Barrett - The acts of the apostles - Volume I

Much scholarly work has been done on the Bible since the publication in 1951 of the latest volume in the International Critical Commentary (that of J. A. Montgomery and H. S. Gebman on the Books of Kings) - and the bulk of the series is, of course, much older.

New linguistic, textual, historical, and archaeological evidence has become available, and there have been changes and developments in methods of study. In the last quarter of the twentieth century there will be as great a need as, and perhaps a greater need than, ever for the kind of commentary the International Critical Commentary seeks to supply. The series has long had a special place among works in English on the Bible, because it has sought to bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis, linguistic and textual no less than archaeological, historical, literary, and theological to help the reader to understand the meaning of the books of the Old and New Testaments. In the confidence that such a series meets a need, the publishers and the editors have planned both to commission commentaries on those books of the Bible which have never appeared in the series and to replace some of the older volumes. The work of preparing a commentary on such a scale cannot but be slow, and developments in the past quarter of a century have made the commentator's task yet more difficult than before, but it is hoped that the volumes will appear without too great intervals between them. No attempt has been made to secure a uniform theological or critical approach to the problems of the various books, and scholars have been selected for their scholarship and not for their adherence to any school of thought. It is hoped that the new volumes will attain the high standards set in the past, and that they will make a contribution to the under- standing of the books of the Bible.