Biblical Theology of the New Testament - Book Series

Discussion in 'Arts, Literature, and Games' started by Ananias, May 9, 2022.

  1. Ananias

    Ananias Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I've been away for a while -- between seminary and the day job, I was spreading myself pretty thin. But I seem to have reached a calm eye in the storm, so hopefully I'll be able to linger in the calmer waters for a spell. I am glad to be able to engage on this forum again! :)

    I recently purchased the Biblical Theology of the New Testament series. (Well, four of the five books - I still need to get the one on Mark's Gospel.) These books seem to fill a void between Scripture on one hand and systematic theologies on the other. These books attempt to establish an over-arching theology based on a corpus of work in the NT. Each book tackles a body of work: the Pauline letters, the Johannine corpus, and pastoral epistles, the Markan Gospel, etc.

    I haven't yet fully gotten into my reading, but I already see hazard lights flashing: we already have the Gospel in the Gospel (i.e., Scripture itself). Other commentaries have already hammered flat the arguments for the various denominations and creeds; entire floors of large libraries groan under the weight of commentaries on Paul alone. Trying to build a bridge between the plain Gospel and a soup-to-nuts systematic theology seems a bit...bespoke. Will these volumes simplify at the expense of clarity, or summarize at the expense of completeness?

    This is obviously a set meant for advanced evangelical protestant readers*, and fair enough. Douglas J. Moo, author of what I think is the best modern commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, also wrote the volume in this set dealing with Pauline theology. What I'm wondering is what Moo can bring to the table about Paul that he hasn't already written about ad nauseam elsewhere (something he admits in his own introduction to the volume).

    That being said, I have high hopes for this set, and if they prove to be useful I'll recommend them to the leadership at my church. I've been harping on for years now about how starved protestant churches are for actual theology, and I'm hoping to use these books as a jumping-off point for some discussion groups and maybe some adult-education courses.

    *Not necessarily just seminary students, but they are clearly meant for a serious academic/theological crowd.
     
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  2. Ananias

    Ananias Well-Known Member Anglican

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    A few words about the books as examples of the bookbinding craft: they are hardcovers, handsomely made, but with glued rather than sewn bindings. Glued bindings on books are like a timer on a bomb: soon the timer will reach zero, and the pages will fall out. Plus the book will never lie flat unless you're in the middle of the text. On the upside, the paper is very nice -- smooth, fairly matte, reasonably heavy with little show through, with good dark black print I can read without my glasses. The books are also printed in the United States rather than China, which is a nice change of pace these days.

    The publisher is Zondervan Academic, which means low volume, which means high cost. I also expect the current print run to sell out fairly quickly (the Mark volume is already unavailable in a lot of places) and another print-run may not come along for a while. The market for books of this kind is not large, and what market there is, is saturated as more and more stuff gets churned out every year.

    So...pretty good, but the lack of sewn bindings is a disappointment, especially for what these books cost.
     
  3. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    I wish someone would put some of C.H. Dodd's material back in print. I might be the only person wanting that stuff though.
     
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  4. Ananias

    Ananias Well-Known Member Anglican

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    I'm one of those people who prefer old books to new ones when I can get them. There are lots of Dodd books on the used market; you can use AbeBooks or a similar reseller to find the stuff you want. You do have to deal with books that have been annotated and marked up with highlighters, but generally that doesn't bother me unless it really hurts the readability of the text.

    There are exceptions to the "used is better than new" rule, though, and that's with paperback editions. Old paperback editions are a roll of the dice because their glued bindings are often (as I said before) weak. I've noticed that paperbacks from the 1950's to the 1970's seem to be especially fragile -- maybe the formula for the glue was sub-par. And the paper tends to be pretty bad as well. I have some old sci-fi classic paperbacks where the paper is so yellowed and brittle that they actually crumble like autumn leaves if you're not careful. Readers are harder on paperbacks; they crack the spines to force the books to lie flat, they bend and tear pages, etc. Which I guess is to be expected; the books are meant to be cheap and rather disposable.

    In a few cases where old paperbacks are all that are available, I'll have them rebound.
     
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  5. Extra Nos 84

    Extra Nos 84 New Member

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    I truly think that for those of us who are evangelical and have been in seminary, are in seminary or will be in seminary, becomes crucial to read the old but useful biblical theology of Geerhardus Vos. More modern and "liberal" would be Brevard Childs' Biblical theology.