Saturday, September 26, 1998

Bible commentary takes a uniquely global view

By Jeffrey Weiss

Dallas Morning News

Professor William Farmer says the world has never seen a biblical commentary quite like the one he's edited.

Seven years in the making, the new book proclaims its ambitious goals in its name and cast of contributors. "The International Bible Commentary: A Catholic and Ecumenical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century" includes writing from 117 biblical scholars from every continent but Antarctica and across a variety of Christian traditions.

"I don't know of any other commentary like this," said Dr. Toni Craven, a professor at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas."It's international and ecumenical in ways the others are not."

Farmer, an internationally recognized New Testament scholar, coordinated the creation of the 2,000-page volume from his office at the University of Dallas, a Roman Catholic school near Texas Stadium. He worked with three other editors from three other continents.

The head of the Vatican library -- one of the contributors -- is coming to Dallas on Saturday for a gala for the just-published book.

Farmer retired from Southern Methodist University in 1990 -- the same year the former Methodist pastor joined the Catholic Church. This book began as a third edition of an existing Catholic commentary but quickly grew in size and scope.

Previous biblical commentaries share traits that Farmer and the other editors did not want -- they were written mostly by men, reflected Eurocentric and particular denominational concerns and focused on middle-class issues, Farmer said.

The editors' aims for the new book were expansive:

--To produce a work that would be Catholic and catholic -- that is, acceptable to Roman Catholic theologians and to the wider Christian world.

About 20 percent of the contributors aren't Catholic. They represent the United Church of Christ, Baptist, Disciples of Christ, Lutheran, Methodist, French Reformed, Greek Orthodox, Anglican and Presbyterian traditions. Catholic writers include Archbishop Jorge Mejia, archivist and librarian for the Vatican. And the book has already been presented to Pope John Paul II and the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

--To produce a work that reflects the cultural diversity of Christendom.

The writers represent 32 nations. Only 22 percent are from the United States. About 20 percent of the writers are women. And plans are in the works to publish the book in Spanish, French, Polish, Italian and Dutch. Other edited versions may be produced in non-European languages.

--To produce a work of first-rate scholarship that nonetheless is written for a nonacademic audience.

"We knew we would be asking these scholars to do something that they're not used to doing and something they don't particularly like to do," Farmer said."They needed to forget about their peers and think about their readers."

The volume is intended primarily for pastors and lay people who would find it useful when shaping a sermon or trying to make sense of a particularly knotty portion of Scripture.

Did the effort to create an erudite but readable commentary succeed? Consider this one-sentence distillation of the complex Book of Revelation:

"Succinctly put, Revelation is a work of hope and eschatological optimism. It is one of the clearest imaginable affirmations of the absolute sovereignty of God and of the Lamb."

The Revelation commentary, like many other commentaries, links the biblical text to current concerns. In addition to articles about each book of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, contributors explored a variety of themes. They include patristic exegesis of the Bible, liberation theology, family from an African perspective, anti-Semitism, women's biblical studies, ecology and nationalism.

The size of the book created special production problems, said Peter Dwyer, marketing manager for Liturgical Press, which is publishing the American edition. His company had to find special extra-thin paper so the bindery's machinery could produce the commentary in one volume, he said.

An initial run of 10,000 copies is unusually large for a book of that size and price, he said. (The list price is $99.95, but amazon.com was selling it last week for $69.96.)

The number of contributors and their geographic and theological scope are unusual, said Dr. Joseph Tyson, retired professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University.

"In all those respects, nothing else like it has been done," he said.

Dr. Paul Hanson, a professor at Harvard Divinity School who wrote one of the articles, regards the commentary as"a very significant contribution, not just to field of biblical studies but to the community of faith across the world that takes the Bible seriously."

Although the scholars were not directed to analyze the texts in any particular manner, the commentaries tend to take the words of the Bible seriously but not necessarily literally.

The Revelation commentary, by three Peruvian scholars, sets the difficult language of the book in historical context. A reader of the era when it was written, the scholars suggest, would have understood"a thousand years" as"a long time" and"144,000" people as"many, many" people -- not the literal interpretation taken by some conservative Christian readers.

"That's a gutsy stand that will not be accepted by everybody," Hanson said.

In every case, the scholars searched for ways that the Bible gave strength to people in every era, Farmer said.

"That's the main characteristic of Scripture," he said,"that it's life-giving."

(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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