Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament (17 vols.)
Digital Logos Edition
The Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament series approaches each text in its final, canonical form, proceeding by sense units (pericopes) rather than word-by-word or verse-by-verse. Thus, each commentary follows the original train of thought as indicated by the author instead of modern artificial distinctions. Using this approach, one is able to grasp not only the exegetical-historical information of a passage, but also follow a coherent theological expression throughout. Additionally, this series is enormously helpful and practical through its usage of small visual presentations of historical, exegetical, and theological information. Highly user friendly, this is a great resource for college students, pastors, or those who want to take their Bible study to another level.
The Paideia series explores how New Testament texts inform Christian readers by:
- Attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs
- Showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits
- Commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book
- Focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text
- Making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format
- Includes introductions and bibliographies for each book
- Contains indexes of subjects, modern authors, and Scripture and ancient sources
- Provides notes, outlines, images, and tables for further clarity
The Paideia Commentary series has established itself as a solid series of concise works that focus on the final form of the biblical text, highlighting narrative flow, rhetorical devices and structure, and commenting particularly on relevant historical background and theological significance.
—Craig Blomberg, Denver Journal
[I] continue to be impressed by the contributors' skill in combining academic rigor with accessibility. . . . The [series] authors . . . combine historical and linguistic analysis with theological reflection, which makes these commentaries useful for those interested in bridging the gap between the ancient world and contemporary Christianity (seminarians, clergy). . . . Frequent inserts with asides [offer] additional explanations or attempts to relate ancient texts to contemporary issues."
Michael Gilmour, Catholic Biblical Quarterly
- Title: Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament
- Series: Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament
- Series Editorial Board: Paul J. Achtemeier, Loveday Alexander, C. Clifton Black, Susan R. Garret, Francis J. Moloney, SDB
- Volumes: 17
- Resource Type: Commentaries
- Topics: New Testament Biblical Studies, Preaching Resources
Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament is a series that sets out to comment on the final form of the New Testament text in a way that pays due attention both to the cultural, literary, and theological settings in which the text took form and also to the interests of the contemporary readers to whom the commentaries are addressed. This series is aimed squarely at students—including MA students in religious and theological studies programs, seminarians, and upper-divisional undergraduates—who have theological interests in the biblical text. Thus, the didactic aim of the series is to enable students to understand each book of the New Testament as a literary whole rooted in a particular ancient setting and related to its context within the New Testament.
The name "Paideia" reflects (1) the instructional aim of the series—giving contemporary students a basic grounding in academic NT studies by guiding their engagement with New Testament texts; (2) the fact that the New Testament texts as literary unities are shaped by the educational categories and ideas (rhetorical, narratological, etc.) of their ancient writers and readers; and (3) the pedagogical aims of the texts themselves—their central aim being not simply to impart information but to form the theological convictions and moral habits of their readers.
Each commentary deals with the text in terms of larger rhetorical units; these are not verse-by-verse commentaries. This series thus stands within the stream of recent commentaries that attend to the final form of the text. Such reader-centered literary approaches are inherently more accessible to liberal arts students without extensive linguistic and historical-critical preparation than older exegetical approaches, but within the reader-centered world the sanest practitioners have paid careful attention to the extra text of the original readers, including not only these readers’ knowledge of the geography, history, and other context elements reflected in the text but also to their ability to respond correctly to the literary and rhetorical conventions used in the text. Paideia commentaries pay deliberate attention to this extratextual repertoire in order to highlight the ways in which the text is designed to persuade and move its readers. Each rhetorical unit is explored from three angles: (1) introductory matters; (2) tracing the train of thought or narrative flow of the argument; and (3) theological issues raised by the text that are of interest to the contemporary Christian. Thus, the primary focus remains on the text and not its historical context or its interpretation in the secondary literature.
Our authors represent a variety of confessional points of view: Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. What they share in common, beyond being New Testament scholars of national and international repute, is a commitment to reading the biblical text as theological documents within their ancient contexts. Working within the broad parameters described here, each author brings his or her own considerable exegetical talents and deep theological commitments to the task of laying bare the interpretation of Scripture for the faith and practice of God’s people everywhere.
Mikeal C. Parsons, Charles H. Talbert
