New in January 2001 (descriptions taken from the CBD web site www.christianbook.com) Reinventing Paul By: John G. Gager Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 240 Vendor: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195134745 CBD Price: $17.50 Description: (PUBOxford University)Casting doubt on a host of accepted notions about the apostle Paul, Gager demands that we look more carefully at this "Hebrew of Hebrews," who retained his Jewish upbringing and outlook throughout his life, yet whose primary focus was his mission to the Gentiles. Bound to generate controversy! The Apostle of God: Paul and the Promise of Abraham By: John L. White Number of Pages: 300 Vendor: Hendrickson Publishers ISBN: 1565632834 CBD Price: $17.45 Description: Most interpreters of Paul emphasize that for Paul, God as universal lawgiver and judge effects righteousness through Christ's saving death, that is, along lines entirely compatible with Paul's previously Pharisaic understanding of God. But since for Paul the power of Torah and tradition to save had in essence its legs kicked out from under it, the question needs to be asked, What made it possible for Gentiles to be saved? Loyola University Professor John L. White contends that to understand the Christ-event in accordance with Torah and Jewish tradition, Paul--the Apostle to the Gentiles--recognized in Abraham and Sarah (as neither ethnically Jewish nor Torah-bound) the explanation for the new status of Gentiles. Because of Christ, the promised seed of Abraham, the Gentiles receive the blessing of Abraham. For the apostle of God, this revelation came not from others or from human teaching, but from his encounter with the God of Abraham and Sarah. Paul's Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology By: Rainer Riesner Number of Pages: 512 Vendor: Eerdmans Publishing Co. Publication Date: 1997 ISBN: 080284166X CBD Price: $37.95 Description: This monumental work by German scholar Rainer Riesner examines both biblical and extra-biblical sources to establish the chronology of Paul's early ministry and also illumines our understanding of his work by portraying him in his cultural context. Paul and His Letters By: John B. Polhill Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 448 Vendor: Broadman / Holman ISBN: 080541097X CBD Price: $20.95 Description: A book on the life, writings and thoughts of Paul, designed to serve both as a textbook for students and a source book for pastors. From Paul To Valentinus By: Peter Lampe, translated by Michael Steinhauser Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 528 Vendor: Augsburg / Fortress ISBN: 0800627024 CBD Price: $29.40 Availability: Available to ship on or about 01/26/01. Description: (PUBFortress)Now translated into English! "So masterful in its grasp of a vast array of evidence, so solid and innovative in its methodology, and so audacious in conception that it is bound to become a classic. It is the most important historical and sociological study ever written on Roman Christianity,"---Interpretation. 528 pages, hardcover. According to Paul: Studies in the Theology of the Apostle By: Joseph A. Fitzmyer Vendor: Paulist Press ISBN: 0809133903 CBD Price: $9.95 Description: According To Paul gathers together several important essays on Paul's mission and teaching by one of the foremost Pauline scholars of our day. These landmark studies explore in detail such major issues as Paul's Jewshness, his characteristic language, and his relationship to Acts. Individual topics include: Paul's use of Abba and its implications, Paul's use of glory as reflected on the face of Christ and in light of a Palestinian Jewish literary motif, and the meaning of kephale, "head" (in 1 Corinthians 11:3). Also discussed id the Christological hymn of Philippians 2:6-11, in light of its Jewish-Christian background. Finally included is an insightful view of Paul's opinion on preaching and suggested modes of preaching Pauline topics. Paul and Politics By: Edited by Richard A. Horsley Number of Pages: 224 Vendor: Trinity Press Intern'l ISBN: 1563383233 CBD Price: $21.50 Description: Interpretation of Paul has long been dominated by Lutheran/Protestant theological concerns. Paul has been treated as primarily concerned with narrowly personal religious issues, and critics have often contended that Paul was a conservative regarding social issues. PAUL APOSTLE OF LIVING GOD By: Mark J. Goodwin Number of Pages: 272 Vendor: Trinity Press Intern'l ISBN: 1563383187 CBD Price: $22.40 Availability: Available to ship on or about 04/01/01. PAUL IN GRECO ROMAN WORLD By: J. Paul Sampley ed. Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 464 Vendor: Trinity Press Intern'l ISBN: 1563382660 CBD Price: $32.00 Availability: Available to ship on or about 05/01/01. RELIGION OF PAUL THE APOSTLE By: John Ashton Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 288 Vendor: Yale University Press Publication Date: 2000 ISBN: 0300084412 CBD Price: $19.95 Availability: Available to ship on or about 02/23/01 Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles By: Marion Soards Type: Trade Paperback Vendor: Westminster / John Knox ISBN: 0664257070 CBD Price: $27.95 Availability: Available to ship on or about 01/31/01. Description: A well-written, comprehensive presentation of Paul, which highlights his importance for the developing Christian movement in the mid-first century. This is a thorough, scholarly, and sometimes beautiful presentation of Paul's life and thought. Paul As Apostle to the Gentiles By: Daniel Chae Number of Pages: 378 Vendor: Paternoster Publishing Publication Date: 1998 ISBN: 0853648298 CBD Price: $31.95 Description: Opposing what he terms "the post-holocaust interpretation of Romans and of Paul," Chae presents an alternative exegetical understanding. He argues that Paul's emphasis in Romans is not---as many believe---to warn the Gentile church against anti-Semitic arrogance. Instead, he reads Romans as a bold defense of the Gentiles' status before God. Approx. 320 pages, softcover from Paternoster. Making Sense of Paul: A Basic Introduction to Pauline Theology By: Virginia Wiles Number of Pages: 300 Vendor: Hendrickson Publishers ISBN: 156563117X CBD Price: $14.95 Description: Wiles introduces Paul's theology by helping readers bridge the gaps of time and place between twentieth-century Western readers and the first-century Mediterranean apostle. Wiles engages the reader in a meaningful way, relying upon solid interpretation coupled with modern analogies. Taking her cue from the notion that what may be familiar may not necessarily be understood, Wiles shows how assuming knowledge of Paul's thought world and language leads to confusion and misunderstanding. Thus "familiar" terms such as 'righteousness,' 'sin,' 'law' and 'grace' take on a new dimension under Wiles's guiding hand. Paul: A Man of Two Worlds By: C.J. den Heyer Number of Pages: 320 Vendor: Trinity Press Intern'l ISBN: 1563383012 CBD Price: $23.20 Description: (PUBTrinity Press International)In this masterly synthesis, den Heyer, the renowned Dutch theologian, seeks to balance the paradoxes that others have discerned in Paul's complex personality and writings. In a graceful, "effortless" style he summarizes centuries of thinking, then adds his own original touches. Paul: The Man and the Myth By: Calvin J. Roetzel Number of Pages: 288 Vendor: Augsburg / Fortress ISBN: 0800631730 CBD Price: $17.60 Description: We are left to reconstruct a portrait of Paul with only scraps of what was once a large and imposing canvas-a small collection of letters and a historical narrative written a generation after his death. This reconstruction focuses on important parts of the image that usally fall in the shadows, parts dealing with Paul's sexual asceticism, his preoccupation with holiness-holy Spirit, holy community, and holy ethos-the evolution of his theology, and his emergence as a legendary figure. Although I have tried to follow the strict rules of historical investigation, of necessity much guesswork is involved in any exploration of Paul's life. All of these efforts are attempts to deal with the gaps in the text, understood in the broadest sense to include not just Paul's written words but also the culture, social world, and political realities surrounding them. The Theology of Paul the Apostle By: James D.G. Dunn Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 800 Vendor: Eerdmans Publishing Co. Publication Date: 1997 ISBN: 0802838448 CBD Price: $31.45 Description: An outstanding contribution to the ongoing discussion regarding Paul's theology. Using Romans as a foundation for constructing an integrated study of Paul's thought, Dunn's readable, thematic treatment clearly describes Paul's teaching on God, humankind, Christology, salvation, the church, and the Christian life. You couldn't ask for a more thorough analysis of Paul. The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for the Jew of of Israelite History and Identity By: Ben Witherington Type: Hardcover Number of Pages: 300 Vendor: Inter-varsity Press ISBN: 0830815031 CBD Price: $15.95 Description: Who was the real Paul? Some of his contemporaries asked the same question. Now the author of the highly acclaimed Jesus Quest presents a scholarly survey that paints a vivid picture of this important first-century figure. Discover Paul's many complexities, including traits previously obscured by history. A most worthy quest for Bible students and pastors. Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society By: HORSLEY Editor: Richard Horsley Number of Pages: 256 Vendor: Trinity Press Intern'l ISBN: 1563382172 CBD Price: $15.20 Description: (PUBTrinity Press International)Catch up on your reading! Horsley has gathered together important recent pieces on Paul's mission to the Gentiles, concentrating on four areas: (1) the imperial cult, (2) patronage and power in Roman cities, (3) the terminology Paul used to articulate the gospel, and (4) the nature of early church assemblies. 256 pages, softcover. Some additional notes from the Pauline studies internet discussion group: White, John L., The Apostle of God: Paul and the Promise of Abraham (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999). Justin Meggitt, PAUL, POVERTY, AND SURVIVAL (1998) Argues against "new consensus" that Paul and his churches were "middle-class"; rather (like on M.'s estimate 99% of the urban population throughout empire) they lived just at subsistence level, therefore had to rely on "Christian mutualism" as a "survival strategy." The early chaps. on poverty and social structure are worth the price of admission. (Amazon.com reviewers have given it a five-star rating.) Anders Eriksson, Traditions as Rhetorical Proof: Pauline Argumentation in 1 Corinthians, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1998. Quite simply the best rhetorical critical analysis of 1 Corinthians that I know. Anders is able to use both ancient and modern theory to illustrate, among other things, that the argumentation in 1 Corinthians is coherent and audience centered. That is, it is of a piece and written to an audience that knew the traditions and could, therefore, complete the argument Paul was making. F. Gerald Downing, THE CYNICS, PAUL, AND THE PAULINE CHURCHES (1998) Argues (as sequel to CYNICS AND CHRISTIAN ORIGINS I) that Paul's self-presentation would readily have been understood by Roman audiences as cynic-like, and that Paul cannot have missed that fact. Also argues that between "early" (Gal., Thess., Cor.) and "late" (Php., Rom.) letters Paul changed from a more "radical," Cynic-like social posture to a more subdued, conserva- tive, Stoic-like one. Lots of good footnotes! Winsome Munro, JESUS, BORN OF A SLAVE (1997?) This work, published just after Prof. Munro's death, builds an intriguing case that Jesus (and his family) came from the slave class and were themselves slaves in Roman Galilee. There is much useful material in discussion and footnotes. There is ALSO a good deal of begging-the-question, circular reasoning, and arguments from silence--i.e. "since Jesus' slave status would have been embarrassing and since the NT sources are likely to suppress embarrassing information, the lack of more explicit evidence 'proves' that Jesus was a slave" (my paraphrase). Despite these flaws Munro makes an intriguing argument that Phil. 2 does NOT use "form of a slave" metaphorically, or in some "theological" sense ("slave to sin," e.g., as for DUNN in THEOLOGY). She argues Paul actually knew that Jesus came from the slave class; the consequences for her reading of Gal., especially Gal. 3:28, are dramatic. At least her argument prompts a re-assessment of the sense in which Paul describes Jesus as dying a slave's death. Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and its Humanist Reception, Yale University Press, 1997 I list it because she forced me to re-think the relationship of rhetoric to hermeneutic and argues that foundationalist understanding of argumentation misunderstands the classic rhetorical theorists -- there ain't a single truth that once described can be applied to a case free of contextual constraints (pace Plato!). They were concerned with relating the parts of an argument to the whole and being pragmatic in their use of argumentation. Thus understanding the arguments in Paul's letters becomes in part understanding the topography of his thought in a letter, not a description of the trajectory of his thought. Mark Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul's Letter (1996), claims that the EXOUSIAIS hUPERECHOUSAIS" spoken of in Rom 13:1 refers not to Roman government officials as is usually supposed or argued, but to synagogue authorities. I would want to add that the fourth volume of Pauline Theology, with the subtitle Looking Back, Pressing On, was published in the SBL Symposium Series by Scholars Press in 1997, edited by E. Elizabeth Johnson and David M. Hay. Its ISBN is 0-7885-03 06-5. The first three volumes were edited by Jouette M. Bassler and published by Fortress Press (1991-). R. B. Matlock, Unveiling the Apocalyptic Paul (Sheffield: S. A. P., 1996). Matlock gives an entertaining review of the way in which "apocalyptic" has been used to make interpreter's points about Paul's theology from Schweitzer up to Beker and Martyn. Pointing out the ambiguities and the problems of abstracting a category of distinctive "apocalyptic" thought from the apocalypses, and including an incisive critique of the Semeia 14 discussion and interaction with Rowland's proposal, Matlock shows how the use of the term "apocalyptic" by interpreters of Paul frequently tells us a lot more about those interpreters than it does about Paul. There is an informative and appreciative review of Matlock's book on-line by Neill Elliott at the SBL Reviews website - http://www.sbl-site.org/SBL/Reviews/8jan16.html [Andrew Lincoln] Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (1996) >From Kirkus Reviews , May 15, 1996 A dry historical tome that would be more aptly titled ``Paul: A Cultural History.'' The difficulties of doing ancient biography are compounded when one of the two major sources available is believed to be historically unreliable and corrupt. One of New Testament scholar Murphy-O'Connor's primary objectives is to demonstrate why Luke's account of Paul's life, contained in the Book of Acts, is an inaccurate basis for biography. Point well taken, but where to go from there? The author relies heavily on Paul's own letters, but the portrait available from them is incomplete at best. Paul revealed relatively little about his personal life, preferring to call attention to his mission. Some surprising hypotheses do emerge from this work. First, Murphy-O'Connor conjectures that Paul was not a bachelor, but a widower who had lost his family in some sort of tragedy. The psychological evidence for this is slim, and the historical evidence is nonexistent. Much stronger are the author's deductions about the letters themselves; he makes an excellent case for 2 Thessalonians as a genuine Pauline letter, a minority opinion among New Testament scholars. He also challenges Rome as the traditional site of Paul's imprisonment and demonstrates why Ephesus was a far more logical locale. The primary contribution of the book is not that it is a biography of Paul, but that it opens the door to Paul's world through geography, Roman history, and Jewish-Christian conflict. Unfortunately, the prose is mired in academic passivity and such dense phrases as ``abstracting from the spurious clarity of the philological argument.'' The book is so weighed down with cultural history that there is relatively little about Paul himself, and what there is seems to be mostly speculation. Acts, though historically imprecise, makes for a much better story. As yet I have only read part of 'Paul: A Critical Life', and ... I think this is an important and essential book for 2 reasons: (1) At the outset, the author acknowledges that his work is speculative, and proceeds from there. (2) As such, the book is an example of how the life of an ancient might be reconstructed, rather than the final word on the life of Paul. This contrasts with many academic texts which seem to aim to give the final word on a subject. My criticism of a book such as E.P. Sanders' 'Paul and Palestinian Judaism' would be that it seems to be an attempt to show how Paul should be read, and thus falls into the same trap as many of the earlier scholars Sanders' criticises. The value of Jerome Murphy O'Connor's work is that the author makes the problem of method clear at the outset, and presents his research against that background. In terms of method, it is a landmark in Pauline studies. [James Harding, University of Sheffield] Charles Cousar's _The Letters of Paul_ (Abingdon, 1996). Kjell Arne Morland, The Rhetoric of Curse in Galatians, Scholars Press, 1995. I list it because it makes good use of semantic field analysis -- a method not widely applied by Pauline scholars -- and has the best exegesis of the anathema and cursing formulas in Galatians that I know about. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (1990): for the seminal articles on the new perspective Morna Hooker: From Adam to Christ: Essays on Paul (1990): lucid, original scholarship. Margaret Mitchell _Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation_ (originally a Chicago dissertation under Betz), another rhetorical analysis of 1 Corinthians that avoids the mechanical appropriation of rhetoric and compares the letter to classical speeches appealing for harmony in the _polis_, among other things convincingly construing the letter as a literary unity. Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989) beautifully written and extremely perceptive. Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ (1988, 2000\2) Fredriksen (FROM JESUS TO CHRIST) has made a persuasive case that Paul's motives for persecuting the churches (which she reads as routine synagogue discipline) were not related to supposed breaches of Torah or inclusion of gentiles, but to the political danger of "messiah" talk in the politically volatile mixed communities outside of Judea. Her case must be rather circumstantial, since Paul does not SAY as much. On the other hand, the more traditional attempts to explain the persecuting activity (indicated above) ALSO rely on circumstantial evidence AND on a tendentious reading of Paul, who never says he objected to Torah violations OR to gentile inclusion, either. Neil Elliott, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul's Dialogue with Judaism The book that introduced this reviewer to exciting (as opposed to the pedestrian "this is the probatio") forms of rhetorical criticism. Collins, Raymond F., Letters That Paul Did Not Write: The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Pauline Pseudepigrapha (Good News Studies, 28: Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988). This book is now published by The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. /end/