As I study, I have found many authors and editors that I enjoy reading. Below are but a few of my favorites:
Bruce Manning Metzger (9 February, 1914 – 13 February, 2007) was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and Bible editor who served on the board of the American Bible Society. He was a scholar of Greek, New Testament and Old Testament, and wrote prolifically on these subjects.
Metzger edited and provided commentary for many Bible translations and wrote dozens of books. He was an editor of the United Bible Societies’ standard Greek New Testament, the starting point for nearly all recent New Testament translations. Metzger’s commentaries often utilize historical criticism and higher criticism, which attempt to explain the literary and historical origins of the Bible and the biblical canon. Many scholars respected Metzger for his definitive writings on the text of the New Testament, the apocryphal literature of the Old Testament, and Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature.
John R. W. Stott (born 27 April 1921) is known worldwide as a preacher, evangelist and teacher of Scripture. He was ordained in 1945 and for most of his years has served in various capacities at All Souls Church in London, where he carried out an effective urban pastoral ministry. A leader among evangelicals in Britain, the United States and even around the world, Stott was a principal framer of the landmark Lausanne Covenant (1974). Whether in the West or in the Third World, a hallmark of Stott’s ministry has been expository preaching that addresses not only the hearts but also the minds of contemporary men and women.
Rob Bell (born August 23, 1970) is a best-selling author, Christian speaker, and the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is also the featured speaker in a series of spiritual short films called NOOMA.
F. F. Bruce (12 October 1910 – 11 September 1990) was a Conservative NT Biblical scholar, and one of the founders of the modern evangelical understanding of the Bible. He was a Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester in England.During his distinguished career, he wrote more than forty bestselling commentaries and books.
N.T. Wright (born 1 December 1948) is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England. He is one of today’s leading theologians and biblical scholars and author of Jesus and the Victory of God, which is widely regarded as one of the most significant studies in the contemporary “Third Quest” of the historical Jesus. N. T. Wright has taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford Universities. He is an expert on the historical Jesus, especially his resurrection. Wright is also well known as an exponent of the New Perspective on Paul, especially on the topic of justification.
George Eldon Ladd (1911–1982) was a Baptist minister and professor of New Testament exegesis and theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Best known for his work on the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, Ladd moved from critiquing his own movement to engaging many of the important theological and exegetical issues of his day. Ladd was a strong critic of dispensationalism, the dominant theological system in conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism, challenging what he perceived to be its anti-intellectualism and uncritical approach to the Bible.
William Barclay (1907-1978), the famous Scottish scholar, was, in some respects, a brilliant writer. But he was an enigma. Barclay taught at the University of Glasgow for 28 years. Barclay once described himself as a “liberal evangelical” — an expression that is somewhat contradictory. The truth is, the engaging professor was a theological modernist.
Inasmuch as William Barclay was such a theological maverick, why do so many serious Bible students — even conservatives — find his writings valuable — even thrilling, on occasion?
For more than half his life he was a teacher of Hellenistic Greek. He was perfectly at home with Aristotle, Thucydides, or Herodotus. In his discussions of biblical words he would track the terms from their classical origins, into the environment of the Septuagint era. He was familiar with words in Koine (common) Greek (the first-century Greek). He would explore the New Testament usage of terms, and even compliment the investigation by showing how the early “church fathers” employed various biblical texts. His linguistic studies are models of research methodology.
His writings are mosaics of literary treasure. Hundreds of illustrations from the works of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Kipling, etc., adorn his compositions in illustrative fashion. His productions are filled with rich deposits of historical lore. For instance, he once wrote regarding Roman domestic life: “So high was the standard of Roman morality that for the first five hundred years of the Roman commonwealth there was not a single recorded case of divorce.”
Barclay’s New Testament commentaries (eighteen small volumes) are packed with information that it would take years and years to locate on one’s own. For instance, his discussion of “slavery” in connection with the book of Philemon is a treasure that significantly illuminates that ancient problem, and the Christian approach to the oppressive institution.