Ten Commandments for Commentary Usage

The OIA Bible study method ought not be incompatible with rigorous usage of commentaries. But there is an everpresent danger of relying on commentaries more than the text, or of allowing commentaries to prevent you from wrestling with the text as you ought. Therefore the main question for commentary usage is not whether but when.

In the interest of helping you make best use of commentaries in your Bible study, here are ten commandments for your consideration.

1. You shall not avoid or ignore commentaries from belief in self-sufficiency to study the Scriptures.
2. You shall not pick up a commentary as soon as Bible study is “hard.”
3. You shall make every effort to form interpretive conclusions or questions about interpretations before consulting a commentary.
4. You shall not read only one commentary, but shall invite a plurality of voices into the conversation.
5. You shall not spend more time reading commentaries than reading and listening to the Bible.
6. You shall hold your conclusions (and your theological tradition) loosely enough to allow commentaries to compel you back into the text to discover the biblical author’s intentions for his original audience.
7. You shall not hold all commentaries equal, but shall give greatest weight to those that stimulate greatest interest in the biblical text and its argument. Corollary: You shall resist speculations made by commentators and shall demand the same text-driven arguments from them that you would demand of your friends or that they would demand of you.
8. You shall distinguish, in the commentaries, between evidence-based observations of the text (such as Hebrew or Greek syntax or wordplay, historical context, or comparative ancient near eastern literature) and reasoned interpretations of the text. You shall remain aware that the first category is more likely to contain factual data that must be accounted for, and the second category is more likely to contain opinions to be weighed and considered alongside alternatives.
9. You shall not quote a commentator as the final word on an interpretive matter, but must demonstrate your conclusions from the scriptural text itself.
10. You shall give credit to commentators where appropriate and not try to appear smarter than you are.