Commentaries differ very widely in pitch, difficulty, method, theological orientation,detail, length, quality, and so forth. Take sheer bulk, for example. All of the commentaries depicted in the photograph below cover Matthew. The first (moving from left to right), in a 1-volume commentary on each book of the entire Bible-with-Apocrypha; the second, in a slim one-volume commentary on Matthew alone; the third, in three thick, technical volumes covering the whole of Matthew; and the fourth, in a substantial volume on but three of its twenty-eight chapters (the Sermon on the Mount):
Use the Library's discovery system to identify commentaries. Select 1) Search Scope: SPU Library for those in the Ames Library and/or accessible online, or 2) Search Scope: SPU + Summit for those in the previous category plus all of those held elsewhere in the Orbis Cascade Alliance and accessible via Summit Borrowing:
Search for commentaries in the Advanced Search area of the Library catalog as follows: Bible AND [Book] AND Commentaries (plural) in Subject contains:
SPU holdings should rise to the top, but to limit your hits to SPU Library holdings that won't have to be Requested via Summit Borrowing only, choose the Search Scope: SPU Library only.
Prioritize your professor's own list of "Select Modern Commentaries" (under "Instructions", below), and then supplement that, if necessary, with my handout entitled Commentary on Commentaries:
