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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Books on Paul
  • Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 10:11:08 -0500

Vince Endris says:

>>I am probably not the person to recommend the best books on Paul, but I
will mention that I am reading PAUL AND HIS INTERPRETERS by Schweitzer and
am astonished at how well he writes. Because of the age of this material, I
am sure that his conclusions will probably be outdated, and will probably
want to discuss them once I am done with this and his THE MYSTICISM OF PAUL.
However, it does not appear that many books are published that lay out the
material like Schweitzer did. He tells you exactly what the problem is, and
who tried to solve it. It appears that he gives credit where credit is due
and usually speaks highly of those he disagrees with even when criticizing
them.<<

Like you, I was quite impressed by Schweitzer's _Paul and His Interpreters_.
It is a shame that it until very recently it had not been in print since a
Macmillan edition in 1956. I see that Wipf & Stock Publishers has reprinted
it as of January 2004 (ISBN: 1592444644) and Amazon has it for $25 with a
2-3 week wait for shipment (meaning, don't expect to see it at the
bookstore).

There are times when it is difficult to distinguish where the position of
the critic under scrutiny ends and Schweitzer's own opinion begins,
especially in the last couple chapters (on the history of religion schools
and the state of the debate as of the first decade of the 20th century). You
may also be surprised that after endlessly pointing out where very erudite
critics let their biases influence their criticism, Schweitzer's work on the
mysticism of Paul and the messianic secret ends up falling into the same
trap. Perhaps there is no getting away from that.

That being said, for those of us who do not read German (or read well enough
to tackle a work full of technical terms) he offers nice *thumbnail
sketches* of the themes, ideas and hypotheses present in the works of a
number of important German, Dutch and to a lesser extent French and English
critics of the 19th century. Much of what critics discuss today is heavily
dependent upon the research of these scholars. While they are no longer
directly cited (except rarely, like when a seminal idea is called into
question) it really helps one realize how much of what we now take for
granted was first argued in the last 200 years, and to form an opinion
regarding how well researched and firmly established such ideas really were.
Like a computer: garbage in = garbage out, and quality in = quality out.

There have been a few modern attempts to bring these kind of sketches up to
date (Ben Witherington III's _The Paul Quest_ for instance), but none of
them seem to have quite matched Schweitzer's ability to provide relatively
neutral reviews, and right-to-the-point analysis, of the works that have
appeared in the 20th century. These newer approaches would include the
psychological (Paul's theology being attempts to rationalize dissonant ideas
he got in his head), rhetorical (difficulties and apparent inconsistencies
may be deliberate rhetorical devices employed by Paul), social scientific
(originally Gerd Theissen but now others, and related to the psychological
and new perspective approaches) and the "new" perspectives (i.e., Paul in
his Jewish context, such as discussed by Sanders and Nanos).

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA







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