The Blackwell Companion to Paul. Edited by STEPHEN WESTERHOLM.

Abstract

The Blackwell Companions to Religion are intended, so the publishers tell us, to present ‘the most recent scholarship and knowledge about world religions’ in ‘a style which is acceptable to undergraduate students, as well as scholars and the interested general reader’ (p. ii). Since such books are not normally reviewed in the pages of the Journal of Theological Studies, the editors have presumably decided to make an exception in this case because its purpose goes beyond that of normal introductions. The book’s aim, we are told, is to address the interests of scholars ‘of the New Testament and early Christianity, on the one hand, and of Christian theology, on the other’, and ‘to facilitate their mutual conversation’ (p.1). The traditional approach to Paul has been to study his writings either letter by letter or topic by topic. Part I of this book, comprising half its pages, combines these two methods. Following an introductory chapter on ‘Pauline Chronology’ (Rainer Riesner), we have five chapters concerned with Paul and particular groups of believers—Macedonian, Corinthian, Galatian, those living in Western Asia, and Roman. The titles given to these chapters indicate where their focus lies—namely in the way in which the particular concerns and emphases of each letter developed out of the context of the community to which it was addressed, and in the relationship between Paul and his converts. The same approach underlies Howard Marshall’s chapter on ‘The Pastoral Epistles’, which are clearly addressed to a situation somewhat later than the majority of the other letters; although the Pastorals appear to have been written by someone other than Paul himself, they are necessarily included in this survey of Pauline thought, since they are part of the Pauline legacy.