At Marginalia:
François was a scholar’s scholar. Those of us who were privileged to work beside him on his publications were always amazed at his ability to sight-read any ancient text in Greek or Latin as well as modern scholarly works in French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English. And François read ancient scholarship as well as modern. His mastery of both areas is reflected in his commentary on Luke, where, besides dealing with critical works by modern scholars, he summarizes for each pericope the contributions made by ancient scholars like Irenaeus and Tertullian, or Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine, medieval scholars like Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, and reformation scholars like Luther and Calvin, under the section, Wirkungsgeschichte (“History of Interpretation” in the Hermeneia edition). These sections were a sort of “Ancient Christian Commentary” on Luke, a unique feature for biblical commentaries at that time, and before the now well-known series by that name made this angle of research popular. And we were surprised to find in his footnotes not only the names of well-known modern scholars like Bultmann or Barth but even our own names, for François was always very careful to give full credit to anyone who had helped him in his work. Even if he could not yet cite a publication from our hands, François would include our names in a footnote and would record his debt to a conversation where he had asked us for our own thoughts on a given passage.
There’s much more which is well worth a read.
This reminds me of Bovon’s complaint (made in 2006 in print, though I suspect on other occasions, too) that too many Lukan scholars were neglecting scholarship in non-first languages. Oh to be a polyglot.