Friday, May 5, 2017

Paul, Paul, who are you, what did you really mean and what do we do now?

If one scholar in the 20th century turned New Testament scholarship on its head, then a good argument supports that scholar being E.P. Sanders.

Michael Bird, an Ozzie cobber from across the Ditch, gives us choice insights into E. P. Sanders' latest book on Paul.

Plenty to think about.

If you do comment, do not comment on the You Know What section of what Sanders' says. I will not publish such comments. As previously stated in a post below, there is a ban until July-ish ...

9 comments:

Bryden Black said...

Well Peter, Michael Bird has surely been a busy lad!

Not only is there this review of Sanders re Paul that you link to, but I have recently taken delivery of a delightful collection of critical essays which he has helped edit. God and the Faithfulness of Paul: A Critical Examination of the Pauline Theology of NT Wright (Fortress, 2017) is extraordinary and I’m only 30% through it. This now makes for a grand total of 800+ pages on Wright, plus 1600+ of Wright’s original double volume, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013), plus 350+ for Wright’s separate book he was forced to hive off, Paul and his Recent Interpreters (Fortress, 2015), originally an Intro to PFG, and finally another 600+ which cover Wright’s Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul 1978-2013 (Fortress, 2013).
That’s a total of 3,350++ pages on Paul via Wright and Bird et al. Mmmm... You and I are in the wrong business clearly!

Father Ron said...

How many trees, Bryden, are going to have to be sacrificed in order to bring just a single copy of these voluminous works into circulation. Just think of the environment!

Bryden Black said...

No longer a problem Ron! Paper has many sources today; it's called recycling. And anyway, all are available via e-books too!

Jean said...

Worse still, oh no, it has now been proven email is just as un-environmentally friendly if not more so than paper! The plans of men and mice....

BrianR said...

"Worse still, oh no, it has now been proven email is just as un-environmentally friendly if not more so than paper! The plans of men and mice...."

Really, Jean? Do you have a link for this claim?
Um, no, on second thoughts ...

Jean said...

Ha Ha Brian be careful what you ask for... the heaps of info on it but here is a kiwi-link just for you and if you want you can even read a book on it!!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/88777019/The-environmental-cost-of-doing-business

Bryden Black said...

Aha! This might be better under the Brexit thread . But I cannot resist the current chain of conversation .
Do you know it costs more according to carbon footprint energy to produce 1 kg of welsh Lamb delivered to London compared to 1 kg of New Zealand lamb delivered halfway around the world to London?! True!
So much for EU agricultural policies!
But then I guess when globalization collapses, London is will still need their welsh lamb, and ours might not be available ...

BrianR said...

Not difficult to see why. Welsh lamb is delivered by road, NZ lamb by ship to ports near London. Vegetables from East Africa are regularly sold in UK supermarkets, though these are presumably flown in. I know there's a lot of hubbub over some of these giant vegetable farms being developed in Africa, mainly by the Chinese, principally over water consumption and poor treatment of Africans by the Chinese (such is socialism).

As for 'the environmental cost of doing business': Greens are troglodytes and would literally make us all into troglodytes if they ever had their way with their pagan madness. Two things to say to the pagan doomsayers;
1. Thank God for that great Christian Michael Faraday!
2. Thank God for Gerald Manley Hopkins! Read 'God's Grandeur' and rejoice - preferably with NZ lamb washed down with a good imported wine.

Jean said...

Sorry to once again go off thread-topic Peter... but Brian troglodyte is a bit cruel... : ) ... Many a 'green' cause is worthy and prevention is better than cure umm not mentioning a certain governments selling of water for next to nothing to companies who perhaps make a little more on it that's is their due... ummm.... or the often invisible impact a healthy ecological environment has (unfortunately probably only accepted as an asset if you put it in the billions of dollars it saves the country..). One just needs to add a little balance and common sense on occasion to keep things in perspective as with all issue of concern; our humanness usually does that quite adequately, like the dream e-mail would decrease the amount of printing : ) .....

Now to the thread topic. I don't understand in the excerpt why E.P. Sanders is quoted as not liking Romans 9 ... Is its thrust not to emphasise God's salvation as being and always having been through the 'promise' as opposed to the 'law'. It doesn't completely illustrate an arbitrary means of those chosen to be saved does it?