John Howard Schutz's milestone analysis of Paul's authority shaped a generation of thought about Paul. This insightful work continues to be relevant to Pauline scholarship. The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.

John Howard Schutz's milestone analysis of Paul's authority shaped a generation of thought about Paul. This insightful work continues to be relevant to Pauline scholarship. The New Testament Library offers authoritative commentary on every book and major aspect of the New Testament, as well as classic volumes of scholarship. The commentaries in this series provide fresh translations based on the best available ancient manuscripts, offer critical portrayals of the historical world in which the books were created, pay careful attention to their literary design, and present a theologically perceptive exposition of the text.

The study of the evolution of church structure and order has been subject to considerable research and debate, often with theological presuppositions determining the direction taken. In this highly original work, Bengt Holmberg separates historical groundwork from theological analysis by reviewing the issues from a sociological point of view. What emerges is an unusually lucid study of the network of power relationships which can be traced in the decades of St. Paul's ministry. The principal actors and situations in the Pauline Epistles suggest what the organizational and leadership realities of the times were like and how Paul, his co-workers, and his churches related to one another. In Part One, Holmberg provides a historical description of the distribution of power at three levels in the primitive church: that between the church in Jerusalem and the apostle Paul; at the regional level where Paul operates in local churches personally, through co-workers and by letters; and at the local intrachurch level. In Part Two, Holmberg develops a sociological analysis of the shape and location of authority in the church. He examines the New Testament literature for evidence and then interprets it in terms of categories derived from modern theoretical sociology, and in particular from Max Weber's sociology of authority. Holmberg describes the nature of authority in the early church and concludes that a charismatic authority was continuously reinstitutionalized through interaction of persons, institutions, and social forces within the church. This persuasive and provocative study combines serious New Testament interpretation with sociological analysis of a crucial issue in earliest Christianity. It advances the case of sociological exegesis by offering a model for further investigations of the entire structure of church leadership and authority in emergent Christianity.

'The Apostle Paul and His Letters' presents a detailed examination of the apostle's seminal writings in the Book of Acts. Paul was writing primarily to converts who had joined church communities only recently, mostly forsaking either Judaism or paganism. Paul's emphases on faithfulness toward God, the faithfulness of Jesus, and his moral teachings are always primary themes. The book discusses a range of topics: the circumstances that led Paul to write each letter; Paul's emphasis on the morality of the believers to whom he was writing; the influence of Old Testament, Qumran, and pagan writings on Paul's own; the intellectual and cultural context of the time; and how careful attention to Paul's language can shed light on his meaning. This book is written for a wide range of interested readers, including students, pastors, church workers and others interested in learning about Paul as a person and his work.

Written by one of the best known and most respected evangelical biblical scholars of all time, "Paul" explores the primary themes in Paul's thought as they developed in the historical context of his life and travels.

The legacy of Pauline scholarship, from ancient to modern, is characterised by a surfeit of unsettled, conflicting conclusions that often fail to interpret Paul in relation to his Jewish roots. William S. Campbell takes a stand against this paradigm, emphasising continuity between Judaism and the Christ-movement in Paul's letters. Campbell focusses on important themes, such as diversity, identity and reconciliation, as the basic components of transformation in Christ. The stance from which Paultheologises is one that recognises and underpins social and cultural diversity and includes the correlating demand that because difference is integral to the Christ-movement, the enmity associated with difference cannot be tolerated. Thus, reconciliation emerges as a fundamental value in the Christ-movement. Reconciliation, in this sense, respects and does not negate the particularities of the identity of Jews and those from the nations. In this paradigm, transformation implies the re-evaluation of all things in Christ, whether of Jewish or gentile origin.

In this groundbreaking work, Norman R. Petersen integrates contemporary literary-critical, sociological,and anthropological insights into the traditional arena of historical-critical methods. he demonstrates how these new approaches can be used to interpret biblical texts, especially Paul's letters. The Letter to Philemon serves as a case study. Yet Petersen focuses on the narrative world of Paul as well, for one cannot be truly understood without the other. This work articulates a sociology of letters, explores the social structures which underlie the social relations of the actors in Paul's world, and deals with the systems of belief, knowledge, and value that define the identities of these actors and motivate their actions. Here is cutting-edge scholarship.

Did Paul expect his churches to engage in evangelistic activity which mirrored his own? Or have modern readers of the Bible wrongly projected Paul's apostolic passion upon the communities that he founded? Such is the charge of several recent authors, and if their thesis is correct nothing could have larger implications for how the modern church engages in mission. In this book, Robert L. Plummer engages in a careful study of Paul's letters to determine if the apostle expected the communities to which he wrote to engage in outward-directed missionary activity. Plummer helpfully summarizes the discussion to date on the debated issue, judiciously handles contested texts, and provides a way forward in addressing this critical question. While admitting that Paul rarely explicitly commands the communities he founded to evangelize, Plummer amasses significant incidental data to provide a convincing case that Paul did indeed expect his churches to engage in outward-directed missionary activity. Throughout the study, Plummer progressively builds a theological basis for the church's mission that is both compelling and distinctively Pauline.

Paul’s conflict with viscous enemies, human and otherwise, led him to employ efficacious powers, charismata (charismatic powers), and controversial and sometimes illegal practices that are only coherent when placed in context of the first century Hellenistic-Roman world. These included soul and spirit transportation, possession, and exorcisms, special techniques to repel demonic attack, as well as what was considered the darkest of black magic in the ancient world—the casting of death curses, which called on Satan to infect, harm, and even kill his enemies. All of these can be recovered in striking detail using risk analysis of his undisputed writings and comparing them with contemporary sources, papyri, and documents independent of the New Testament. The results demonstrate that Paul’s letters are so much more than simply intellectual and rhetorical correspondences—they are infused with dangerous mystical and charismatic powers feared in an ancient world that was saturated with prevalent, active dark forces and multi-layered human and supernatural conflicts; of angels and demons at war; of charismata and anathemata (deadly curses); and Paul’s expectation of the hemera kuriou, “Day of the Lord,” that would defeat Satan and the curse of death via pistis (faith) in the efficacious euangelion (gospel) of agape (love).