Book Notice: Framing Paul

Book Notice: Framing Paul July 29, 2015

Douglas A. Campbell

Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014.
Available at Amazon.com

Doug Campbell’s book is an adventurous, bold, and thought-provoking attempt to re-think Pauline chronology with a pure reliance on the epistolary data. Campbell makes some eyebrow raising claims like the Antioch Incident (Gal 2.11-14) precedes the Jerusalem meeting (Gal 2.1-10) – I’ve read before from Gerd Ludemann, but Campbell sets it up in his own way. He argues for the authenticity of  Colossians and Ephesians, dating them to ca. 50 AD and written from Pisidian Antioch.  He dates 1-2 Thessalonians in the early 40s. He doesn’t think Paul wrote any letters from Rome. Campbell believes that the pastoral epistles were written after and in response to Marcion. Many accounts of Pauline chronology just tinker with extant chronological narratives. In contrast, Campbell’s work is a fresh and intriguing, even if not always convincing, attempt to start from scratch, forgo all the assumptions, and just work with the data we have. Worth consulting whenever debates about dating, authenticity, and provenance of Paul’s letters are up for discussion.


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