Moisés Silva - Philippians

Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament

ROBERT YARBROUGH AND ROBERT H. STEIN, EDITORS

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1992, 2005 by Moiss Silva

Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2014

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ISBN 978-1-4412-0247-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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Series Preface

The chief concern of the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (to be known as BECNT) is to provide, within the framework of informed evangelical thought, commentaries that blend scholarly depth with readability, exegetical detail with sensitivity to the whole, attention to critical problems with theological awareness. We hope thereby to attract the interest of a fairly wide audience, from the scholar who is looking for a thoughtful and independent examination of the text to the motivated lay Christian who craves for a solid but accessible exposition.

Nevertheless, a major purpose is to address the needs of pastors and others who are involved in the preaching and exposition of the Scriptures as the uniquely inspired Word of God. This consideration affects directly the parameters of the series. For example, serious biblical expositors cannot afford to depend on a superficial treatment that avoids the difficult questions, but neither are they interested in encyclopedic commentaries that seek to cover every conceivable issue that may arise. Our aim, therefore, is to focus on those problems that have a direct bearing on the meaning of the text (although selected technical details are usually treated in the additional notes).

Similarly, a special effort is made to avoid treating exegetical questions for their own sake, that is, in relative isolation from the thrust of the argument as a whole. This effort may involve (at the discretion of the individual contributors) abandoning the verse-by-verse approach in favor of an exposition that focuses on the paragraph as the main unit of thought. In all cases, however, the commentaries will stress the development of the argument and explicitly relate each passage to what precedes and follows it so as to identify its function in context as clearly as possible.

We believe, moreover, that a responsible exegetical commentary must take fully into account the latest scholarly research, regardless of its source. The attempt to do this in the context of a conservative theological tradition presents certain challenges, and in the past the results have not always been commendable. In some cases, evangelicals appear to make use of critical scholarship not for the purpose of genuine interaction but only to dismiss it. In other cases, the interaction glides over into assimilation, theological distinctives are ignored or suppressed, and the end product cannot be differentiated from works that arise from a fundamentally different starting point.

The contributors to this series attempt to avoid these two pitfalls. They do not consider traditional opinions to be sacrosanct, and they are certainly committed to do justice to the biblical text whether or not it supports such opinions. On the other hand, they will not quickly abandon a long-standing view, if there is persuasive evidence in its favor, for the sake of fashionable theories. What is more important, the contributors share a belief in the trustworthiness and essential unity of Scripture. They also consider that the historic formulations of Christian doctrine, such as the ecumenical creeds and many of the documents originating in the sixteenth-century Reformation, arise from a legitimate reading of Scripture, thus providing a proper framework for its further interpretation. No doubt, the use of such a starting point sometimes results in the imposition of a foreign construct on the text, but we deny that it must necessarily do so or that the writers who claim to approach the text without prejudices are invulnerable to the same danger.

Accordingly, we do not consider theological assumptionsfrom which, in any case, no commentator is freeto be obstacles for biblical interpretation. On the contrary, an exegete who hopes to understand the apostle Paul in a theological vacuum might just as easily try to interpret Aristotle without regard for the philosophical framework of his whole work or without having recourse to those subsequent philosophical categories that make possible a meaningful contextualization of his thought. It must be emphasized, however, that the contributors to the present series come from a variety of theological traditions and that they do not all have identical views with regard to the proper implementation of these general principles. In the end, all that really matters is whether the series succeeds in representing the original text accurately, clearly, and meaningfully to the contemporary reader.

Shading has been used to assist the reader in locating the introductory comments for each section. Textual variants in the Greek text are signaled in the authors translation by means of half-brackets around the relevant word or phrase (e.g., Gerasenes), thereby alerting the reader to turn to the additional notes at the end of each exegetical unit for a discussion of the textual problem. The documentation uses the author-date method, in which the basic reference consists of authors surname + year + page number(s) (e.g., Fitzmyer 1981: 297). The only exceptions to this system are well-known reference works (e.g., BDAG, LSJ, TDNT ). Full publication data and a complete set of indexes can be found at the end of the volume.

Robert Yarbrough

Robert H. Stein

Authors Preface to the Second Edition

The present commentary first appeared, at the end of 1988, as part of the Wycliffe Exegetical Commentary series. It was then reprinted in 1992, with minor corrections, as the initial volume of the BECNT series, which has since adopted some changes (e.g., the use of the author-date system). The opportunity to revise the commentary has made it possible not only to bring its structure and formatting into consistency with more recent volumes in the series but also to update the material by taking into account works published during the last fifteen years. My Philippians bibliography for that period, however, contains almost two hundred new items, most of which make a genuine contribution to our understanding of the letter. How to integrate so much new research is a challenging problem.

The initial publication of the commentary had a very positive reception, but I was particularly gratified by comments from a number of pastors who found it especially helpful in their study and preaching. It thus seemed advisable not to change its character by overloading the exposition with scholarly suggestions. Indeed, readers of this commentary are best served by having their attention drawn to selected works only (even so, close to one hundred new titles receive mention). The introductory chapter contains two addenda that summarize recent publications (these will be found at the end of the sections titled Literary Structure and Exegetical History). Otherwise, interaction with newer scholarship is mostly relegated to the footnotes.