There is an interesting discussion going on over at the blog Singing in the Reign about the dating of the Pastoral Epistles. This is somewhat ironic since it coincides with the recently published volume on "First and Second Timothy and Titus" in the new Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series.PS: Any time I can put up an icon of St. Timothy, I certainly will do it!
7 comments:
When their is a dispute between scripture scholars about the author or date of any of the NT letters, I use the ancient tradition of the Church Fathers as a tie breaker.
Rolf,
Wouldn't it be nice to have a useable one volume Catholic Bible with commentary from the Fathers? I know that Scepter has just published a new edition of the Navarre New Testament, but it looks really big (and quite expensive!).
There is the 'Early Christian Bible Commentary' series, which isn't half bad. But it isn't one volume, and it isn't JUST for Catholic readers but is intended to be ecumenical.
At any rate, the problem with 'relying on the Church Fathers' is that the vast majority of issues that modern scholars are concerned with were never addressed by the Fathers, and even those that were, the points which the Fathers made have been rebutted, and obviously dead man can't counter-rebut their rebuttals.
Yeah Tim, I am still counting on Ignatius Press to come through for us, with the RSV-2CE text, the Scott Hahn commentary from the NT series, along with the notes from a good Catholic OT scholar. Add a few maps and some good introductory
articles on the Bible and the Lectionary from a Catholic prospective, and you have a good Catholic Study Bible.
Michael,
It would be interesting to see if someone could make a one-volume Catholic Bible with commentary from the Church Fathers as well as including some historical-critical info. Like Rolf commented, I think the best hope is the eventual publication of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. Perhaps we should offer up some prayers for the completion of it.
Well you know, they only have 3 people working on the thing, and if you make them go too fast the quality won't be very good.
Consider, the Anchor Bible Commentary series started in 1956 and still isn't finished. It was supposed to be only 20 volumes long and take 10 years, but at the moment it is 85 volumes long, and by the time it is done, it will be 120 volumes long.
I guess that what I am saying is that creating a good Bible commentary is hard word, takes a long time, and good things are worth waiting for.
:-)
Michael,
You are 100% correct. I would rather have quality over something that is hastily put together. So, maybe they could add two more people to the staff to speed things up a bit? ;)
I am certainly willing to wait for the Ignatius Study Bible to be completed. It's not like there is anything else like it currently in production.
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