Commentary on the New Testament

Gundry, Robert H.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781441237088
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Verse-by-verse explanations with a literal translation Shouldn't a Bible commentary clarify what God's Word actually says? Going beyond questions of authorship, date, sources, and historicity, respected linguist and teacher Gundry offers a one-volume exposition of the New Testament that focuses on what is most useful for preaching, teaching, and individual study--what the biblical text really means. Providing interpretive observations in a "breezy" style that's easy to read and adaptable for oral use in pulpit or classroom presentations, Gundry directs his book to an evangelical audience. His crisp translation of the New Testament inserts various phrasings of passages in brackets, allowing for smooth transition from original text to alternative and contemporary readings. SAMPLE TEXT OF TRANSLATION
JOHN'S PREDICTING A MORE POWERFUL BAPTIZER THAN HE (Mark 1: 1-8) 1: 1-3: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, God's Son, according as it's written in Isaiah the prophet, "Behold, I'm sending my messenger before your face [= ahead of you], who'll pave your way [= the road you'll travel], [the messenger who is] the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.'" Pastors, Sunday school teachers, small-group leaders, and laypeople will welcome Gundry's non-technical explanations and clarifications. And Bible students at all levels will appreciate his sparkling interpretations of the NT Scriptures. A trustworthy guide for anybody wanting to delve deeper into God's Word. SAMPLE TEXT OF COMMENTS
"Gospel" means "good news." Jews would associate this good news with Isaiah 52: 7. Non-Jews would think of the good news of an emperor's accession to power, birthday, visit to a city, military victory, or bringing of prosperity to the empire. But Mark's good news has to do with the salvation and victory brought by Jesus over evil in all its demonic and physical forms. "The gospel of Jesus Christ" therefore means "the gospel about Jesus Christ" and refers to a proclaimed message ("the voice of one crying out"), not a book (though because books like Mark's contain that proclaimed message, the term came to refer to those books in the capitalized form of "Gospels" to distinguish them from the message, kept uncapitalized as "gospel").

Introduction

Above all, this volume aims to serve Christian ministers, Bible study leaders, and serious-minded lay students who are either too busy or otherwise unable to plow through technical commentaries on individual books of the New Testament. I’ve therefore omitted scholarly documentation and discussions of authorship, date, sources, historicity, harmonization, and similar topics and concentrated instead on what is likely to prove useful for expository preaching, teaching, group discussion, and private edification. As a result, my comments plunge into the text of each New Testament book with only minimal introductions. Nevertheless, even scholars and seminarians may discover in the comments many particulars not to be found elsewhere yet worthy of consideration.

To suit the orality of preaching, teaching, and group discussion, I’ve avoided almost all abbreviations and freely used contractions (for example, “we’ll,” “you’re,” “they’ve”) and italics (the italics mostly for vocal emphasis), plus occasional colloquialisms. In the same vein, I’ve portrayed the New Testament authors as speaking rather than writing and their original addressees as hearing rather than reading. For first-century authors would normally have dictated their words to a writing secretary; and given the low rate of literacy and the scarcity of private copies, first-century addressees would normally have heard the text read to them.

Present-day readers will have to make their own practical and devotional applications of the scriptural text. But such applications shouldn’t disregard or violate the meanings intended by the Scripture’s divinely inspired authors and should draw on the richness of those meanings. So I’ve interpreted them in detail. Bold print indicates the text being interpreted. Translations of the original Greek are my own. Because of the interpretations’ close attention to detail, my translations usually though not always gravitate to the literal and sometimes produce run-on sentences and other nonstandard, convoluted, and even highly unnatural English. Square brackets enclose intervening clarifications, however; and seemingly odd word-choices in a translation get justified in the following comments. It needs to be said, moreover, that the very awkwardness of a literal translation often highlights features of the scriptural text obscured, eclipsed, or even contradicted by loose translations and paraphrases.[1]

Literal translation also produces some politically incorrect English. Though “brothers” often includes sisters, for example, “sisters” doesn’t include brothers (see Matthew 12:48–50). Similarly, masculine pronouns may include females as well as males, but not vice versa. These pronouns, “brothers,” and other masculine expressions that on occasion are gender-inclusive correspond to the original, however, and help give a linguistic feel for the male-dominated culture in which the New Testament originated and which its language reflects. Preachers, Bible study leaders, and others should make whatever adjustments they deem necessary for contemporary audiences, but not adjustments that obscure or change the text’s intended meaning.

Because of context and tradition, a Greek word often has to be translated differently from one passage to another. Take hagios: it’s usually translated “holy” or, in the plural, “saints.” For most English readers these translations connote moral superiority. But the Greek word’s basic meaning has to do with consecration and consequent sacredness regardless of such superiority. So I’ve often translated with “consecrated” and “sacred.” Yet “Holy Spirit” and “saints” have become so traditional that at other times I’ve retained these translations, occasionally with an explanation of the basic meaning. Despite sounding stilted, the traditional exclamation “behold!” has likewise been retained for lack of a sufficiently good synonym in contemporary English, at least for lack of one that suits a variety of passages with reasonable consistency. Other English versions of the New Testament often ignore the men . . . de construction in Greek, and do so because the only adequate English translation, “on the one hand . . . on the other hand,” is ponderous in English as it is not in Greek. Nevertheless, I’ve refused to sacrifice meaning for lightness of touch.

The translation “scribes” is both traditional and literal. It originally referred to copyists of Scripture. But copying produced expertise, so that the term came to connote scholarship without regard to the work of copying. Hence my use of the translation “scholars” instead of “scribes.” To highlight the identification of “the Lord” with “Jesus Christ,” a comma usually appears between the two (“the Lord, Jesus Christ”). Similarly, a comma usually appears between “God” and “the Father.” In both instances the comma substitutes for an implied “namely.”

Square brackets enclose not only clarifications of awkward English resulting from literal translation, but also interior cross-references and words in English that don’t correspond to words in the Greek text but do need supplying to make good sense. (As a language, Greek has a much greater tendency than English does to omit words meant to be supplied mentally.) Where a Greek verb occurs in the present tense for a past condition or event, I’ve used a present tense also in English whether or not such a translation looks and sounds awkward; and in my comments I’ve noted this usage as vivid or otherwise emphatic. Similarly, “is” or “are” plus the -ing form of a verb brings out the frequently progressive meaning of Greek verbs in the present tense.

In English, verbs of command carry an implied “you,” which may be either singular or plural. By contrast, Greek verbs of command express the “you” outright, distinguish between the singular and the plural, and also occur in the third person (“he/she/it/they”). Traditionally, this latter construction is translated with an introductory “let,” as in the nonbiblical “let them eat cake” (often but wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette). But that sort of translation can sound like a permission rather than a command. So I’ve used “is/are to . . . ,” as in “the person who is thirsting is to come . . . to take the water of life as a gift” (Revelation 22:17). In a few passages, however, “must . . .” or “had better . . .” gives a translation superior to “is/are to . . . .”

Readers who know New Testament Greek may note that my translations of Greek words don’t always correspond to translations given in standard Greek lexicons, but do often fit better both the substance of the Greek and the New Testament context. For instance, “nitwits” corresponds to the Greek aphrones more exactly than does the usual translation, “fools”; and though humorously cumbersome, “a multitudinous multitude” corresponds to the highly emphatic Greek poly plēthos more exactly than does the usual translation, “a large [or ‘great’] multitude.” I’ve consistently translated hostis in its various forms with “who as such” or “who, to be sure” rather than with a simple “who”; for its contexts regularly support the notion of character, function, or the like which “as such” or “to be sure” adds to “who.” Where ancient texts of the New Testament differ from each other in their wording, I’ve made my own judgments about what wording is mostly likely to have been original; but these judgments seldom stray from Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993).

Out of respect for the abilities of my readers so far as English is concerned, I’ve not dumbed down the vocabulary used in translations and interpretations. Like the translations, interpretations are my own. Rather than reading straight through, most readers will consult this volume for the interpretation of individual passages in the New Testament. So a certain amount of repetition has had to supplement cross-references. To offset the repetition and thus keep the volume in bounds, I rarely discuss other interpretations. But I’ve not neglected to canvass them in my research.

On the theological front, careful readers will notice that lest one side or the other seem to lose its gravity I don’t try to square New Testament affirmations of divine sovereignty, as in the doctrine of election to salvation (though I prefer to call it selection), with indications of human responsibility, as in the commands to repent of sins and believe the gospel. For the same reason I don’t try to square New Testament affirmations of security in salvation for true Christians with warnings to professing Christians that they not apostatize. If squaring is needed, though, let it be that since God already knows who is true and who is false, apostates lose out on salvation rather than losing it; and since human beings can’t tell ahead of time whether they’ll apostatize, the warnings against apostasy are to be taken just as seriously as the affirmations of security.

In support of all who strive for faithfulness to the New Testament, my prayers accompany this volume.

Matthew

Very early church tradition attributes the writing of this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, also called Levi (compare Matthew 9:9 with Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27). The Gospel has in view persecution that exposes a rift between Christians who remain faithful to their Christian profession despite the persecution and those who because of it are proving themselves unfaithful. Matthew encourages faithfulness by highlighting Jesus’ messiahship and divine sonship, defines faithfulness in terms of Christian behavior and verbal testimony, and warns against unfaithfulness by accenting its eternally dreadful consequence.

THE GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST
Matthew 1:1–17

This passage divides into a heading for Jesus’ genealogy (1:1), the genealogy proper (1:2–16), and a numerical summary of the genealogy (1:17). The genealogy proper subdivides into generations from Abraham to David (1:2–6a), from David to Jeconiah and his brothers (1:6b–11), and from Jeconiah to Jesus (1:12–16).

1:1: The record of the genesis of Jesus Christ, the son [= descendant] of David the son [= descendant] of Abraham. “The genesis of Jesus Christ” will consist in his genealogy. In Genesis 5:1, whose phraseology Matthew echoes in part, a genealogy takes its name after the first on the following list (“Adam”). But Matthew titles this genealogy after the last on the following list (“Jesus”). This reversal and the borrowing of Old Testament phraseology make the genealogy portray Jesus as the goal and fulfillment of the Old Testament. Matthew designs the portrayal to confirm in their Christian faith his audience of Jewish Christians, who are suffering persecution and tempted to save their necks by recanting. Strengthening this portrayal of Jesus are Matthew’s additions of (1) “Christ,” the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Messiah,” which refers to the one God has “anointed” to bring salvation to his people; (2) “the son of David,” David being the prototype of the messianic king; and (3) “the son of Abraham,” father of the Jewish nation. This last phrase probably refers to David rather than Jesus as Abraham’s descendant, though of course Jesus too descended from Abraham. The omission of all ancestors prior to Abraham suits the coming identification of Jesus as “the king of the Jews” (2:2; contrast the tracing of Jesus’ genealogy as far back as Adam, father of the whole human race, in Luke 3:38). In the following genealogical list “fathered” has to do solely with impregnating the mother of the next male or males on the list.

1:2–6a: Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac fathered Jacob, and Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers, 3and Judah fathered Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez fathered Hezron, and Hezron fathered Aram, 4and Aram fathered Amminadab, and Amminadab fathered Nahshon, and Nahshon fathered Salmon, 5and Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth, and Obed fathered Jesse, 6aand Jesse fathered David the king [compare 1 Chronicles 1:34; 2:1–2, 4–5, 9–12, 15; Ruth 4:18–22]. Since Davidic kings came from the tribe of Judah, Jesus’ descent from Judah prepares for the presentation of Jesus as the messianic king in David’s line. Mention of Judah’s brothers, unnecessary in a purely genealogical list, portrays the old people of God as a brotherhood in anticipation of Matthew’s portrayal of the church, God’s new people, as also a brotherhood (5:22–24, 47; 7:3–5; 18:15, 21, 35; 23:8; 25:40). The mention of Tamar, emphasized by the inclusion of her son Zerah despite his falling outside Jesus’ lineage, brings a Gentile into the genealogy. For she was probably a Gentile (see Genesis 38) and was certainly thought to be so by many Jews in the New Testament era. Thus she becomes for Matthew a prototype of Gentiles who convert to Jesus the Messiah and whose conversion Jesus will promote in 28:18–20. Two other women, Rahab and Ruth (both of them Gentiles without question and celebrated by Jewish rabbis as converts to Judaism), join Tamar as further prototypes of Gentile converts to the church (see Joshua 2, 6; Ruth 1–4). The introduction of Rahab is especially striking in that the Old Testament contains no indication of Salmon’s fathering Boaz by her. The designation of David as “the king” adopts a designation of him that’s frequent in the Old Testament and prepares for Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as the messianic king after the likeness of David and in fulfi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Matthew
• Mark
• Luke
• John
• Acts
• Romans
• First Corinthians
• Second Corinthians
• Galatians
• Ephesians
• Philippians
• Colossians
• First Thessalonians
• Second Thessalonians
• First Timothy
• Second Timothy
• Titus
• Philemon
• Hebrews
• James
• First Peter
• Second Peter
• First John
• Second John
• Third John
• Jude
• Revelation
• Notes
• Back Cover