Jewish Annotated New Testament posts
November 29, 2011
This BLT blog is getting scores of hits from Google (and other search engine) searches for Jewish Annotated New Testament. Here is an index of posts discussing it:
- September 2: An unusual Jewish study Bible
- October 24: Annotated Jewish New Testament first impressions
- October 27: Jewish Annotated New Testament: Hey Jude
- November 29: Marc Brettler and Amy-Jill Levine speak up about the New Testament
- November 29: Jewish Annotated New Testament posts
5 Comments
leave one →
BLT 
I very much appreciate Theophrastus’ comments about my commentary to Matthew– 1-14 (I have the rest of the commentary 15-28 and am having some difficulty publishing it without spending 6000 dollars!). My annotations to James served as the model for all the others in JANT. Annotations put the onus on the readers to write their own oommentaries and merely hang out some places to begin. They are not commentaries and do not argue their cases– just show parallels.. A year after I completed James where I list a passage as being addressed to judges I discovered a Ph.D. thesis arguing for its judicial setting (my parallel is actually closer to James wording). Annotating is simply referencing but not explaining. Most reviews so far seem to have confused the genres– My friend Frank Talmage told me in his opinion the measure of a scholar lies in the skills of translation and annotation. The editors set firm word limits and the various writers showed their ingenuity in annotating points lucidly without expanding. Somewhere in JANT I hope there is an exposition of how Jewish literatures relates to NT writings.I expended much effort in both investigating and illustrating this relationship– but maybe not since there is no unanimity on this issue. In its own right and for its own purposes in addressing larger audiences than I generally do JANT is a groundbreaking achievement. One might well look for a variety of approaches within its pages.
H. Basser
.
Thank you so much, Prof. Basser, for your comments. I find your distinction between annotated works and commentaries interesting (but also a bit frustrating, as one hopes for more explanation.)
Now I want to post a review of your outstanding commentary.