Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:3 (Fall 2025)
Article: Revisiting Commentaries On Joshua
Author: David M. Howard, Jr.

Revisiting Commentaries On Joshua

David M. Howard, Jr.

David M. Howard, Jr. is Professor of Old Testament at Bethlehem College and Seminary, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his PhD in ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Previously, he taught for twenty-eight years at Bethel Seminary, where he is now Professor of Old Testament Emeritus. He is the author of seven books, served as the series editor for the Handbooks for Old Testament Exegesis, and numerous other articles. Dr. Howard was raised by missionary parents and lived in Costa Rica and Colombia. He has taught since 1998 at a Christian university in Romania, and for more than a decade at schools in East and Southeast Asia. He is married to Jan, and they have two daughters, two sons-in-law, and seven grandchildren.

In 1998, I published a survey of a dozen of the best exegetical commentaries on the book of Joshua in the SBJT, in conjunction with having completed my own commentary on the book in the New American Commentary series (NAC).1 I have now completed a comprehensive revision of that commentary for a new series, the Christian Standard Commentary (CSC),2 and so I am delighted that Stephen Wellum, editor of SBJT, has agreed to let me revisit that survey again in these pages.

In the original survey, I first addressed what a commentary is, how best to use one, and how to go about building a library of commentaries on any given biblical book, and I reproduce much of that discussion here (though in expanded and reorganized fashion). I then selected the twelve best exegetical commentaries that in my judgment would help pastors, students, and well-motivated laypeople to mine the riches of the biblical text of Joshua. This time around, I do the same, keeping some from the original survey and adding others. I again select the dozen best— my own opinion, so caveat lector! (“let the reader beware!”). In this survey, I have limited myself to commentaries published in the last thirty years, with one significant exception.3

SBJT 29:3 (Fall 2025) 168

What Is A Commentary?

In its most basic sense, a commentary simply makes comments on a text. In the best commentaries, these comments are not random or impressionistic statements that may or may not have a legitimate connection with the meaning of the text at hand. Rather, they focus on the given text, and on clarifying the text’s meaning.

Commentaries do this using different tools. The first step is determining which text is to be clarified. Many commentators provide their own original translation and te...