D. A. Carson

Highly respected New Testament scholar D. A. Carson provides students and pastors with expert guidance on choosing a commentary for any book of the New Testament. The seventh edition has been updated to assess the most recently published commentaries. Carson examines sets, one-volume commentaries, and New Testament introductions and theologies, offering evaluative comments on the available offerings for each New Testament book. This is an essential guide to building a reference library.

New Testament Commentary Survey

Jonathan Tysick

If you consider yourself a conservative evangelical with a reformed bent you will love this book. While helpful, it's due for another edition as there have been major commentaries (even new series!) released since 2013. Carson also endorses commentaries that have subsequently been taken out of print due to plagiarism. For an up to date, more moderate but less entertaining (see below) similar work see Nijay Gupta's 2020 commentary guide with Lexham.

Carson says "I prefer to be a shade too trenchant than a good deal too bland," and he is indeed blunt, to the reader's entertainment (although I'd hate to read such sharp critique of my work). Some of my favourite laugh-out-loud phrases:

"[so and so's book] should have been put out to pasture a long time ago"
"[such and such series] is not much more than a major disappointment"
"most of the work was seriously dated before it went to press"
"[book series] is a disappointing monument to misplaced energy"
"one would have to be as rich as Croesus to consider [a certain commentary]"
"tends toward viewpoints characterized by eccentric independence"
"an exercise in brilliantly phrased reductionism"
"so odd I'm uncertain why it was published" 
"his reconstruction of the church situation is so quirky that it cannot be recommended except to readers devoted to quirkiness"
"one wonders how the editor [of the series] let [the author] get away with...superficial treatment"
"[the author] had a bad year"
"[the author] makes Paul sound like a twit"
"not up to the standards one expects from her", 
"an erudite disappointment...his vocabulary is impressive, but not much else is"
"interspersed with personal agendas that seem more interested in scoring points than in listening to the text"
"slender in both volume and substance" 
"the reader's sanctification must endure the irritating format of this series"
"a marked tendency to dance to agendas other than Paul's" 
"an exercise in frustration"
"[the commentary] is mercifully out of print"

New Testament Commentary Survey

Reviews