For those looking to deepen their understanding of the letter to the Colossians (and Philemon, in the case of Beale’s commentary), the scholarly choices are looking bright. As the following review will evidence, studies in Colossians are on the rise. Members of the academic world are no strangers to the authors of the following volumes. G. K. Beale holds the J. Gresham Machen chair of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, Glenside, PA; Scot McKnight holds the Julius R. Mantey chair of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Lisle, IL; and Joel White is university lecturer in New Testament at Freie Theologische Hochschule, Giessen, Germany.
Given the nature of commentaries and the amount of material being surveyed and reviewed, the following engagement will be somewhat limited in its attention to particulars. Instead, I want to focus on the layout of each commentary and some of the distinctives one can glean from...