Gifford on Romans Available Again

Edwin Hamilton Gifford, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, Nabu Press, 2010. (London: John Murray, 1886. Originally in The Speaker's Commentary, 1881).

I have already mentioned this commentary in another post. This is a commentary the way they used to make them in the nineteenth century, in two columns with the translation on top and the notes taking most of the page at the bottom. I can only concur with Sanday-Headlam. This much neglected exegetical commentary is very good. Many twentieth century commentaries on Romans bring very little or no additional information compared to Gifford.

Our obligations to this commentary are probably higher than to any other. (Sanday-Headlam, Romans, cviii)

For example, Gifford already debates the Claudius Hypothesis (3); he sees a reference to Ps 97LXX in Rom 1.17 (61); to Ps 142LXX in Rom 3.20 (88); he discusses the “Faith of Christ” problem in 3.22, rejects the subjective genitive, and refers to other nineteenth century commentaries on the issue (89); etc.

Gifford also offers the advantage of interacting with older works and commentaries on Romans in several languages, as commentators used to do. This saves you time in trying to find the references yourself, especially since many modern commentaries refer little to pre-Sanders or, if you are lucky, pre-Schweitzer works.

Gifford has been unavailable for a long time until recently but is now reprinted. As indicated by the publisher, this is an exact reproduction of the old edition, not an OCR. If you work on Romans, get this commentary or have your library order a copy!