Tag: From the Bookshelf
Paul in Acts and the Letters
While expressing doubts about the correctness of the “New Perspective(s) on Paul,” Stan Porter makes the following, interesting observation about the New Perspective(s) vis-à-vis the question of continuity between the portraits of Paul in Acts and the letters: If this new perspective is correct, then it would appear that the Jewish elements that typify the…
Second Temple Literature as a “Cultural Script”
While reading Darrell Bock’s Studying the Historical Jesus in preparation for class this fall, I came across the following, insightful comment: Every culture has its “cultural script” that is assumed in its communication. These [Second Temple Jewish] sources help us get a reading on the cultural script at work in the time of Jesus. They…
Hansen on Christian Community and Obedience
In commenting on Phil 2:12 in his recent Pillar series volume, Walter Hansen observes the following about Paul’s description of Christian community and obedience: The church is an eschatological community, a colony of heaven. But in order for the heavenly reality to be a present, earthly experience, believers need to work out the salvation promised…
History and Collective Memory
Defending the legitimacy of the category of “collective memory,” Maurice Halbwachs observes the following: History is neither the whole nor even all that remains of the past. In addition to written history, there is a living history that perpetuates and renews itself through time and permits the recovery of many old currents that have seemingly…
Torah as Interpreted Torah
In an essay entitled “Paul and James on the Law in the Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Martin Abegg incisively observes that The interpretation of the law, which had been revealed by God, is the focus of the phrase “works of the law” [at Qumran]. . . . No doubt the emphasis is on…
The Power of Private Presuppositions
Presuppositions that remain unacknowledged at least to oneself can still exercise strong influence. Indeed, [a] person who believes he is free of prejudices, relying on the objectivity of his procedures and denying that he is himself conditioned by historical circumstances, experiences the power of the prejudices that unconsciously dominate him as a vis a tergo.…