more on manuscript-specific commentary

Following up on the excellent suggestion by Michael Bird regarding commentaries focused on specific manuscripts rather than on a critically reconstructed text, Rick Brannan offers some helpful thoughts on what this might look like. I like the focus on the manuscript's place within broader text critical concerns, but I'd like to see more along the lines of the manuscript's place within its specific historical-geographical context, how its distinctives help us understand how the biblical documents within it were being read at that time and location. In other words, as I've noted before, I'd like to see such a commentary move into reception historical concerns, something which Rick's last bullet point only begins to address.

But I think I'm beating a dead horse with no one else around to hear... Uggh! That's quite a horrible image, really. And it leads to the standard philosophical question, "If someone beats a dead horse and no one is around to hear..." ;-)