Well, we have waited for this one a long time. I think I first heard it was coming 15 years ago. Perhaps I noticed because it was anticipated to be an excellent commentary on Acts. I heard that the exegesis that Walton would likely produce were why the expectations were so high. Though it has grown into a three-volume set, and though this is only the first volume, I can see what all the hullabaloo was about.

There is an anomaly—the Introduction for Acts as a whole is not in this first volume. There is a bit about textual issues, but the rest of those things normally addressed in an Introduction will come in the third volume. At first I thought maybe he just wanted more time to write it, but he states that at the end is where those issues should be handled. He is in the minority there and I cannot concur. That also makes the staggered release of the volumes a bit unfortunate. I’m not complaining as most all major publishers of Christian academic works do the same thing. I suspect budgetary concerns are in play. It’s not that serious a problem in any event and the three volumes are going to be fantastic when they are all here.

But volume 1 is here now and the prognosticators were correct: the exegesis is expert level. The Introduction of sorts is worth reading as it explains his approach. In short, he wants a commentary on the text rather than on previous commentaries. I’m glad someone figured that out.

We are all used to the WBC format by now even if it would never occurred to us to design a commentary in such a fashion. He advises that in each periscope that we read the “Explanation” section first, which ironically is the last one in each periscope. The WBC format can’t keep a good man down, or a good commentator I suppose.

The scholarship is mature and thorough. There’s some Greek but English is always at its side. He is considered conservative, but some critical, and a bit wrong-headed orientation, is to be found occasionally. This big volume on only the first nine chapters of Acts proves that this will be detailed enough for the most demanding student imaginable.

He writes well too. It’s hard to really hold attention when we have this kind of depth, but he pulls it off. There are some good one-volume commentaries on Acts that are indispensable, but I’d think we’d have to rank this as the best major, heavy-exegesis volume on Acts we have.

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