The Review of Biblical Literature contains Jason Myers’s helpful and appreciative review of Teresa Morgan’s Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (OUP, 2015).
A while ago, I mentioned Sacred Texts and Paradigmatic Revolutions would be coming to paperback. That format is now available at about a fourth or less of the MSRP for the hardback.
For May, Logos Bible Software’s free volume is N. T. Wright’s The Lord and His Prayer(SPCK, 1996). The paired discount volume is Wright’s Paul: Fresh Perspectives (SPCK, 2005).
...
This month’s free book from Logos Bible Software is Stephen Westerholm’s Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme (Eerdmans, 2013). Those who get this free volume are also eligible to purchase Douglas Campbell’s massive The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul(Eerdmans, 2013) for only $0.99.
...New Testament Studies
The latest issue of New Testament Studies includes:
Barry F. Parker has the latest article in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, "‘Works of the Law’ and the Jewish Settlement in Asia Minor." According to the article’s conclusion:
The first recourse for the Anatolian Jews under [social, political, and religious] pressure was not an appeal to ‘legalism’, but to ‘selective works of the law’, as is implied by the phrase ἔργα νόμου. The only appearance of this phrase from that time outside of Paul is found in 4QMMT. The use of ‘works of the law’ there confirms both that Paul is in (indirect) dialogue with those familiar with Essene terminology and that selectivity is in view. Although he speaks to a different audience about a different problem regarding the law in Romans, when Paul uses the phrase ἔργα νόμου in Romans 3, the immediate context is quite similar to what he addresses in Galatians. It is, in both cases, a matter of the righteousness of God, as expressed in the faithfulness of Christ (πίστις Χριστοῦ). This faithfulness of Christ suffices for both Jew and Gentile (pagan), who are equally condemned—in Galatians they are condemned for trying to supplement that faithfulness with a perverted version of the law, and in Romans they are condemned for perverting the law by their very efforts to fulfill it through a selective participation in it ( 96).
...
New Testament Studies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The latest issue of New Testament Studies includes:
On the web:
New Testament Studies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In addition to John Barclay’s tribute to Friedrich Avemarie, the latest issue of New Testament Studies includes:
Dan Wallace digests the SBL meeting discussion of the recently announced Romans fragment in the Green collection.
Michael Bird, ed.
The folks at Zondervan sponsored this year’s Institute for Biblical Research meeting reception. In addition to the deserts there, they very kindly provided attending members with a copy of the recent (2012) Counterpoints volume on Paul, edited by Michael Bird. According to the publisher’s description:
...Ben Dunson and I were at Westminster together for a bit before his Durham days, and it’s wonderful to see that this volume is now available. For those who want to take a look at the original thesis, Durham has it archived here.
The latest reviews from the Review of Biblical Literature include:
New Testament and Cognate Studies
Second Temple Judaism
...New Testament Studies
The latest issue of New Testament Studies includes:
Ferdinand Christian Baur.
Google Books has available two full PDF copies ( 1, 2) of the original German of F. C. Baur’s Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi (1845). Also available are the first and second volumes of second edition of the English translation produced by Eduard Zeller ( Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, 2 vols., 1873–1875). In addition, the book’s second, posthumously produced German edition (2 vols., 1866–1867) from which Zeller translated the English version is available in a single, combined PDF that contains both of its volumes.
...In his Romans commentary, F. F. Bruce gives the following, sound advice for those who want to understand Paul better:
We may agree or disagree with Paul, but we must do him the justice of letting him hold and teach his own beliefs, and not distort his beliefs into conformity with what we should prefer him to have said ( 136).
...
[caption id=“attachment_6870” align=“alignright” width=“80” caption=“Michael Licona”] 
[/caption]In his new monograph, The Resurrection of Jesus, Michael Licona summarizes as follows how he sees Paul conceiving of believers’ possible ends:
Paul sees two options before believers. Some believers will die prior to the parousia and will become disembodied until the general resurrection, while believers alive at the parousia will have their earthly bodies clothed with their new resurrection body made by God. Paul certainly prefers to avoid the former. But his faith gives him confidence that, if he dies prior to the parousia, he will be with the Lord, although in a disembodied state, which he prefers over present life in the earthly body. And being with Christ is what matters most to Paul ( 435–36).
...
This week in the biblioblogosphere:
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 account in Acts, such as Paul’s beginning much of his local preaching with a visit to the synagogue . . . , his agreeing to participate in the ritual in Jerusalem ( Acts 21:17–26 . . . ), and his defenses focusing upon his continuity with Judaism, all point toward continuity between the Paul of Acts and of the Letters. Thus, the new perspective on Paul would appear to render this criticism of [E.] Haenchen [that Luke is unaware of Paul’s answer to the question of the law and the Gentile mission] no longer valid ( 191).
...
Michael Bird announces a new, semiannual journal dedicated to Pauline studies and that is chiefly edited by himself in association with Nijay Gupta.
This week in the biblioblogosphere:
Klyne Snodgrass discusses a “hermeneutics of identity.” Snodgrass repeatedly observes the New Testament’s concern with issues related to identity.
The call for papers for the 2010 annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting is available. Proposals are due by March 31. This year’s theme will be “Justification by Faith” with plenary addresses by John Piper, N. T. Wright, and Frank Thielman, a lineup that promises to be highly engaging. Moreover, this year’s program will also include, on Friday morning, a two-hour panel discussion with the plenary speakers.
...Regarding the place of Jesus in Paul’s hermeneutic, James Aageson suggests that
[Paul’s] hermeneutic is inherently theological and is governed by his experience on the Damascus road and its legacy. From a persecutor of the early church, Paul was transformed into a man with a mission to carry the name of Jesus to the Gentile world. The divine mystery that was revealed to Paul in Christ opens for him new ways of reading and listening to the ancient texts of the Jewish people. His belief in Christ is both an experience and a conviction that, in his eyes, allows him to comprehend the “true” meaning of the religion of his people and their sacred texts ( 155–56).
...
Michael Bird comments that the papers for next week’s Louven conference, “New Perspectives on Paul and the Jews,” are available for download. Of the presenters listed in the program, only Anne-Marie Reijnen’s paper on " Kosmos and Creation in Paul’s Thought" is not currently available.
Additionally, in the developing list of audio and video resources over at Evangelical Textual Criticism:
...Douglas Campbell
Douglas Campbell’s new book, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul, has come to publication at Eerdmans. The publisher’s description reports that:
In this scholarly book Douglas Campbell pushes beyond both “Lutheran” and “New” perspectives on Paul to a noncontractual, “apocalyptic” reading of many of the apostle’s most famous-and most troublesome-texts.
Campbell holds that the intrusion of an alien, essentially modern, and theologically unhealthy theoretical construct into the interpretation of Paul has produced an individualistic and contractual construct that shares more with modern political traditions than with either orthodox theology or Paul’s first-century world. In order to counteract that influence, Campbell argues that it needs to be isolated and brought to the foreground before the interpretation of Paul’s texts begins. When that is done, readings free from this intrusive paradigm become possible and surprising new interpretations unfold.
...
I just received an email confirmation that my paper, “Jeremiah 9:23–24 and Rewritten Bible: A Window on Paul’s Hermeneutic,” has been accepted for this year’s national ETS meeting in New Orleans. A brief abstract follows:
The genre of rewritten Bible was reasonably common in the Second Temple period. Although rewritten Bible did not fully substitute for Israel’s scripture, this genre still provides evidence for biblical interpretations that were current in the Second Temple period. It also facilitates a greater understanding of how these interpretations could be employed in various contexts. Two Pauline texts in which the rewritten Bible tradition provides such assistance are 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17, which both cite Jer 9:24. In this case, reading Jer 9:24 in concert with the rewritten Bible tradition, such as the one that the Targum of the Prophets exhibits, sheds light on Paul’s text and on the hermeneutical approach that he exhibits toward Jer 9:24 as he attempts to speak to the unique challenges of the Corinthians’ situation.
...