Customer Reviews

Beginning from Jerusalem (Christianity in the Making, vol. 2)

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In this study of Christianity's beginnings, and as always, Dunn is not constrained by conservative/liberal party lines. Breadth and depth of the period are held in suitable tension. Dunn faces head-on each significant issue in NT scholarship for this period in its own right, while leaving the reader with a number of plausible and convincing big-picture themes -- which is the point of a book trying to cover such a scope. Probably a bit stretching for conservatives who are new to "moderate" British N.T. scholarship. Recommended.

D. is a fine interpreter and has been influential in what is called "the new look" regarding Paul (a theory under growing attack).
He is less gifted as an historian. Although this work is equipped with large bibliographical and scholarly apparatus, it is by and large a repristination of views dominant in Anglo-Saxon scholarship c. 1950. D. identifies the problems well, but then procedes to reiterate old answers.
The work is too long and has difficulty in sustaining its arguments. Better for reference than for conclusions.
Obvious contrast is Helmut Koester's 2 volume introduction, which is concise and informed. Koester's views are also controvertible, but they stand upon a much broader foundation than do Dunn's.