Category: Books and articles

Blog posts stimulated by, or about, books or articles I’ve read.

My review of Jesus is Lord—Caesar is Not

My review of a fascinating collection of essays, Jesus is Lord—Caesar is Not: Exploring Empire in New Testament Studies, is now available online on Reviews in Biblical and Early Christian Studies. I enjoyed reading this book which makes a valuable and accessible contribution to the debates over the impact of the Roman empire on what the New Testament authors say (especially...

Review: Claire S. Smith, Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’: A Study of the Vocabulary of ‘Teaching’ in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus

    I commented on this stimulating and thoughtful study by Claire S. Smith some while ago on this blog, here, and sketched some of its implication. Now my review has been published by Review of Biblical Literature online, so you can read it here. There’s also a shorter, but helpful, summary-review by Andrew D. Clarke in Themelios online here.

Simon Gathercole on Tom Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God

  Here’s a fresh, generous and stimulating review of N. T. Wright’s big Paul and the Faithfulness of God by my friend Simon Gathercole, who teaches in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading Simon’s review, which is gracious and clear, and clarifies and maps areas of agreement and disagreement nicely. It’s preparing me for reading Wright himself—I...

Learning and church structures: a stimulating book by Claire S. Smith

This book addresses a really important topic, the ‘learning’ nature of the Pauline communities (especially in Corinth, Ephesus and Crete)—although the title is technical rather than inviting—and it’s stimulated me to write about a particular point arising from it. In general, I’ve enjoyed reading Claire Smith’s book and a full review (I wrote almost 2500 words) will appear on the...