Today I read through Prof. Larry Hurtado’s new little book Why on Earth Did Anyone Become a Christian in the First Three Centuries? (Marquette Univ Press, 2016; based on the 2016 Marquette Lecture in Theology). Here I want simply to commend the book to you, and give some brief notes. Firstly, Hurtado is less interested in answering the question, and much more concerned with prompting others to take interest in this question. So, he writes, “There must have been features of early... Read more

Below are the recordings of Dr. Beverly Gaventa’s (Union Theological Seminary) 2016 Sprunts Lectures, under the title “Reading Romans for Now”   Read more

I just finished John R. Clarke’s Roman Life (2007), a fascinating glimpse into Roman life from 100BC-AD 2oo with special interest in Ostia and Pompeii. Clarke is an expert on Roman visual culture and he spends much time in the book examining graffiti, inscriptions, etc. He has written at length about tavern graffiti and speech lines in wall cartoons. Here is his concluding statement: The fact that it is not just the images but also the writings that make these tavern... Read more

This is a multi-part review of NT Wright’s Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Fortress). Today we will look at chapters 3-5 on the New Perspective on Paul. In chapter 3 (“The New Perspective on Paul”) Wright does a bit of pre-history and notes that the NPP path was already being paved by GF Moore, as well as Schweitzer and Davies to some degree. Interestingly, Wright makes the case that Ed Sanders’ work got a good hearing because it inadvertently  resonated with... Read more

One of my new favorite commentary series is the “Teach the Text” from Baker. This series aims at giving pastors and Bible study leaders a potent dose of biblical studies, able to be consumed quickly and conveniently -it is the “Redbull” of commentaries! It is designed to facilitate the process of interpreting a biblical text and going from history context and meaning to theological concepts to modern life and how to teach and illustrate the messages of the text. The... Read more

Check out NT Wright’s May 5th Pepperdine Lecture on the topic of “Cruciformed: Living in Light of the Jesus Story” – This is the first lecture in the series. Presumably more will be published on Youtube soon.     Read more

I won’t offer a full-fledged review, but allow me to recommend to you Craig Keener and Medine Moussounga Keener’s c0-autobiography, Impossible Love: The True Story of an African Civil War, Miracles, and Hope against All Odds (Baker, 2016). Craig is not the kind of person to parade his life around and seek fame and stardom, so I know his and Medine’s desire is to glorify God, encourage believers, and inspire faith. This book, well written, tells the tale of the ups... Read more

Here we launch into a discussion of NT Wright’s new Paul and His Recent Interpreters. In chapter one, Wright commences by “setting the stage” of the discussion of Paul with a focus on the last century or so. He notes the formative influence of FC Baur (19th century) and the early 20th century debates about how Jewish Paul was in his upbringing, education, and thought. I particularly appreciated, in this chapter, his interest in the question of whether or not modern... Read more

“Did Saint Paul Take Up the Great Commission?: Discipleship Transposed into a Pauline Key” – that is the name of my essay in the brand-spankin’ new publication Ecclesia and Ethics: Moral Formation and the Church (T&T Clark Biblical Studies series), edited by John Frederick and his colleagues. This book was a long time in the making and I am glad to finally see it in print. My interest in this essay is basically a historical question and a theological question. Firstly, the historical,... Read more

I have a stack of very big books that I hope to read this summer – Longenecker’s Romans commentary, E.P. Sanders’ big Paul book, John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift, Jimmy Dunn’s Neither Jew nor Gentile. Therefore, it was a bit of a relief to tackle at the moment a “short” book by N.T. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Fortress, 2015) – a mere 378 pages! I am almost halfway through the book and I must say –this is the NT Wright book I... Read more