Ever asked a pastor or professor, "What's the best commentary on Romans?" Best Commentaries answers that question for every book of the Bible — by crowdsourcing the collective wisdom of scholars, journals, and thousands of everyday readers.^1
Created in 2008 by John Dyer — a coder, professor, and VP for Enrollment and Educational Technology at Dallas Theological Seminary — the site was inspired by Rotten Tomatoes. Dyer wanted to aggregate the trusted recommendation lists of scholars like D.A. Carson and Tremper Longman III into a single, searchable database with a transparent scoring algorithm.^2 Today the site catalogs 10,817 volumes with 7,655 reviews and 454 curated libraries from seminaries, scholars, and organizations like The Gospel Coalition.^1
The scoring system weighs average ratings, review volume, and library inclusions so that a well-reviewed, widely recommended commentary rises above one with a perfect score but few reviews.^3 The result is a practical starting point for seminary students building a library, pastors preparing a sermon series, or any believer who wants to go deeper in the Word.
Why Christians Love It"If you're willing to purchase physical commentaries, I'd recommend bestcommentaries.com. I use it all the time." — Reddit user^4
"Best Commentaries is trying to cover ALL the audience from the devotional follower to the scholar." — Ross D. Harmon, pastor and commentator reviewer^5
Notable- In 2025–2026, the site expanded to support Chinese, Spanish, German, Korean, and Portuguese, driving a 400% increase in active users and serving the global church across multiple languages^6
- Dyer has written openly about the "problem of religious algorithms," acknowledging how the site's ranking methodology can reflect cultural biases and actively working to highlight a wider range of scholarship — including curated collections of commentaries by female scholars, Jewish scholars, Roman Catholic scholars, and BIPOC authors^7
- Watermark Community Church (Dallas) pastor Timothy Ateek referenced Best Commentaries in a 2025 sermon on eschatology, calling it "extremely helpful" and noting its DTS roots^8
- Dyer spoke at the 2025 Digital Ministry Conference on a biblical framework for understanding AI, noting Best Commentaries serves half a million pastors annually^9
- In January 2026, Dyer published "9 Bible Verses on Artificial Intelligence" for AI and Faith, continuing his active writing on technology and theology^10
- John Dyer is the author of People of the Screen: How Evangelicals Created the Digital Bible and How It Shapes Their Reading of Scripture (Oxford University Press), which traces the history of Bible software development and the role evangelical entrepreneurs and coders played in shaping it^11
- Free to use; Dyer also runs a Patreon supporting his free bible and theology tools, including bestcommentaries.com, biblewebapp.com, and biblereadingplangenerator.com^12
