The Anchor Bible reference library is a collection of books that I have had some connect with over the last 10 years. I have owned a number of these and used them in my studies, so when the collection was priced at 40% off I wanted to point this out to my readers. Full disclosure – Logos opened this resource up for me for this review. I already owned some of it so a few volumes in it are new to me. As always, that doesn’t skew my review positive and I will point out negatives were needed.
Ever since I got a copy of the Anchor Bible Dictionary in grad school, I appreciated the Yale/Anchor books. I knew they were quality and would be worth the money anytime I could get my hands on them. I began assembling a set of what you see below over the course of about ten years. The volumes never disappoint and the scholars involved are some of my favorite – David Noel Freedman, Luke Timothy Johnson, Raymond Brown, Neusner, Charlesworth and so many others.
It was through these volumes that I came to a greater appreciation for some venerable Catholic scholars like Brown and Johnson. I came to appreciate Jewish scholars like Jacob Neusner. There is so much to learn when you get outside your own echo chamber and these volumes provide a wealth of knowledge from a variety of scholars that will widen your point of view in a healthy way.
What is in this set of 47 volumes:
- Literary Theory and the New Testament (Dinkler)
- Matthew within Sectarian Judaism (Kampen)
- A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (5 vols – Meier)
- The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (Regev)
- Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (van der Toorn)
- History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition and the Interpretation (Dungan)
- A Social History of Hebrew: Its Origins through the Rabbinic Period (Shniedewind
- Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (Luke Timothy Johnson)
- An Intro to the Gospel of John (Raymond Brown)
- An Intro to the New Testament (Raymond Brown)
- Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies and Traditions (Moss)
- Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (3 vols – 10,000BC to Constantine)
- Education in Ancient Israel (Crenshaw)
- Friendship in the Hebrew Bible (Olyan)
- History and Prophesy: The Development of Late Judaen Literary Traditions (Peckham)
- Introduction to Rabbinic Literature (Neusner)
- Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Charlesworth)
- Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises (Hahn)
- Language and Literacy in Roman Judea (Wise)
- No Ordinary Angel (Garrett)
- Peoples of an Almighty God: Competing Religions of the Ancient World (Goldstein)
- Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity (Potok)
- Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (Sommer)
- The Birth of Christian History: Memory and Time from Mark to Luke-Acts (Becker)
- The Birth of the Messiah (Raymond Brown)
- The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis
- The Death of the Messiah (2 vols – Raymond Brown)
- The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel (Mobley)
- The Formation of the Jewish Canon (Lim)
- The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations and Introductions (Layton)
- The Good and Evil Serpent: How a Universal Symbol became Christianized (Charlesworth)
- The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin (Chapman)
- The Nine Commandments (David Noel Freedman)
- The OT Pseudapigrapha (2 vols – Charlesworth)
- The Pentateuch: An Intro to the First Five Books of the Bible (Blenkinsopp)
- The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (Niditch)
- Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen (Ackerman)
- Where the Gods are: Spatial Dimensions of Anthropomorphism in the Biblical World (Smith)
- Women’s Divination in Biblical Prophesy, Necromancy and Other Arts of Knowledge (Hamori)
Annotations on a few specific volumes
Literary Theory and the New Testament: A fairly technical take on literary analysis of the New Testament, especially focusing on Critical Theory, which is the foundation of Critical Race Theory.
Matthew Within Sectarian Judaism: This book gives a lot of great historical background to the gospel of Matthew and his world. It focuses in on the Sermon on the Mount in light of the sects of Judaism. The book also covers the sects of Judaism in the ministry of Jesus.
Marginal Jew (5 volumes): I am not intimately familiar with all five volumes. The gist of this series is to examine the historical Jesus and what that means for us today. This requires a deep dive into the historical, political, cultural and religious background of Jesus and the Gospels.
A History of the Synoptic Problem: The book is exactly what the title says it is and is an essential read for anyone studying the Synoptic problem. Dungan attempts to explore a few aspects that he says up until the point of publication (1999) had not been tackled including: a longer history of the synoptic problem going back to 1800, examining the canon in relation to the synoptic problem, unique aspects of the history of the synoptic problem and what other factors have shaped the debate over the years (“cultural, political, economic and technological presuppositions”)
Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (3 vol): These books were on my shelf for some years and provided a great wealth of knowledge to use in class and sermon prep. They are filled with pictures and illustrations that bring things to life. This is an incredibly thorough resource that will not disappoint.
History and Prophesy: This is a massive tome that explores the deuteronomistic history and the prophets.
Introduction to Rabbinic Literature: This book by Jacob Neusner is a must read for people looking at Rabbinic literature. Maybe you are studying the New Perspective on Paul/E.P. Sanders – this will be a great help.
Birth of the Messiah and Death of the Messiah (3 vols): Raymond Brown has done us all a favor with the amount of detail he put into these books. You can walk through the legalities of the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus as well as a very detailed analysis of the birth of Christ. I often turn to these around Christmas and Easter as I prepare lessons.
The Formation of the Jewish Canon: This is a book that I have not yet read (I have skimmed through it but not a thorough reading) but it intrigues me because I have read a lot on the NT canon but very little on OT canon. This book looks at the various early lists, works that didn’t make it, dead sea scrolls, OT canon in the NT and finally the formation process itself in chapter 10 (the most interesting part, imo).
The Nine Commandments: First, the title is striking. Second it is written by David Noel Freedman who edited the Anchor Bible Dictionary…so you have me right there! I am in! This book highlights Freedman’s skill as someone who unlocks complicated puzzles in the text. He ties each commandment to a book of the OT.Here is the opening line of the Introduction, “Hidden in the Bible is a previously unrecognized pattern of commandment violations, a pattern that has gone undetected for more than two thousand years. In the books spanning Exodus to Kings, the nation of Israel is presented to the reader as thoroughly defying its covenant with God by breaking each of the Ten Commandments, one by one, book by book, in order, until there are none—leaving God with only one choice: the destruction of the nation.” Wow!
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols): If you are studying these texts, these contain all the texts you would ever want to have at your disposal. These are two massive volumes.
The Temple in Early Christianity: This book intrigues me as well because I am doing a deep dive on early Christian meeting places and house churches. I haven’t read it yet but giving it a look it seems to be what I had hoped it would be – a walk through of the temple throughout the entirety of the New Testament.
Pricing
This set normally runs $2025. In February 2025 it is marked down 40% to $972! Now, that is still a lot of money and here is some good news. If you already own any volumes in the set, it marks it down even more. So that put this set around $600 based on what I already owned. And I don’t believe this set goes on sale all that often so you might consider picking it up before the end of the month.
Buy it here at my affiliate link – Anchor Bible Reference Library!
If you want to watch a video review, you can do that below.
