary series.

This is a literary analysis, not a commentary. A lot of space is wasted on the analysis of textual structures. Studying Lukan narrative we are kept at arm's length from the real people and circumstances that Luke describes. What were the hopes, fears, burdens and expectations of the men and women who encountered Jesus? How did they each respond to him? What were their personal circumstances - their spiritual, cultural, social, psychological and historical context? We have no help with this. In the cleansing of the leper, for example, we learn nothing about leprosy. In the healing of the paralysed man who came through the roof we are not shown how anyone felt about anything. The analysis of co-text, inter-text, narrative structures etc. leaves the reader with very little fresh insight or encouragement. A few years ago it was fashionable to focus on the people reading the text, now on the person writing the text. Perhaps soon we will rediscover the people actually in the text and study their situation and experience and see what it meant for them.