UPDATE: Guthrie responds: see below for his perspective on some of my concerns. Thank you, George! I met George Guthrie recently, I think at SBL at ETS this past year. He is a warm and gracious soul, and he is also a very capable NT scholar. He recently edited a book for young students called Read the Bible for Life: Your Guide to Understanding & Living God’s Word (B&H, 2011). It is composed of 16 chapters, containing personal “conversations” that... Read more

When I was in Durham, it was a privilege and a delight to have gotten to know James D.G. Dunn — or “Jimmy” as he is known by many. Eerdmans recently released a collection of lectures he has given in recent years on a wide range of topics: Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels. The book is divided into three parts: What are the Gospels? From Jesus to Paul; and The Bimillennial Paul. It is a rather short book (on the... Read more

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OK, one last note on Love Wins – I participated (along with a few other faculty members) on a symposium on Bell’s book. You can check out the audio of our conversation on itunes here. (Also, SPU recently posted on itunes a public lecture by Steve Fowl – good stuff!) On the topic of “Hell” I will make quick mention of the forthcoming book by my friend Preston Sprinkle called Erasing Hell: What God Said about Eternity, and the Things We... Read more

I would like to give a plug to a new book by friend and future scholar Andrew Byers Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint (IVP 2011). This is a book for the church – especially for what Byers calls “Christian cynics” – those Christians who have been jaded by some of their experiences in the church. The title is apt (Faith Without Illusions)- when all the illusions of Christian idealism have shattered and faded, what is left? IVP... Read more

To many NT students and scholars, it may seem that the “Quest” for Jesus is over. Now, maybe it is a pilgrimage; maybe nothing at all (but scholars walking around in circles). In comes Anthony Le Donne, trying to refresh and re-direct “questers” in his book Historical Jesus: What can we know and how can we know it? (Eerdmans, 2011). This is a short book on Jesus that is aimed at the student and draws from social memory theories and historiographical... Read more

On several different occasions, I have heard N.T. Wright lament that because the book of Ephesians has been considered “pseudonymous” by academia at large, it has become seriously neglected and its theological power ignored. I believe that Wright would be encouraged by Tim Gombis’ new book The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God (IVP, 2010). Here are Gombis’ opening words: “This book presents Ephesians as a drama, a gospel script that invites performances by communities of God’s people.”... Read more

If you keep up with who’s writing which new commentary, you may know that Richard Longenecker has been working on a massive Romans commentary for the NIGTC series. He had so much “introductory” material that he was given the go-ahead to pre-publish some of it to reduce the size of the forthcoming commentary (so I understand). The result is the newly published book Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous letter (Eerdmans, 2011). It is nearly 500 pages long and... Read more

When I had seen N. Clayton Croy’s Prima Scripture: An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation (Baker, 2011), I wondered what it was going to be all about. Is it about hermeneutics? Is it an exegesis primer? Actually – it is all-in-one in about 200 pages and it is FANTASTIC. Essentially, Croy wanted a moderately rigorous hermeneutics book that worked basically from an inductive study method, but also offered traditional “exegetical” analytical tools and resources as well. Thus, Croy works with... Read more

During my PhD research, John Barclay encouraged me to compare Paul and Philo. Since then, I have had a deep love for Philo – such an inspiring moralist philosopher! I have a new article out on Philo and the search for coherence in his thought using conceptual metaphor theory and looking at his cultic metaphors as a test-case. It is with the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha. Enjoy! Read more