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Rating: 
Summary: Lacks depth
Review: After reading the masterly work of Baucknam on Jude, I thought all the books in the series were similar. I was dissappointed. There is nothing extra. The greek analysis was okay, but that was all. No discussion on the historical, archeological material or the customs of that day. No comparison of scripture or how verses are linked to other parts of the bible..It wasn't what I wanted, but it may be okay for others
Rating: 
Summary: Lucid scholarly work
Review: Like all commentary series, the Word Bibilcal Commentary has it's good and average contributions. This is at the very good end, exegeting the text in detail for the student or pastor, while maintaining clear discussion for the layman.
Rating: 
Summary: Best so-far on the Greek text but with some caveats
Review: Smalley really has put together the best commentary on the Greek text of I, II, and III John we've got at this point. He is well-versed in the scholarship on these books and presents others' views well even when he disagrees. He is fairly good at sorting through the issues in a balanced way, giving good arguments for most of his conclusions. His treatment of the historical setting for these books seems to go a bit beyond the evidence. In the spirit of Raymond Brown, Georg Strecker, and other contemporary scholars, Smalley seems to place much emphasis on reading these books as a response to how some had misinterpreted the Gospel of John, reconstructing a whole historical situation behind the letters reflecting this speculative scenario behind this so-called "Johannine community". While this sort of work is imaginative, it is hardly worthy of the name of historical scholarship. At best it can show us a possible background to the texts at hand. Compared to Brown and Strecker, Smalley is a breath of fresh air. At times, Brown seems more sympathetic to the heretics John is confronting, and Smalley does seem to identify more with the elder and his concern for purity of maintaining the apostolic doctrine. Brown seems open to taking both the heretics and the orthodox on these matters as legitimate interpretations of the apostolic message, an approach that minimizes the apostolic message and ignores much of the indisputably earlier epistles. Strecker's work reflects outdated scholarship. His now outdated history-of-religions method, together with his placing these books well into the second century despite all the recent evidence to the contrary, makes his work far less appealing than its scholary reputation would otherwise lead one to believe. Smalley's own unique contribution is in his view that two heresies are at work in the Johannine community. Some Jewish heretics err on the side of Jesus' humanity, not admitting to his divinity because of Jewish monotheistic concerns, and other proto-Gnostic heretics err in denying his full humanity. The evidence shows no such thing, and all the language of these letters fits just fine with some sort of proto-Gnostic heresy, so the two-heresy view seems unnecessary, though showing such a thing will take some significant work in future commentaries on these letters. I'm not entirely happy with everything in this commentary, but it stands far above the others available with this much detail on these books. I eagerly await D.A. Carson's commentary in the NIGTC series, which will easily be the best work on these letters. On the more popular level, John Stott's Tyndale volume and Colin Kruse's Pillar commentary will provide some balance to the idiosyncrasies of Smalley, but his attention to detail and interaction with the whole of scholarship will prove invaluable, at least until Carson's book is finally published. Schnackenburg's older commentary could also be quite useful as a more in-depth foil to balance out Smalley.
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