This post has been severely delayed, mostly because of the Christmas and New Years holidays. It only reflects the NT books I found so interesting at the last SBL Annual Meeting booths, that I simply had to buy them… 🙂 Click on the picture to have a better view.
Konrad Hammann, Rudolf Bultmann. A Biography (Polebridge Press November 2012). ISBN 978-1-59815-118-3. 624 pages, hardcover, $60.
“Rudolf Bultmann was the giant of twentieth-century New Testament scholarship. His pioneering studies in biblical criticism shaped research on the composition of the gospels, and his call for “demythologizing” biblical language sparked debate among Christian theologians worldwide.
This definitive biography—now in English for the first time—traces his career in Germany through the tumult of two world wars. Through richly drawn connections between events in his life and his theology, Hammann illuminates Bultmann’s contributions to biblical historical criticism and the changing role of religion in public life in Europe.”
George H. van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context. The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity (Mohr-Siebeck, XXIV, 444 pages. WUNT I 232).
“George H. van Kooten offers a radical contextualization of Paul’s view of man within the Graeco-Roman discourse of his day. On the one hand, important anthropological terminology such as “image of God” and “spirit” derives from the Jewish creation accounts of Genesis 1-2. On the other hand, this terminology appears to be compatible with reflections of Graeco-Roman philosophers on man as the image of God and on man’s mind, and is supplemented with Platonic concepts such as “the inner man.” For this reason, the author traces the development of Paul’s anthropology against the background of both ancient Judaism and ancient philosophy. Although he takes his starting point from Jewish texts, and is not out of tune with particular Jewish thoughts about the close relation between man and God, Paul, like Philo of Alexandria, seems to owe a lot to contemporary philosophical anthropology.” More info here.
Joseph Marchal, Studying Paul’s Letters. Contemporary Perspectives and Methods (Fortress Press, 2012)
“More than a series of “how-to” essays in interpretation, each chapter in this volume shows how differences in starting point and interpretive decisions shape different ways of understanding Paul. Each teacher-scholar focuses on what a particular method brings to interpretation and applies that method to a text in Paul’s letters, aiming not just at the beginning student but at the “tough choices” every teacher must make in balancing information with critical reflection. Studying Paul’s Letters is organized for use in a single semester course on Paul” (Fortress Press)
Matthew V. Johnson, James A. Noel, Demetrius K. Williams, Onesimus our brother. Reading Religion, Race, and Culture in Philemon (from Fortress Press, 2012, 175pp)
In Onesimus Our Brother, scholars including leading African American biblical interpreters tease out the often unconscious assumptions about religion, race, and culture that permeate contemporary discussions of this letter and of the apostle Paul’s legacy. ‘The editors argue that interpreting Philemon is as weighty a matter from the perspective of African American experience as Romans or Galatians have proven to be in Eurocentric scholarship. The essays gathered here continue to trouble scholarly waters, interacting with the legacies of Hegel, Freud, Habermas, Ricoeur, and James C. Scott as well as the historical experience of African American communities(from Fortress Press).
E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (IVP Books, 2012).
“Biblical scholars Brandon O’Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what might be going on in a text. Drawing on their own crosscultural experience in global mission, O’Brien and Richards show how better self-awareness and understanding of cultural differences in language, time and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways.”
All quotes from the publishers webpages.
Philonica et Neotestamentica 