ZECNT Blog Tour: Osborne on Matthew, Part 1

A few weeks back I snagged a review copy of Grant Osborne’s new (and monstrous) commentary on Matthew as part of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament Blog Tour.  When I first saw their post, I thought there would be no way I’d read the entire 1100+ pages by December 15, especially given the new baby in the house.  However, they mentioned that the reviewer would not need to read it cover to cover but give it a “fair look” and review it.  My plan is to do this in 3 parts posted over the next week or so.

With the ZECNT series, Zondervan is trying to do something different with their commentaries.  There are more “bells and whistles” in this series than in most.  In ZECNT volumes, each passage is handled in 7 components: Literary Context, Main Idea, Translaton and Graphical Layout, Structure, Exegetical Outline, Explanation of the Text, Theology in Application.  I’ll comment on some of these features in my forthcoming posts; in this post I’ll comment on the “pre-commentary” matter.

Good

Osborne’s Introduction is relatively short, considering the size of the commentary in general.  I, for one, appreciate this, especially given the audience of this series- pastors and teachers who have studied some level of Greek but aren’t “experts.”  In other words, this series is geared towards the “busy pastor” type (is that term redundant?). 

As far as I can tell, Osborne gets this.  From the outset it is very clear that he has empathy for the pastor who preaches through a gospel and keeps this question in mind: “What would I want to know as a pastor preparing a sermon on this passage?” (p22).  To this end, Osborne gives a quick (5 page) overview on gospel hermeneutics- studying the plot, characters, etc.  It may seem elementary, but Osborne’s tips will help the pastor preach Matthew’s gospel well, rather than a “life of Jesus” style sermon, where the distinctives of the gospel account are minimized.

All the other details traditionally handled in a commentary are found here: authorship (where Osborne takes the traditional view), date (pre-70AD, with a comment about Mark beign written in the 50’s that I found interesting), audience (clearly influenced by Richard Bauckham and others against seeing a “Matthean community”) and so on.  He probably could have spent less time on sources, but that’s largely my own preference.

Osborne also includes a section on Matthew’s use of the OT, where he argues mainly for a typological understanding, which he defines as “analogous fulfillment” (p38).  Again, it may have been nice to see more here, but he does flesh out the details a bit more in his commentary proper; for example on Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15

Though not a direct messianic passage, this still constitutes fulfillment because Jesus as Messiah is corporately identified with Israel throughout its history… and so fulfills its experiences.  Jesus as Son is reliving the experiences of God’s children, Israel.

All in all, I liked Osborne’s simplified approach to the introduction.  Busy pastors don’t have all the time in the world to wade through the debates on authorship, audience, etc., and Osborne understands their plight.  He gives them an overview, cites sources for pastors to check for further information and gives his opinion.  You can’t ask for more than that given the intended audience.

Not-As-Good

Perhaps this is purely one of my idiosyncracies, but the “Contents” page has a major strike against it.  One of my pet peeves is when the commentary proper (the actual section of the book on the biblical text) is not broken down in the Table of Contents.  In this case, the reader sees this:

• Commentary…………………..57

And that’s it.  For a commentary bent on being as user-friendly as this one, what logic would lead one not to lay out the commentary section more helpfully?  Osborne presents his structure of the Gospel of Matthew in detail at the end of the Introduction on pages 41-47; why couldn’t a simplified version of this outline make its way onto the contents page?  This would especially be helpful given the Contents page doesn’t even tell you what one can expect to find in the Introduction either.  Where would one find Osborne’s thoughts on authorship?  Somewhere between pages 21 (Introduction) and 49 (Select Bibliography). 

Related, but a lesser offense, is the non-mention of the excurses.  The Contents page would also be a wonderful place for the reader to find out about the occasional excursus that appear in the commentary.  But nary a word is mentioned about them.  I didn’t know, for instance, that an excursus (not actually labeled that, but set apart in a gray box) on the Son of Man occurs on pages 307-308 (on 8:22) until I was referred there as I was reading Osborne’s comments on 26:64.  If something is significant enough to warrant a special excursus, why wouldn’t it be included in a list of excurses?

Like I said, this may be my own little idiosyncracy.  But my opinion is that if you are trying to make your commentary user-friendly with various features to enhance the reading and learning experience, why would you miss something as simple and useful as a more detailed Contents page?  I promise that there is some college student in Grand Rapids who would love an internship at Zondervan who could take some time (and it really wouldn’t take much) to simplify and transfer Osborne’s outline to the Contents page with the appropriate page number.  Come on Zondervan- make a young Dutch boy’s dream and let him do it, maybe even give him a shout out on the acknowledgements page.

But let’s be clear about something- when your biggest gripe is the relative uselessness of the Table of Contents page, you know you’re dealing with a pretty good commentary.

More coming in Part 2, where I give a quick look at some of the features found in the commentary.