Syhu13

This is the greatest Proverbs commentary out there.

This one is my favorite commentary on Revelation. I actually prefer this over Beale’s, simply because as a historic premil guy, I agree with Osborne more. But also, Osborne gives various interpretations, and then gives his conclusion for what he thinks is best. I really like this approach because if I do find myself unconvinced by a particular take, I can go look up other authors and read up on them. It is quite a manageable commentary for a book as complex and long as Revelation. The uninitiated will appreciate both the breath and accessibility of Osborne’s analysis.

This is the best idealist interpretation of Revelation, hands down. It should be the gold standard for thoroughness. The level of detail is remarkable. Even though I don’t hold to an idealist framework personally, the hermeneutical methods employed to get there is respectable, and invaluable, for any student, layman, or pastor. GB is a master interpreter. He also has an abridged version, which spares many of technical analysis and just gives you the conclusions (it is still a few hundred pages long though). For those who want an easier read, I find it a viable substitute.

First, let me say that I love TL’s work overall (his Song of Songs is my go-to commentary), though I don’t agree with him on all things (which applies to everyone). However, that tropes surely exhausts itself at some time when disagreement reaches such a substantive degree as in this book. I cannot, in good conscience, give this a high rating — the three stars is for his survey of authorship, dating, and exhaustive exegesis of individual verses. While his intelligence is obvious, and his research quite meticulous (esp. his work with comparing the genre of this work to ancient Mesopotamian “fictional autobiographies”, which he cites copiously in the work itself), the basic interpretive framework of Ecclesiastes renders the entire project useless. TL essentially frames the book as an extended quote by a pessimistic skeptic with a narratival parenthesis in first and last half of ch.1 and 12 respectively. Any normative theology must be found in the bookends, not the bulk of the treatise. And thus, 90% + of the book is rendered practically useless. The quote is essential akin to Job’s friends speech in that book, which is God’s word in the sense that its words are in the Bible, but cannot be taken seriously and applied at face value. I have many disagreements along the way to get to this conclusion, but I’ll just settle for this one: Eccl.12:9 Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. 10 The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. 11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. The narrator (whom TL even acknowledges to have penned these verses) explicitly affirms the Qohelet’s teachings to be true, normative, and from one Shepherd (God himself). So even by his own standard, TL contradicts his own position. There can be no discontinuity between the Qohelet and the narrator. The narrator himself disallows this. So either the narrator is correct and so is Qohelet, or Qohelet is wrong and so too the narrator. But you cannot have it both ways. As great of a scholar TL is, this is such a basic and elementary error I cannot see how anyone can countenance this. Interpreting the Bible is an art, but it is also a science. There is an objective right and wrong. If a student in a math class gave the wrong answer to a question, he cannot get a high mark, no matter how much work he put in. At a certain point, a take is so strained that it needs to be judged by its content itself. How there can be folks who give it a 5 star, yet admit disagreement on such a fundamental issue as the narratively framework befuddles me.