New commentary on 1 Peter

Eerdmans Publishing announces that they are about to publish a another commentary on 1 Peter in the new series inaugurated a couple of years ago, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary:Joel B. Green,
1 Peter
The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary
Grand Rapids; W.B. Eerdmans, 2007 (Oct. 29), 328 pp, n.p. This series, is "Seeking to bridge the existing gap between biblical studies and systematic theology, this distinctive series offers section-by-section exegesis of the New Testament texts in close conversation with theological concerns", and as such it is supposed to "offer a clear paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of 1 Peter and, even more, unpacks the letter’s theology in ways that go beyond the typical modern commentary."

There is a lot of experimenting with the genre of NT commentaries out there. While this may be more traditional, rather adding some systematic theological reflections on the texts, there are other more experimental. I think some of these will be available at the book marked at SBL in San Diego. I have the volume on Colossians in this series, and I will most probably also get my hand on a copy of this one.

One might have various thoughts about the need to integrate historical exegesis and systematic and/or homiletic reflections. One the one hand it might lead to a more shallow historical exegesis, on the other hand, the systematic and/or homiletic expositions may be too much culturally colored by the expositor's social location. In my opinion, for example, I find the homiletic expositions of The NIV Application Commentary often to be too much US culturally dominated to be a good commentary to recommend to my African students. What I am looking for, is a commentary that integrates in a better way the mediterranean culture and its social scripts in the both the historical sections as well as in the systematic/homiletical expositions, hence being more useful in cross-cultural settings.

When it comes to 1 Peter, I realize that this letter is being found especially rewarding to read for students coming from non-western cultures. I'll return to that issue in a later posting.