Best Commentaries

Commentary on the Hebrew text which accepts a substantial historicity to the accounts.
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The JPS Torah commentaries are written by Jewish scholars and are quite technical, but for those who are interested in digging deeply into the text, they usually offer numerous valuable insights. This is certainly the case with Milgrom's commentary on Numbers.
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Jacob Milgrom's JPS commentary (1990) is by far my favorite commentary from mainstream academia. It's much briefer than Levine (below), but I appreciate what Milgrom is up to, and he doesn't spend as much time on things that I don't find very helpful. His Leviticus commentary is the best academic work on that book, and this one is nowhere near as detailed but equally scholarly and insightful. Milgrom tends to have a higher view of the historicity of Numbers than most of the other mainstream works. His academically focused treatment does not tend to lose the forest for the trees the way his three-volume Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus sometimes does, and he argues for a unified structure. This commentary is strong in both details and overall message. Milgrom has a special interest in rabbinic traditions, particular in the medieval period, and that history of interpretation finds its way into these pages frequently. This book isn't cheap, but it's much less expensive than the Anchor Bible set by Levine.
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