I've been slowly but surely working my way through Reinhard Feldmeier's The First Letter of Peter: A Commentary on the Greek Text (amazon.com), published by Baylor University Press. Sean Winter (of the blog Primal Subversion), who blogs a lot about all things First Peter, mentioned Feldmeier in a post awhile back:

My semi-embarrassing moment [at the International SBL meeting] came when I began to chat to a guy about Reinhard Feldmeier’s newly translated commentary on 1 Peter (which I’m hoping to review soon). This guy was quite persistent that this was one of the best commentaries on 1 Peter. I was a bit hesitant, and I’m quite happy that Achtemeier and Green are the best commentaries on 1 Peter, with Elliott a close second. The banter when back and forth for a while and then we parted ways. Later on, I was told that the person I was talking to was Carey C. Newman, who is down to write a commentary on 1 Peter for the Smyth & Helwys series! Next time I’ll be more careful before I just start blabbing… PS: I still think I’m right about Achtemeier and Green. Feldmeier is helpful, but nowhere near as helpful or insightful as the former two.

Feldmeier's commentary (amazon.com) has a lot going for it, in my opinion. I actually enjoyed reading the introduction and particularly appreciated the focus on recipients/addressees. Feldmeier beat it into my head that the author (we'll call him Peter since that's what the text claims) considers himself and those he's writing to as foreigners. Here's an excerpt:

... one must carefully observe that in 1 Peter, the alienation from the world around them does not in the first place take its character from a negation of the world but is interpreted as the flip side of the belonging to God that is stressed in the whole letter, in 1.1f.; 2.4, 9f., by means of the concept of election as integration into the people of God, in 1.3f., 23; 2.2f., by means of the idea of rebirth as an eschatological renewal of existence. This shows that even though the address as "foreigners" is determined by the societal conflict situation, the foreignness of the Christians is not in its essence derived from protests against society, but from correspondence to God and belonging to his new society. (Feldmeier 14, emphasis his)

In other words, the foreignness of Christians in this world is because Christians belong to God; it isn't some counter-cultural difference. I knew this, but Feldmeier (better, Peter Davids' translation of Feldmeier) put words to this idea in ways I hadn't before read, and that I've profited from.

What about the commentary itself? While there is an extensive bibliography in the back, each commentary section has a section-specific bibliography as well. Layout-wise, the book has real, bona-fide footnotes (yay!) instead of chapter endnotes or that insipid abomination, notes at the end of the book. All in all, a good reading experience.

However, I have at least one thing I'm not pleased with: Latin phrases. Sure I can figure out most of them, but c'mon -- genitivus auctoris? (p. 58); scientia eminens practica? praxis pietatis? (both on p. 43); paralelismus mebrorum? (p. 65). This sort of thing is just unnecessary and useless. Here's an in-context example of useless use of Latin: "The having or not having of such hope thus forms virtually the differentia specifica between Christians and non- Christians..." (p. 68).

I'm still working through the commentary itself; perhaps I'll post more in the future as I continue to work through it.