I hope you don’t laugh out loud when you read this, but I am actually trying to write a commentary on the entire New Testament. I’ve been going for about eight years now, and have completed Mark, John, Ephesians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, James, 1 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John, and most recently the Pastorals (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus).

I always intended to publish them here on my site as I completed each one, but the truth is I am embarrassed about my inadequacy in both understanding the Biblical text and being able to write in a way that doesn’t bore people to tears. Nevertheless, I have decided that it is about time I simply put them up here. It’s not as if more than a handful of people are likely to download, let alone read them, and any feedback on how they can be improved would be gratefully received.

I should also say that I can think of no sane reason why anyone would actually read these. The commentary market is awash with much better materials, and if you want recommendations I am always glad to oblige. These are written more for my own benefit than for anyone else, as it is a good way to help myself grapple with the meaning of the text.

My basic approach is to take blocks of around five verses at a time, and briefly explain what I think they mean before making some points of application. After commenting on each section, I then consult at least one commentary in order to answer difficult questions and discover things I have missed and ways in which I have misunderstood the text.

I’ve really enjoyed working through the Pastorals over the past few months, and I’ve been mainly using Towner’s NICNT commentary. I’ve also made extensive notes on themes I have found in the Pastorals, a few of which I have turned into blog posts, with hopefully a few more to follow. There have been several passages that I found really challenging to understand, but I have tried to adopt a position on most issues, and only remain noncommital on the most difficult.

The PDF of my first draft is available here. It is very rough and ready, and needs a proof reader, so please send me any tips for improvement if you do have a look through.

If you want to download any of the others in my series, follow this link. There are three that need a little tidying up before they go online (Mark, Thessalonians, 1-3 John), but the rest of them are up, and I’ll probably do a blog post introducing each one individually at some point in the future.