Today, Thursday, is the one day of the week I do not teach. So, it is called my “sanity day.” I get a chance to work on some conference papers and articles, and even (hopefully) to do some blogging. So here I am. And, an added bonus, there was a large package from Eerdmans today. What could it be? Was it several books?
It was J. Ramsey-Michaels’ NICNT on the Gospel of John. As some of you know, I will be teaching John next summer at Asbury and so I am pleased to have another good resource.
A detailed review will be coming in time, but here are some first impressions.
1. It is HUGE – a whopping 1094 pp. (Moo’s Romans is nearly 100 pages shorter)
2. This commentary is 17 years in the making!
3. He mentions,regarding his influences in his Johannine commentary preparation, “To my surprise I found Rudolf Bultmann’s commentary the most useful of all, a work widely admired for all the wrong reasons” (p. xi)
4. Approach: on the obsession with determining the “background” of 4G: “”Background,” to my mind, is better assessed in relation to particular passages than in generalities” (xi).
5. The introduction is intentionally brief (about 40 pages).
6. I read a sampling of the commentary and I was impressed at some of the insights that Michaels’ found, particularly regarding 2:19-21. He seems to be particularly good at literary analysis and the logic of the flow of the text.
More to come!
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