Too many references in a commentary?

[bigcat1969]

Do you ever get the point where there are so many cross references to other Bible verses (or other works) in a commentary that it is hard to concentrate on the commentary itself? I'm a commentary newbie reading through the Tyndale Commentary series and I was doing pretty well until the Chronicles. The author seems to love to point to every verse related to what he is saying including many verses in the chapter I just read. One commentary page on Solomon had roughly 100 cross references. There is sometimes more cross reference 'words' than commentary words on a page.

 

Maybe I'll just have to get used to it over time, but my goodness I want a commentary not the Thompson Chain Reference Bible when I'm trying to get deeper into the text using a commentary. Maybe I'm lazy and I get that the bible comments on itself, but there is a limit to how many references I'm willing to look up per verse and I'm not willing to read several entire chapters elsewhere to get the author's point.

Edited August 28, 2019 by bigcat1969

[Tim Hall]

Bigcat,

 

In the preferences under Tool Display you can change the way your links look. This will make them easier to ignore if you want.

[Unix]

This is often the case as commentaries fill several functions. It should be possible to follow most commentaries on most passages without reading every reference in-depth, though many series make a point of using them as a reference work is possible because of treatment of pericopes being to a large extent stand-alone elaborations.

If You're wanting less of that there is likely to be a set that suits Your style of reading. Generally speaking, Biblical Scholarship requires a decent knowledge of many books of the Bible as well as lots and lots of other primary texts. I myself usually want lots of extra-Biblical references to the Antiquity and Medieval times.

References to whole chapters may very well be there for the readers accustomed to knowing what each chapter is essentially about and their main points or setting in time are. Many commentaries are used for homily and sermon building and help out not to forget the story and message the Bible speaks.

Familiarize Yourself with for what all kinds of purposes there have been commentary sets made and choose one add-on set with the focus and scope to Your liking! I have a group on FB which YOU ALL are welcome to join, the title of the group is something along the lines of "Concisely Erudite Commentaries, of the nobility", - search for the two words commentaries nobility, when You find it link to it here, it will be that one! I'm not online on FB right now, the link may also be in one of my posts on here, I keep forgetting which post. Novices will get help from experts in that group. There are many people, including me, with a great overview of existing series, though many more need to join the group first for the discussion to get active!:

Maybe I'm lazy and I get that the bible comments on itself, but there is a limit to how many references I'm willing to look up per verse and I'm not willing to read several entire chapters elsewhere to get the author's point.

[bigcat1969]

Thanks revtim. Turning the text to look like non-link text helped a lot. I finally figured out that it wasn't the fact of having tons of cross references that was the problem, but that at points every sentence was split into two or three parts. When you are a newbie [2,3,3,7,10] trying to read [another book 3:32-97,yet another book 54:1-54,32:12, 11:1-43] an endless string of interrupted sentences [is this good grammar 32:1, or is there 54:1-45, a better way 2:34] takes some getting used to. I looked at other commentaries and it seems fairly common to have the links only at the end of a sentence which I think will help in the future.

 

Thanks Unix. The Tyndale is the 'newbie' multi-volume commentary and I think I'm generally understanding it. Though I think I'll go to a few introductions and single volume commentaries next. Maybe I should have done that first, but 10 volumes in, I want to persevere. I really enjoyed Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, early Joshua, Judges/Ruth and Samuel so I think this is a pretty good commentary set for me. I hope that in future I will be conversant enough to the Bible and other texts to know what they are in a single glance. I admire people like you have already have that knowledge!

[Unix]

Thanks:

I admire people like you have already have that knowledge!

The group I referred to, is this one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2290154717874594/ :

I have a group on FB which YOU ALL are welcome to join, the title of the group is something along the lines of "Concisely Erudite Commentaries, of the nobility", - search for the two words commentaries nobility, when You find it link to it here, it will be that one! I'm not online on FB right now, the link may also be in one of my posts on here, I keep forgetting which post. Novices will get help from experts in that group. There are many people, including me, with a great overview of existing series, though many more need to join the group first for the discussion to get active!: