What Have We Achieved?

We have designed the first full-scale early Christian commentary on Scripture in the last five hundred years.

Any future attempts at a Christian Talmud or patristic commentary on Scripture will either follow much of our design or stand in some significant response to it.

We have successfully brought together a distinguished international network of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox scholars, editors and translators of the highest quality and reputation to accomplish this design.

This brilliant network of scholars, editors, publishers, technicians and translators, which constitutes an amazing novum and a distinct new ecumenical reality in itself, has jointly brought into formulation the basic pattern and direction of the project, gradually amending and correcting it as needed. We have provided an interdisciplinary experimental research model for the integration of digital search techniques with the study of the history of exegesis.

At this time of writing, we are approximately halfway through the actual production of the series and about halfway through the time frame of die project, having developed the design to a point where it is not likely to change significantly. We have made rime-dated contracts with all volume editors for the remainder of the volumes. We are thus well on our way toward bringing the English ACCS to completion. We have extended and enhanced our international network to a point where we are now poised to proceed into modern non-English language versions of ACCS. We already have inaugurated editions in Spanish, Chinese, Arabic. Russian and Italian, and are preparing for editions in Arabic and German, with several more languages under consideration.

We have received the foil cooperation and support of Drew University as academic sponsor of the project – a distinguished university that has a remarkable record of supporting major international publication projects that have remained in print for long periods of time, in many cases over one-hundred years. The most widely used Bible concordance and biblical word-reference system in the world today was composed by Drew professor James Strong. It was the very room once occupied by Professor Strong, where the concordance research was done in the 1880s, that for many years was my office at Drew and coincidentally the place where this series was conceived. Today Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible rests on the shelves of most pastoral libraries in the English-speaking world over a hundred years after its first publication. Similarly the New York Times's Arno Press has kept in print the major multivolume Drew University work of John M'Clintock 13 The theory of dynamic equivalency has been most thoroughly worked our by Eugence A. Nida, Toward a Science of Translating (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson, 1986). Its purpose is «to state clearly and accurately and accurately the meaning of the original texts in words and forms that are widely accepted by people who use English as a means of communication.» It attempts to set forth the writer’s «content and message in a standard, everyday, natural form of English.» Its aim is «to give today’s readers maximum understanding of the original texts.» «Every effort has been made to use language that is natural, clear, simple, and unambiguous. Consequently there has been no attempt to reproduce in English the parts of speech, sentence structure, word order and grammatical devices of the original languages. Faithfulness in translation also includes a faithful representation of the cultural historical features of the original, without any attempt to modernize the text.» [Preface, Good News Bibles. The Bible in Today’s English Version (New York American Bible Society, 1976)]. This does not imply a preference for paraphrase, but a middle ground between literary and literal theories of translation. Not all of our volume editors have viewed the translation task precisely in the same way, but the hope of the series has been generally guided by the theory of dynamic equivalency.

and James Strong, Theological and Exegetical Encyclopedia. The major edition of Christian classics in Chinese was done at Drew University fifty years ago and is still in print. Drew University has supplied much of the leadership, space, library, work-study assistance and services that have enabled these durable international scholarly projects to be undertaken.

Our selfless benefactors have preferred to remain anonymous. They have been well-informed, active partners in its conceptualization and development, and unflagging advocates and counselors in the support of this lengthy and costly effort. The series has been blessed by steady and generous support, and accompanied by innumerable gifts of providence.

Thomas C. Oder.

Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology, Drew University

General Editor, ACCS

A Guide to Using This Commentary

Several features have been incorporated into the design of this commentary. The following comments are intended to assist readers in making full use of this volume.