Mondays with Peter Davids ... Part Four

This is the fourth installment of an eight-part interview with Dr. Peter Davids, Professor of Biblical Theology at St. Stephen's University in New Brunswick.

His commentary on the epistle of James is part of The New International Greek Testament Commentary series (Eerdmans), edited by I. Howard Marshall and W. Ward Gasque.

JR: Your highly-regarded commentary on James' epistle was published in 1982, just as the explosion of evangelical commentary publishing was beginning. From a scholar's point of view, what do make of this explosion?

DAVIDS: I think that things had been building for a number of years. F. F. Bruce and some others had started the Tyndale Fellowship back in 1935, I believe, when no faculty in the UK had an evangelical biblical scholar. When I was there in the early 70s, no faculty did not have an evangelical biblical scholar.

Back in the USA evangelicalism was maturing, often coaxed and coached by British evangelicals. Rather than defensive biblical scholarship ("How the liberals are wrong"), more and more were feeling secure enough to ask questions that had not been asked before and explore the text with historical eyes rather than simply repeat the answers that their dogmatic tradition demanded that they give.

Parallel to this maturing of scholars came the maturing of presses. Eerdmans was joined by InterVarsity Press and then Zondervan and Baker as presses that wanted their own place in the evangelical scholarly market. When I was in seminary, only Eerdmans was in that market.

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So you have the maturing of scholars and scholarship at the same time that you had presses that all wanted to be in the scholarly market, broadly defined, and that led to the explosion of commentaries.

I did not set out to write a commentary on James. I was teaching in Wiedenest when Ward Gasque visited me (as a fellow Brethren – he was on his way to a conference elsewhere) and read my thesis one night, unbeknown to me, then consulted with I. Howard Marshall and offered me a contract to write that commentary. They wanted someone able and ready to produce a commentary for their new series. Scholars in Tyndale Fellowship wanted to create an evangelical scholarly tool, a press was amenable, so they sought out other scholars to write.

That pattern was repeated multiple times, although in some cases presses decided that they needed a series (often because of the success that they saw at other presses) and sought scholars to be editors and recruit the writers of the volumes.

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NEXT MONDAY'S QUESTION: You grew up in the Plymouth Brethren fellowship and have ministered a great deal in Vineyard Fellowship circles, and you are an Episcopalian/Anglican minister. Tell us some of the things you have learned from that ecumenicity and why you have chosen the Anglican/Episcopalian communion as home.