International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament

OVERVIEW
The International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament (IECOT) aims to provide a multi-perspectival interpretation of the books of the Old Testament to a broad, international audience of scholars, laypeople and pastors. Commentaries too often reflect the fragmented character of contemporary biblical scholarship, where different geographical or methodological sub-groups of scholars pursue specific methodologies and theories with little engagement of alternative approaches. This series, published in English and German editions, brings together editors and authors from North America, Europe, and Israel with multiple exegetical perspectives.

From the outset of the series, the goal has been to produce commentaries that attend to three criteria: international, ecumenical, and contemporary.

• The international character is reflected in the composition of an editorial board with members from six countries and commentators representing an even broader diversity of scholarly contexts from North America, Europe, and Israel. Additionally, all volumes will appear in both English and German. This marks the first time in the history of bible commentaries that both a German and an English version are being edited simultaneously. (NOTE Both volumes may not be published at the exact same time, but the delay between the respective original and its translated version will not exceed two years.)
• The ecumenical dimension is reflected in at least two ways. First, both the editorial board and the list of authors includes scholars with a variety of religious perspectives, both Christian and Jewish. Second, the commentary series not only includes volumes on books in the Jewish Tanakh/Protestant Old Testament, but also other books recognized as canonical parts of the Old Testament by diverse Christian confessions (i.e., the deuterocanonical books).
• The contemporary natured is exhibited in one central distinguishing feature of this series, namely, its attempt to bring together two broad families of perspectives in analysis of biblical books. These perspectives are often described as “synchronic” and “diachronic,” and are all too often understood as incompatible with each other. The IECOT aims to bring synchronic and diachronic methods into closer alignment, allowing these approaches to work in a complementary and mutually-informative rather than antagonistic manner.

Of course, each biblical book is different, and each author or team of authors has different ideas of how to incorporate these perspectives into the commentary. The authors will present their ideas in the introduction to each volume. In addition, each author will highlight specific contemporary methodological and hermeneutical perspectives (e.g., gender-critical, liberation-theological, reception-historical, social-historical) appropriate to their own strength and to the biblical book being interpreted. The result will be a series of volumes that display a range of ways that various methodologies and discourses can be integrated into the interpretation of the diverse books of the Old Testament.

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EDITORIAL BOARD

• Walter Dietrich (University of Bern)
• David M. Carr (Union Theological Seminary)
• Adele Berlin (University of Maryland)
• Erhard Blum (University of Tübingen)
• Irmtraud Fischer (University of Graz)
• Shimon Health (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Walter Groß (University of Tübingen)
• Gary Knoppers† (University of Notre Dame)
• Bernard M. Levinson (University of Minnesota)
• Ed Noort (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
• Helmut Utzschneider (Augustana University in Neuendettelsau)
• Beate Ego (University of Bochum)

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ADDITIONAL INFO
For the IECOT series website, click here. For the list of volumes and commentary assignments, click here. For the publisher's (Kohlhammer) catalog of volumes in English, click here, and for the catalog of volumes in German, click here.