Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
New Testament scholar and professor David L. Turner offers a substantive yet highly accessible commentary on Matthew in this latest addition to the BECNT series. With extensive research and thoughtful chapter-by-chapter exegesis, Turner leads readers through all aspects of the Gospel of Matthew--sociological, historical, and theological--to help them better understand and explain this key New Testament book. He also includes important insights into the Jewish background of this Gospel. As with all BECNT volumes, Matthew features the author's detailed interaction with the Greek text. This commentary admirably achieves the dual aims of the series--academic sophistication with pastoral sensitivity and accessibility--making it a useful tool for students, professors, and pastors. The user-friendly design includes shaded-text chapter introductions summarizing the key themes of each thought unit.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Brevity yet Comprehensive
Customer Rating:
The size (692 pages; the bibliography and the indexes are not included) tells us about the terseness of the commentary but not the lack of clarity. Every paragraph is straight to the point without diffusion. Every discussion has significance, not only serving the purpose of delivering information. I enjoyed much of reading this form of presentation: terse yet unambiguous.
This is also not a commentary of commentaries, hence the brevity. However, he does well in quoting others, such that the commentary is neither mostly a pile of arguments about others' opinion nor only a gathering of others' view. The way he summarizes other's argument is well balanced. He is really writing a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. This work is brief yet comprehensive.
The other concern in writing a commentary of the Gospels is that we have to treat each Gospel in its own right, which means that we are not supposed to do a synoptic comparison in order to gain the whole picture. I believe that the author has done it well. But sometimes such comparison is justified, because the differences will show us the uniqueness of each Gospel. In this point, I found out that the author tends to do only the first part, but offers no explanation of the differences so as to highlight its distinctiveness. (see, for instance, p. 108 about the difference of Matthew 3:3, compared with the other Gospels, in quoting the OT; others like pp.124, 129 etc.)
When commenting on a verb, the author emphasizes the implication of the Greek tense, which makes me a little uneasy about it. (Surprisingly, this is rarely found at the second half or even the last two third of the commentary) For instance, in commenting on 3:5-6 (p. 109) he writes, "The imperfect verbs exeporeueto (were going out) and ebaptizonto (were being baptized) indicate that this response was widespread and regular." (I omit the Greek words) I am wondering, does "imperfect" indicate the widespread and regularity of the verbs or is it the context that requires so? In another sense, I will agree with some of the conclusions, but not the reason. I may have such an understanding due to the fact that I am more influenced by the Aspect Theory rather than traditional grammatical analysis. But for sure, the latter approach is still a common practice. This, however, won't affect me in appreciating this commentary due to many other strengths.
Select button not working? 
