Logos partners with Yale University Press by giving away two Anchor Bible commentaries and offering deep discounts on seven other volumes in the series. The discounted books are almost all from the Anchor Bible Reference Library (ABRL). Since Yale University Press purchased the Anchor Bible, the series is now the Anchor Yale Bible and the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.
This excellent might be a case of “something old, something new” since the Ephesians, Song of Solomon, Psalms and Epistles of John volumes are some of the earliest in the Anchor series, but Johnson’s James, Koester’s Revelation, and Neyrey’s 2 Peter, Jude are more recent, replacement volumes. Barth’s commentary was idiosyncratic, as many of the early AB commentaries were, but it is hard to turn down for free. Marvin Pope’s Song of Solomon is a massive “history of interpretation” of the Song, well worth reading although it is on the older side.
For the price, all nine are worth adding to your Logos collection. If you purchase all nine including the pre-order of Cook’s 2018 Ezekiel commentary, the average cost is about $8 a volume.
- Markus Barth, Ephesians 1–3, Free!
- Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, $3.99
- Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans, $9.99
- Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, $10.99
- Craig R. Koester, Revelation, $14.99
- Stephen L. Cook, Ezekiel 38-48 (Pre-order), $19.99
There are three more Anchor volumes on the “Another Free Book” page:
- Jerome H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, Free!
- Mitchell Dahood, Psalms I: 1–50, $1.99
- Raymond E. Brown, Epistles of John, $11.99.
Three other excellent volumes from Yale University Press:
- Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, (Yale, 1993) $1.99
- Saul M. Olyan, Friendship in the Hebrew Bible (Yale, 2017), $7.99
- Raymond Brown, The Death of the Messiah, from Gethsemane to the Grave (2 vols.), $8.99
And a few more gems on the volumes on the “Another Free Book” page:
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus: Volume One, the Roots of the Problem and the Person, $3.99
- Scott Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises, $5.99
- Raymond E. Brown and Francis J. Moloney, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, $7.99
- Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, $9.99.
I highly recommend Hays, Echoes of Scripture in Paul to anyone interested in how Paul uses the Hebrew Bible. This book is regularly cited in every intertextual study since 1993. John Meir’s Marginal Jew (now five volumes) was foundational for my studies in the Gospels in seminary, although Historical Jesus studies have fallen on hard times in recent years.
Between the “free book” and “anther free book” you can add both Raymond Brown’s Birth of the Messiah and Death of the Messiah; both are highly respected commentaries in the Anchor Bible Reference Library.
For historical theology, there are two volumes in Yale’s Works of Jonathan Edwards series:
- Religious Affections (Edited by John E. Smith; The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2; 1993), $2.99
- A History of the Work of Redemption (Edited by John F. Wilson; The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 9; 1989), $5.
If you do not have Logos 9 yet, you can get the Logos 9 Fundamentals or the (free) Basic Edition and begin reading these books right away. Right now First-time Logos users save 50% on the Fundamentals bundle, only $49.95. By following that link you can also choose five additional resources for free. Logos Basic is the free version of Logos Bible Software and has limited free resources, but you do get the Lexham Bible Dictionary and can use the basic edition to add the free and discounted resources listed above.
These free and discounted commentaries are only available through February 2021.
I’m just getting into historical NT studies, so I was noticed your comment that “Historical Jesus studies have fallen on hard times in recent years.” What do you mean by this? I’d like to get up to speed in the field.
Good question. In the middle 90s (when I was doing my MA work), Historical Jesus studies were hot, although any good historical Jesus study goes back to the 19th century “Lives of Jesus” movement and Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus. The 1990s were a kind of “third quest” including the Jesus Seminar, who created a set of criteria to determine if a saying or action of Jesus was more likely authentic (or not). John Dominic Crossan, for example, limits the authentic sayings to maybe 25-30 lines of the Gospels. This generated withering critiques, not only from the expected sources in Evangelical scholarship, but even from more moderate biblical scholars.
That John Meier volume Logos has on sale is one of the better presentations of the quest in the 1990s.
However, by there 2010s people were questioning the validity of the criteria of authenticity, for example, Chris Keith, Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity. Historical Jesus studies began to give way to a sort of canonical or literary criticism, or Theological Interpretation of Scripture. Something like, we can never know whether Jesus said or did any particular saying, then perhaps the focus should be on the author, Matthew presents Jesus as saying the Sermon on the Mount, so what were Matthew’s theological motivations, etc.
Others moved to memory studies, James Dunn for example considered the Gospels the record of the Jesus as remembered by his community.
Here are a few posts from this blog to get you started, you can use the search bar on the right to find more (“historical Jesus” comes up in many book reviews). If you have other questions, feel free to ask!
https://readingacts.com/2014/09/17/the-words-of-jesus-and-the-criteria-of-authenticity/
https://readingacts.com/2010/09/24/are-these-really-the-words-of-jesus/
https://readingacts.com/2014/09/18/the-words-of-jesus-and-skepticism/
https://readingacts.com/2014/09/04/the-gospels-and-historical-criticism/
https://readingacts.com/2014/09/12/did-disciples-of-jesus-keep-notebooks/
Thanks! That is helpful background. The change in tide makes sense to me, as the criteria do seem to be a double-edged sword used to buttress either position. I’m reading Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, and his more holistic approach to identifying features of the Gospels that lend to the eyewitness testimony hypothesis seems more fruitful. These indirect arguments form a cumulative case for understanding the Gospels more broadly, from which one may then infer the historicity of Jesus’s sayings and actions.
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is excellent and part of the “demise of the criteria of authenticity.” Larry Hurtado is another to read. David Aune called Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Eerdmans, 2005) “one of the more important books on Jesus in this generation.”
https://readingacts.com/2018/06/21/book-review-larry-w-hurtado-honoring-the-son/