Paul Archives - Page 2 of 4 - exegetical.tools

Learn about Paul’s Life and Missions with this Illustrated Guide

April 18, 2016

To this date, I think one of the most difficult academic tasks is to learn about Paul’s life and missions. This topic requires memorizing much information, such as the laws of the Roman empire, the geography of the cities Paul visited, the years in which Paul visited cities, the various historical reconstructions of Paul’s journeys, the methodologies for harmonizing Paul’s letters with Acts, and much, much more. If you have never visited the regions of Paul’s journeys, and if you do…

Paul’s Theology of Preaching: The Apostle’s Challenge to the Art of Persuasion in Ancient Corinth, by Duane Litfin

March 30, 2016

Todd Scacewater

Duane Litfin’s Paul’s Theology of Preaching: The Apostle’s Challenge to the Art of Persuasion in Ancient Corinth updates and expands St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation (1994), a revision of his dissertation. This latest version, which Litfin calls the “final” one, the one….

Galatians (Concordia Commentary), by A. Andrew Das

February 17, 2016

Todd Scacewater

The purpose of the Concordia Commentary series is to serve “pastors, missionaries, and teachers of the Scriptures to convey God’s Word with greater clarity, understanding, and faithfulness to the divine intent of the text” (x). To that end, the convictions of the series are that Scripture is Trinitarian, Christ-centered, and Christological. The….

Neither Jew Nor Greek: James Dunn’s Capstone to His History of Early Christianity

February 8, 2016

Todd Scacewater

The history of early Christianity has taken one of the prime spots in recent NT research. Revisionist histories abound, and new perspectives on old data are welcome. But the attempts to canvas in detail the first 150 years of Christianity are few and far between….

Paul and the Gift, by John M. G. Barclay: A Crucial Corrective to the New Perspective on Paul

December 28, 2015

Todd Scacewater

In 1977, E. P. Sanders wrote his landmark Paul and Palestinian Judaism, which argued that second temple Jews did not believe in meriting salvation by works, but believed Jews were included in the covenant by grace and kept in by works. Thus, Judaism, like Christianity, was a religion of grace. Since Sanders’ work, Pauline studies has not been the same. Some followed Sanders’ view of Judaism, including James Dunn who applied these results to a re-reading of Paul, dubbed the “New Perspective on Paul.” Paul did not rail against Jews trying to merit salvation, but against those who tried to use boundary markers or separation from Gentiles to prove (or vindicate?) their right inclusion in the covenant….

The Blackwell Companion to Paul, ed. Stephen Westerholm

December 23, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Moses and Paul: these two would likely be considered the two most prominent and influential biblical authors who have shaped world civilization through Christianity. (Jesus, of course, did not write anything.) As Westerholm’s Perspectives Old and New on Paul showed us, Paul shaped the Christian theological giants theologically more than any other biblical writer. It is therefore no surprise that Pauline studies continues to be (perhaps) the most active and saturated field in biblical studies today (I’ve never heard of any seminary short on Pauline scholars)….

Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright, eds. Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays

September 9, 2015

Jennifer Guo

Jesus, Paul, and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright brings together the proceedings from the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference, in which a group of scholars who also happen to be Wright’s friends were invited to deliver papers responding to some of the most important features of his work on Jesus and Paul. In distinction from other works responding to a biblical scholar, this book holds the unique features of 1) offering a theological response and 2) bringing the conversation to bear on the church, that is, the “people of God.” The book is divided into two parts, the first on historical Jesus research and the second on Pauline studies….

Gregory MaGee’s Response to My Review of His Portrait of an Apostle

September 2, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Earlier, I reviewed Greg Magee’s published dissertation, Portrait of an Apostle: A Case for Paul’s Authorship of Colossians and Ephesians (Wipf & Stock, 2013), 204 pages. You can catch up on the review here. I found this book very creative and well executed, so I decided to ask Greg to write a reply to my review, hoping that he could sharpen my thinking a bit on a topic he spent years studying. He graciously replied, and we hope the discussion between us is fruitful and stimulating….

Portrait of an Apostle: A Case for Paul’s Authorship of Colossians and Ephesians, by Gregory S. MaGee

August 31, 2015

Todd Scacewater

If Colossians, Ephesians, or both are pseupigraphal writings, how would we know? There is one objective, historical test to which we might subject the documents. There are documents that are unanimously agreed to be Pauline pseudepigraphs, namely, Epistle to the Loadiceans (Ep. Lao.) and Third Corinthians (3 Cor.). An objective, historical test would be to compare the language and ideas of these two known pseudepigraphs….

Greek Matters: Colossians 2:20 and Liberation from Fleshly Living

August 12, 2015

Todd Scacewater

Εἰ ἀπεθάνετε σὺν Χριστῷ ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων τοῦ κόσμου, τί ὡς ζῶντες ἐν κόσμῳ δογματίζεσθε; (Colossians 2:20)

There are two difficult elements of Greek grammar here, but, once sorted out, we see a powerful question posed to the Colossians. The first four words are simple enough, “If you died with Christ…” But the following preposition ἀπό seems strange following the verb ἀποθνῄσκω, “to die”; what does it mean to “die from” something? As you can imagine, it means more to “die to” or with reference to something, but even more than that. According to BDAG….