Customer Reviews

Paul: His Life and Teaching

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McRay's book is for college or seminary level students. McRay is good about interacting with other scholars on all the issues he covers. McRay is a conservative evangelical, so he does use Acts and Paul's letters to contruct his history and thinks them to be historicall reliable. For an intermediate reading on Paul, I would recommend the book.

I found the first half of the book on Paul's life to be quite good. He gives good background info on all the cities Paul went to. He descibes how he would have traveled, what life was like in Roman prisons, and how Paul used his Jewishness and Romanness to his advantages. McRay thinks Paul was released from his first Roman imprisonment (where Acts ends) and went on to more ministry and wrote the Pastoral epistles.

This books is not that great if one is intersted in Paul's writings. Each letter is treated very breifly within the life narrative. He mostly focuses on Paul's reasons for writing the letter and its general contents. The second half of the book focuses on various aspects of Paul's teaching. There doesnt seem to be any rhyme or reason why McRay chose the topics he did. Here are some comments on a few chapters within the "teachings" half of the book:

Paul's view of the law -- an extremely complex topic. McRay does a good job of breaking all the debate down into a few points. Very helpful introduction to the issue.

Paul in Recent study -- does what it says. Again, a good intro to the topic.

Form, function, and canonicty of Paul's letters -- mostly about what letters were like in the Greco-Roman world and how Paul's letters compare.

The Faithfulness of Christ -- corrects a common misunderstanding of Paul's teaching. Usually people see Paul as pitting works verses faith. McRay convinvingly argues that this is wrong. Paul pits faith in the Law verses the faithfulness of Christ to God's promises to redeem humanity.

Paul's world of apocalyptic and demonology -- Sets Paul in the religious context of the 1st century.

Paul and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ -- Mostly discusses Philippians 2:5-11. Very technical chapter.

Obviously one book cannot comprehensively cover life and teaching. So I guess I should cut McRay some slack. Good book, many pictures, some maps. Has many many footnotes for further research.

It was claimed that Paul, who has been accepted as the most effective missionary and the founder of christianity, has been misunderstood by a lot of people from Marcion to Bultmann. Mcray's book offers satisfying information about Paul to seminary, college students and all interested christians to explore Paul's life and teaching. Mr Mcray who has described Paul's Life and missionary journeys extraordinary dealt with important issues on Paul in his book's second chapter. John Mcray deserves both congratulations and thanks for this high in quality guidebook.

The book is an approachable academic look at Paul's life and times for with a passion to know more about this great Apostle in his historical and cultural setting. This brings it all alive. The book is full of facts (tables), dates (charts), and excellent general as well as detailed material on Paul's life, his ministry, and the many places he traveled and taught. In this way, the book is more a biographical history but not a theological review of Paul's writings.

I read this book at reading Prof. McRay's book titled "Achaeology & The New Testament". The second half of this Archaeology book covers the provinces and cities Paul visited from an archaeological perspective.

Prof. McRay has visited most of these sites, so there are plenty of fairly recent photographs. He has a nice touch on the pictures he publishes.

These are two of my favorite books, so I hope you enjoy them too.

The previous reviewer did an excellent job! To add to what he said:

This book is divided into two halves: the historical background and events of Paul's life (240 pages), and an brief exposition of his writings (184 pages) .

I bought the book for the first half because the last half, although it has a few interesting facts here and there, is very inadequate.

The first half contained a number of charts, photos and extensive footnotes. It contains a history of Paul's life derived from the Bible, and historical background derived from many other sources. It gives a very good overview.