Book Notice: Peoples of the NT World (Simmons)

This really interesting ‘illustrated guide’ to Peoples of the New Testament World (Hendrickson, 2008) would have passed right by me unnoticed had a friend not brought it to my attention.

I will try and spend more time blogging on the particular contents later, but I will just give you a taste for now.

From what I can tell from a quick perusal, it is an intro to the ancient world, focusing specifically on groups of people.  This approach has the advantage of being somewhat focused (on only people), but covers a wide range of clubs and religious organizations throughout the ancient world.  This looks like it is pitched to a college level or an educated (armchair theologian) layleader level.  You expect there to be discussions of the Pharisees, Zealots, Sadducees (and there is).  But also Magicians and Exorcists; the Hebrews and Hellenists; Roman Emperors (27BCE-96CE); Centurions; Patrons and Clients; the Greek Philosophers; Slaves and Freed Persons.

The author: William Simmons teaches at Lee University (Tennessee).  He did his PhD at Univ. of St. Andrews under A.J.M. Wedderburn.

Use of book: This might be too detailed to require for a NT survey course as a supplementary textbook.  It would work well for a NT history course or one on backgrounds (e.g. ‘the social world of the NT’).

Style: It is illustrated with great pictures of coins, statues, buildings/temples, architectural reconstructions, landscape photos from mediterranean cities.

Resources: It has an annotated bibliography of primary documents (such as the trans. of the magical papyri, DSS, works of the apostolic fathers, Mishnah, Loeb volumes and more.  The end bibliography has almost 600 entires of secondary sources that will aid students in finding material for research papers.

Endorsements: David Aune (‘well-written presentation’) and Clinton Arnold (‘well researched and richly informative’) give high praise to this book.