[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Baker Academic in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary and Review
A few years ago, Baker Academic released The State of New Testament Studies, and the contributors felt like they couldn’t devote as much space to Paul as they needed. So this book was developed. It includes chapters on Paul and specific areas of focus – gender, Judaism, the Spirit, etc. – as well as chapters on each of Paul’s letters. The book exists to highlight recent research, study, theories, and debates. Each chapter is essentially a literature review of recent research – and it’s brilliant! This is a deep, heavily researched exploration.
Professors, researchers, students, and practitioners could use this as a one-stop starting place to dig into the contemporary world of Biblical scholarship, specifically around Paul. The content can spin readers off to numerous resources to dig deeper. Each article/essay is heavily end-noted.
As an example, the chapter on Romans is written by Dr. Jennifer Strawbridge, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Oxford. The chapter covers topics like justification, Junia and Phoebe, post-colonial readings of Romans, ecological interpretation, queer approaches to Romans, and disability studies.
This could be a fascinating textbook for New Testament courses as well as a stellar resource for students and researchers. I would highly recommend the addition of this to university libraries. And practitioners/pastors could get a lot out of having this in their libraries. Again – this is a STARTING place – far more reading and follow up work would come after reading this. I don’t know that someone preaching on a passage in Romans, for example, would use Strawbridge’s chapter alone and feel they did their due diligence in examining current thinking on Romans. Professors, especially those developing or updating a course on Paul’s work, would be well-served by this resource, again as a starting point to include contemporary research.
Also available from Baker is The State of New Testament Studies (already available) and The State of Old Testament Studies (releasing in November).
As a non-academic reader, I felt clearly that I was not the intended audience for this book. But I was captivated by it anyway. I wanted to follow every end-noted rabbit trail to further reading on a variety of topics. The voice of the introduction is great! As a non-seminarian, I had to look up three words/concepts in the intro alone. Have your phone handy to look up terms you might not know. But anyone who is fascinated by Biblical study will find something to dig into here. My only “complaint” is that the end notes (at least in my review coy) weren’t separated by chapter/article which would have made using them a lot easier.
Rating: ♥♥♥♥½*
♥♥♥♥½ = I loved it! Would re-read.