THE LETTERS OF 2 PETER AND JUDE
(The Pillar New Testament Commentary)
By Peter H. Davids. Apollos. 3148 pages. £21.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-151-9
It is a pleasure to be able to commend this excellent commentary on 2 Peter and Jude, bringing to completion Peter Davids’ long-term goal of commenting thoroughly on the General Epistles. It fits easily into the Pillar series, being scholarly, meticulous and widely read, all the time being based on the NIV, and evidently showing that it has been preached and acutely applied. This is a commentary that shows it has been the product of a lifetime’s faithful study.
Davids’ work stands up well against the most impressive of commentaries on these letters, Richard Bauckham’s in the Word series. Davids interacts with a wide range of authors, but it is perhaps in engaging with Bauckham that he shows off best his scholarly generosity. He shares Bauckham’s views on an early Palestinian (Galileean, for Davids) provenance for Jude, and finds the evidence for the author being Jesus’s brother compelling. On 2 Peter he is (rightly, in my view) suspicious of Bauckham’s theory that it is a pseudepigraphical Testament: it might be pseudepigraphical (although he doubts it), but a Testament is quite the wrong genre.
