Studying Paul's Letters: Contemporary perspectives and
methods
Joseph A. Marchal, editor
Fortress Press £21.99
(978-0-8006-9818-8)
Church Times Bookshop £19.80 (Use code
CT895 )
WHAT do new readers or students of Paul's letters need to know
or do when beginning to study his writings? (This is a real
question, not rhetorical or one with a simple answer that the
author already has in mind.) What effect does the choice of study
method have on our understanding?
This volume offers 11 chapters on a variety of critical methods
or selective approaches to the texts. They originated in a Society
of Biblical Literature conference in Atlanta in November 2010 on
"Paul and the Politics of Introduction", and have been honed by use
in seminars and group-teaching to become a course textbook on
introductory methods.
"Paul's words have been used for various modern social purposes
such as telling slaves to obey their masters, Jews that they are no
longer God's chosen people, women that they should be subordinate
to men, and homosexuals that their relationships are
unnatural."
In contrast, contributors here advise on:
• Asking historical questions of Paul in relation to our own
historical understanding, using archaeological evidence and
sociological and economic theories to clarify Paul's world.
• Seeing Paul's letters as rhetorical exercises in the art of
persuasion.
• Adjusting the priorities between word and image in studying the
art of communication in a society that is only partially
literate.
• Taking seriously the cultural and ideological perspectives of
feminism, Judaism, and African-American, Asian-American, and
"Queer" approaches, in order to reinterpret the text appropriately
in these ways.
Many of these contributions advise radical methods of approach
which are subversive of the post-Enlightenment traditions of
academic biblical scholarship. But such awkward questions deserve
serious attention in today's society, although the American
orientation of these chapters (rhetorically transcendental and
transatlantic?) may present some obstacles for the British
reader.
Dr Court is Hon. Senior Research Fellow in Biblical Studies
at the University of Kent at Canterbury.