Customer Reviews

Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Professor Udo Schnelle is widely regarded as the leading scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity working in Germany today--and those who read this volume will see why. For, here, they will encounter a historical, textual, and theological assessment of Paul that is of impressive magnitude on all fronts--a type of work that (in my view) is without analogue in current Anglo-American treatments of Paul. Students who have been educated in the latter context (esp. in the US, as I myself) will here encounter a type of panoramic study and a degree of cross-disciplinary competence (e.g., *both* Greco-Roman and Jewish backgrounds, as well as linguistics, philosophy of language, and epistemology) which, in all likelihood, they did not realize existed in the discipline. Not only does Prof. Schnelle display an unparalleled historical, philological, and textual expertise that (justly) made the German school the leader of NT studies in the 20th century, but he also carries out his work with a philosophical and hermeneutical sophistication that one rarely (if ever) encounters elsewhere in contemporary scholarship.

If you are studying Paul (particularly in the Anglo-American context), this book is not only a "must-read," it should serve as the chief guide & arbiter among all modern treatments. It is more than the equal of Dunn's Theology of Paul (and as well-written as Gager's Reinventing Paul), and will correct the excesses and misperceptions that plague the currently conceived horizon of Anglo-American scholarship. Indeed, this work should encourage those in the latter context to read still further, consulting directly with the other recent luminaries of the German critical school (esp. G. Bornkamm; N. A. Dahl; M. Dibelius; G. Strecker; even R. Bultmann--all of whom have been wrongly neglected of late).