Customer Reviews

From Pentecost to Patmos: An Introduction to Acts through Revelation

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In a word, Outstanding! This book fills a void for the every-day Christian, meaning it's not written for the "scholar," but for the Sunday to Sunday pew-packing Christian. The "novice" will gain great insights from this volume, and the mature Christian will be allowed to go "deeper" into the text while learning a great deal.

Dr. Blomberg's layout for this book is just outstanding, giving enough "historical background" to be interesting, but not overwhelming. In addition to the "historical background," the structure is superb, with Dates, Authorship, Audience, Purposes, Literary Genre, etc. for each book. Also, he has an excellent Commentary for each book; brief enough to be read quickly, but enough "meat" to get the understanding. And with the understanding of "what it meant" to those living back "then," he then proceeds to the Application and, after all, one must know what it "says" before one can understand how it "applies"! There are also some excellent "Questions" at the end of each chapter to ponder. Thanks Dr. Blomberg for such a well-researched book with all the "current journal articles" and finally, "additional books" in a "Select Bibliography" with commentaries categorized as: "Advanced, Intermediate, and Introductory" for further study.

This book is Christ-centered throughout. And the crucial point that Dr. Blomberg clearly believes and says well, is that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world!

Dr. Blomberg often summarizes those thorny, controversial passages. Of course, some "theology" will be debated until the end of time, but he is often "balanced" in his approach concerning those difficult texts, and is always "fair". Buy this book, I assure you that you will not be disappointed! Perhaps an overstatement, but this book could very well surpass the current "Standard" Introductions to the New Testament such as Guthrie's and Kummel's (at least from Pentecost to Patmos, or Acts through Revelation) due to the excellent current research. (Dr. Blomberg is more in line with Guthrie, i.e., to his credit, he is "conservative.") I believe this book deserves to be in every "theological school" and seminary in the country! And ministry students would be wise to obtain a copy for their personal library. I found it to one of the best books I've ever read and wish it a wide circulation!

Craig Blomberg is one of the best New Testament authors that I have come across in the last 10 years. I have his books on the Parables, the Gospels, and the Gospels as History. He is solid, reliable, an excellent communicator and gives you your money's worth.

This book is an excellent book to use to get the flavor of a book and its background. He also puts in some light commentary. It is a bit better than a single volume commentary of the New Testament because he doesn't break everything out in a section. The background and occasion are being discussed throughout his coverage of each book. As he hits key passages, he explains what they mean without going into a lot of detail.

This is a summary work. It is not a real detailed coverage of finer points of exegesis. You will need the single volumes on the books of interest to get that depth. However, to get the flow and direction of the author's intent and communication and arguments, this is an excellent work. I am teaching books of the New Testament and have found it very illuminating and helpful as a foundation for more detailed study. For the average teacher (read, not a PhD in New Testament), I think you will find this book very useful.

I had Dr. Blomberg as a professor and we used his book about the gospels. I am not of school, but I wanted a book that I could read fairly easily, but also would give me in depth study. The balance that this book provides is great. It's readable and enjoyable and yet Blomberg gives great insight into the scripture. I would definitely recommend this book to someone want an overview with some depth.

This is one of the best New Testament Survey books available, and if you read this in conjunction with the author's tremendous volume on the Gospels (Jesus and the Gospels), then you are in good shape indeed. Craig Blomberg highlights the book of Acts as an historically reliable volume about the spreading of the gospel of Christ. He also compares the itineraries of Paul in Acts with what Paul writes in his epistles. Blomberg makes predictably evangelical contentions on a number of issues (the Pauline authorship of all thirteen epistles ascribed to him, the primitive date and setting for the book of James, the early date for the book of Acts, the identification of Paul's trip to Jerusalem with the famine relief visit of Acts 11:27-30, the essential Petrine authorship of 1 and 2 Peter, the Pauline condemnation of homosexual behavior in Romans 1, and the Johannine authorship of the Gospel and epistles of John.

There are a few surprises along the way. Blomberg believes that Paul is describing the Christian struggle in Romans 7:14-25, but he takes a eyebrow raising Arminian take on the word foreknowledge in Romans 8:29 amd 1 Peter 1:2. He believes that God chooses people to be saved based on His foreknowledge of how they would respond to the gospel. He also rejects the double predestination reading of Romans 9:22-23.

Yet Blomberg, holds to the security of the believer. He thinks that the fallen people described in Hebrews 6:4-6 and 10:26-29 were probably not true believers to begin with.

As far as eschatology goes, Blomberg adopts a premillenial, posttribulational view of the return of Christ. He sees the book of Revelation as primarily futuristic, and yet he acknowledges its applicability in the timeless struggle of good vs evil.

For the most part, this is a very solid work, a reliable guide through the last 23 New Testament books. It doesn't quite hit the heights of Blomberg's classic work on the gospels, but it comes close, and that's definitely a good thing!

For someone looking to get a brief summary of the New Testament after the Gospels this is the book for you. Dr. Blomberg dives into the historical aspects of each book, discusses authorship, themes, thesis, and provides a brief commentary for each book. As the title explains this book begins with Acts and finishes with the Book of Revelation. There are also introductory sections that discuss Paul, the prison epistles, and the pastoral epistles. The commentary portion is not deep and detailed, although Dr. Blomberg does touch on just about everything you need. What is great about this section as well is that Dr. Blomberg provides the reader with where they can go if they wish to read further.

Many don't want to sit down and read a distinct commentary for each book of the New Testament. They just want to get an introduction, or get a taste, of each book. This book is quite helpful in that regard.

Just so you know where I'm coming from: I purchased this book as part of a class I'm currently taking; I've read chapters 9-13 and will be reading 14 in the coming weeks. The content is straightforward and understandable yet goes just deep enough to be beneficial. The book will give you a great feel for the overall theme, structure, and context of the whatever book you're studying. It goes just deep enough to give you a good insight or feel for the meaning of the text without going too deep and becoming boring or painstaking.

Don't buy this book if you're looking for an in-depth exploration of the text; this is an introduction (hence the subtitle, "An Introduction..."). That being said, I would certainly recommend it to anyone who is just starting to get serious about studying the Bible and needs a good overview and wants to lay a foundation for deeper study in the future. This is a great resource to help get you started. I'm sure I will be using it frequently as a quick reference anytime I need clarification on a passage.

No doubt, it may be a great book without more than 80 mistakes in it. I was really surprised when I opened the book and a piece a paper fall down from it! Where was the editor? Is it possible to have so many errors and horrors beginning with misspelling words, wrong quotes, mistakes all over! Unbelievable !!
Of course, I wont recommend this book at all. Not with these kind of basic grammar mistakes.

Hopefully, I'm returning it back to Amazon!

Jose G