Latest reviews of Biblical literature

I’m going to put them on my desk, and read them as soon as I can, since they seem two rather interesting books:

Speaking Conflict: Stories of a Controversial Jesus, by David Buttrick.

Conflict stories appear throughout the Synoptic Gospels, and although they are familiar and dramatic, the stories are particularly challenging for pastors to interpret and teach. In this book, Buttrick delves into each conflict story, analyzing the particular controversy at hand and highlighting problems that these passages pose for preachers-including anti-Jewish attitudes in the text. As he moves through each story, he helps readers correct long-standing biases, shows how many of these controversies are still with us, and provides sample sermons to demonstrate how these stories might be preached more effectively.

The review can be downloaded from here.

And The New Testament Interpreted: Essays in Honour of Bernhard C. Lategan, edited by Cilliers Breytenbach, Jeremy Punt and Johan C. Thom.

This volume contains a collection of essays in honour of Bernard C. Lategan, a renowned specialist on the modern reception of the New Testament. Besides offering anayses of Lategan’s own contribution to New Testament scholarship, the essays present and discuss interpretations of the New Testament from antiquity through contemporary critical scholarship. Topics covered include hermeneutical issues of historical Jesus research, intertextuality in antiquity, the interpretation of the New Testament in Africa, and the New Testament as literature. The collection thus provides a representative perspective on the diversity of New Testament scholarship in South Africa and elsewhere.

To read the review click here.

mercoledì 27 febbraio 2008