BestCommentaries.com Blog

Derek Thomas, Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary,  and John Tweeddale published the 2nd edition of The Essential Commentaries for a Preacher’s Library in 2006. Thomas and Tweeddale have generously allow their “Recommended” books to be included in BestCommentaries.com. From my review of their work:

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For each book of the Bible, Thomas categorizes books into “Recommended” (usually 2-4 books), “Consider” (as many as 20) and “Books to be considered for sermon preparation” (another 10-20).
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The book is very user-friendly and well laid out. Unlike Glynn who only bolds recommended works, Thomas’ annotations are helpful. The comments are not as lengthy or thorough as Carson, Longman, or Rosscup, but the emphasis on older commentaries and commentaries useful for preaching and the fact that this work covers the entire Bible plus some theological works makes this inexpensive book very valuable and unique.

Their work is one of the least expensive and most useful commentary reference books available. We are extremely glad to have their thoughts included on the site.

Here are links to their information

• All Reviews by Thomas and Tweeddale (note there are many, many more in the actual publication)
• Old Testament Recommendations
• New Testament Recommendations

For all you Reformed folks out there (and anyone who wants to buy from an awesome Christian book store), I've added links to Westminster Bookstore. The "Best of Best Commentaries" page, now looks like this:

Notice the red Westminster icon (as well as the blue Logos icon) noting where the book is available.

There are supposedly 100s of forthcoming commentaries in various series by various authors, but the accuracy of this somewhat dubious. Authors often commit to projects they cannot complete due to a variety of circumstances.

An example is the Word Biblical Commentary on 1 Corinthians. It has an ISBN number (084990238X), but there are conflicting reports as to who is actually writing it and when:

• Valore Books - E. Margaret Howe
• Nelson Books - Judith Gundry-Volf (July 2008) [this is the publisher]
• Nelson Books - Linda Belleville (July 2009) [another page from the publisher]
• Amazon - Linda Belleville (3/2007)
• Linda Belleville's personal page - Linda Belleville
• Andrew Clarke's personal page - Andrew Clarke

So, various sites list at least four different authors,and even the publisher doesn't seem to be sure. A close personal correspondent of Dr. Clarke says that he is in fact working on it and is surprised that Thomas Nelson and Linda Belleville still have outdated information. For now, I have both Clarke and Belville listed to cover the bases, but hopefully there will be some clarity down the line.

Last week, Dan Pritchett from Logos emailed to suggest that I add links for books which are available in Logos' Libronix product. The guys at Logos sent over the links and now an icon appears next to any books which are available in Logos.

Here's a screen shot of the Genesis page:

And here's the popular "Best of Best Commentaries" page:

In the future, I'll continue to add links to stores and other means of accessing books when they become available.