Logos Bible Software is offering a free book each month in 2012. For August, you can download B. F. Wescott’s Epistle to the Hebrews. The book can be read with either Logos Bible Software, Vyrso, or Bilbia.com, either on your desktop computer or using the Logos App for iPad or the Android. Follow the link to download the book and enter the drawing for the 14-volume Classic Commentaries of the New Testament set, including J. B. Lightfoot’s classic, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians and Swete on Mark.
Wescott (1825-1901) is an important NT scholar who is well known for his critical edition of the Greek New Testament (with F. J. A. Hort). He served as Bishop of Durham (1890-1901), and was one of the Cambridge Apostles.
I included this commentary as part of my Top Five Commentaries on Hebrews, as a “classic.” This is a classic commentary on Hebrews, available as an e-Book through Google (a 1903 third ed.) recentlyreprinted by Wipf & Stock (the first ed.) Like many older commentaries, this book runs the Greek text across the top of the page, with detailed (and occasionally cryptic) notes in dual columns. There are numerous “additional notes” scattered through the commentary which give additional lexical or theological content. What is it about a one-hundred year old commentary that makes it worth reading? Commentaries of this age are notoriously brief, cutting to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible. Wescott especially has a sense for reading Hebrews in the light of the rest of scripture, which is all the more impressive since he live well before computers made finding potential parallels quite easy. The most intimidating thing about this commentary is that all parallel texts are given in Greek!
The book is free for Logos / Vyrso users, download B. F. Wescott’s Epistle to the Hebrews and enter the drawing for the Classic Commentaries.