This volume, a tribute to John J. Collins by his friends, colleagues, and students, includes essays on the wide range of interests that have occupied John Collins’s distinguished career. Topics range from the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple Judaism and beyond into early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. The contributions deal with issues of text and interpretation, history and historiography, philology and archaeology, and more. The breadth of the volume is matched only by the breadth of John Collins’s own work.
Since 1977, the lines of inquiry developed by P.E. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, N.T. Wright and others, have generated the 'New Perspective' on Paul. This perspective is profoundly tied to a certain reading of the literature of second temple Judaism which then in turn shapes what is now the dominant reading of Paul. This volume brings together an array of specialists to examine afresh the various corpora of the period. The authors analyze the highly diverse literature to determine to what extent 'covenantal nomism' is a suitable way for its categorization. The way this literature speaks of the relationship between God and Israel, election, sacrifice, the manner in which God's people are said to be rightly related to him, are all studied closely, within the genre distinctions and theological priorities of each corpus. Careful study is also devoted to 'righteousness' language. Volume 2 will apply the findings to Paul.
In this New Studies in Biblical Theology volume, Mark Seifrid offers a comprehensive analysis of Paul's understanding of justification in the light of important themes including the righteousness of God, the Old Testament law, faith and the destiny of Israel.
Many factors contributed to the Protestant Reformation, but one of the most significant was the debate over the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In fact, Martin Luther argued that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. This comprehensive volume of 26 essays from a host of scholars explores the doctrine of justification from the lenses of history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice—revealing the enduring significance of this pillar of Protestant theology.
How far did Paul stray from the view of salvation handed down to him in the Jewish tradition? Following a hunch from E.P. Sanders's seminal book Paul and Palestinian Judaism,Preston Sprinkle finds buried in the Old Testament's Deuteronomic and prophetic perspectives a key that starts to turn the rusted lock on Paul's critique of Judaism.