Official New Adventist Bible Commentary Series, First in 70 Years.
14 December 2022 |
Most Adventists are familiar with the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary set released in the 1950s. Avocado green cloth with red and gold lettering on the spine, they’re common in most church libraries and many home libraries too. With the passing of years, and advances in Adventist studies, though, some of the entries haven’t held up, and occasionally don’t reflect modern scholarship.
Several Adventist websites have recently announced the release of a new commentary set, the first new official commentary in 70 years. Martin Klingbeil, one of the authors of the first volume released, says,
The need for a new commentary grew out of the datedness of the SDABC (1950s) and the progress in linguistic, historical, and archaeological data since then.
As is usual with commentaries covering the whole Bible, the whole set won’t be released at the same time. One volume of the eventual 15-volume set has so far been published: volume 6, covering Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Three more volumes will be printed in 2023.
Contributors to the current volume are Martin G. Klingbeil, Dragoslava Santrac, David R. Tasker, Jacques B. Doukhan, and Richard M. Davidson. Says Gerald Klingbeil in a review of the volume, “Half of this volume of the SDAIBC (c. 700 pages) is dedicated to the commentary on the Psalms, authored by two scholars (Martin Klingbeil [Pss. 1-75] and Dragoslava Santrac [Pss. 76-150]).”
One of the big differences is that this is an international Bible commentary. Says Jacques Doukhan, SDAIBC editor and professor emeritus of Hebrew and Old Testament Exegesis at Andrews University, ”
The former commentary, SDABC, was only written by North American writers. This new one is also the only Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentary that is international. Since the publication of the original SDABC, the church has changed: it has become international and has more trained biblical scholars. Accordingly, this series involves more than 60 authors from all over the world.
The first volume of 1,391 pages in hardcover is published by Pacific Press. It will be priced at US$59.99 from AdventistBookCenter.com.
