Scholars Agree: The Paideia Commentaries Stand Out—and Why Now’s the Time to Buy

The series name alone sold me on this commentary set: paideia (παιδεία) in Greek means “education,” or “instruction intended for a person who is in the process of growing up.”¹ And that’s that goal of the Paideia commentaries publisher: to come alongside contemporary students in that lifelong journey of “growing up” by giving them a basic grounding in academic New Testament studies and guiding their engagement with New Testament text.²

These commentaries are different. They don’t take the reader through a passage word by word or verse by verse but approach the text in its final, canonical form, proceeding by “sense units” (larger rhetorical units). Each volume helps students understand an individual New Testament book as a literary whole rooted in a particular ancient setting and related to its context within the New Testament.³

And though they’re aimed squarely for college students, Paideia commentaries are ideal for anyone who wants to take their Bible study to another level. Most original language content is transliterated, so a formal knowledge of Greek is not required. This excerpt from the Revelation volume by Sigve K. Tonstad shows how the series handles biblical languages:

God’s intent to “make known” links Revelation to Daniel (Rev. 1:1; Dan. 2:28–30, 45). G. K. Beale (1999, 50) emphasizes the common theme of “making known” in these books. Revelation’s contention that God “made it known” (esēmanen) depends on a Greek word that means “make known,” “report,” “communicate,” “foretell,” or “signify.” “The clauses ‘revelation . . . God showed . . . what must come to pass . . . and he made known (sēmainō)’ occur together only in Daniel 2 and Revelation 1:1,” says Beale (1999, 50). 

When we consider the context in Daniel, we have not only a fascinating word study but also a case report for how a message claiming to be a revelation compares to other sources of knowledge. When crunch time comes, Daniel says to King Nebuchadnezzar that “there is a God in heaven who reveals [anakalyptōn] mysteries, . . . and he has disclosed . . . to you what is to be [ha dei genesthai] . . . in order that the interpretation may be known [esēmanthē]” (Dan. 2:28–30 LXX).

The thematic link between Daniel and Revelation is indisputable. While Revelation and the Greek text of Daniel both use sēmainō for “making known,” the Semitic word in Daniel is the same word used in the conversation between God and Abraham in Genesis (Gen. 18:17–19; Beale 1999, 50; Tonstad 2016a, 128–33). In Genesis, too, the subject is God’s disposition in relation to knowledge passing from the divine realm to the human sphere. Daniel expands on prior notions of things God alone knows by variants of the word rāz (mystery), a Persian loan word found only in Daniel (2:18, 19, 27, 28, 29, 30, 47; 4:6), with all but one occurrence in Dan. 2 (Lenzi 2009, 331, 341; Hartman and Di Lella 2005, 139–40). The mystery denoted as rāz, then, is “secret information that only the deity knows” (Lenzi 2009, 332).⁴

Plus, sidebars interspersed within the text give more in-depth background information on words and phrases, like this one on “Son of Man”⁵: 

Trusted scholars recommend Paideia commentaries, like Craig Blomberg, who says this:

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, New Testament Scholar, Denver Seminary

All in all, it’s a highly accessible resource for anyone who wants to dig deep into specific New Testament books and discover theological gems along the way.

And through September 7, 2020, you can save over $150 on the Paideia New Testament Commentary Collection.

Don’t miss your chance to get this great commentary set, and save 50% today.