Framing Paul
An Epistolary Biography
- Biblical Studies & Commentaries
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Published: 2014
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Publisher's Description
All historical work on Paul presupposes a story concerning the composition of his letters -- which ones he actually wrote, how many pieces they might originally have consisted of, when he wrote them, where from, and why. But the answers given to these questions are often derived in dubious ways. In Framing Paul Douglas Campbell reappraises all these issues in rigorous fashion, appealing only to Paul’s own epistolary data in order to derive a basic “frame” for the letters on which all subsequent interpretation can be built. Though figuring out the authorship and order of Paul’s letters has been thought to be impossible, Campbell’s Framing Paul presents a cogent solution to the puzzle.
Endorsements (5)
“In most generations there are those rare scholars willing to go back to fundamentals, to rethink and reorganize what other scholars have come to take for granted or have not bothered to think through. Our scholarly generation owes Douglas Campbell hearty thanks for this book which, among other things, does the hard work of clarifying the chronology and historical context of Paul's letters. Campbell's transparent and rigorous thought is seen here at its best. All historical-critical interpreters of Paul's letters will need this book; any serious reader of Paul will benefit from it.”
“Having worked on Pauline chronology for many years, Douglas Campbell here provides a major synthesis. Building fundamentally on the work of John Knox, Campbell sets out a chronological framework for the Pauline letters, ten of which are judged authentic, using only the evidence from the letters and deliberately leaving Acts aside. At once brilliant, bold, provocative, maddening, Campbell's work will require careful attention, not least because of his insistence that the chronological framing of the letters matters — and crucially so — for any responsible historical interpretation of Paul.”
“Campbell's careful, step-by-step arguments about the chronology, contexts, interconnections, and coherence of Paul's letters — apart from Acts — need to be considered seriously, and their potential implications thought through carefully, by all students of Paul.”
“Once again Doug Campbell sets the cat among the pigeons! Through careful argumentation, laced with a mass of radically new suggestions, he builds an original case for a ten-letter corpus of authentic Pauline letters in a historical sequence never before proposed. All Pauline scholars, whether convinced or not, will need to give this book the careful attention it deserves.”
“A sharp, imaginative, painstaking study. . . . Like a puzzle master, Campbell fits together clues large and small to form a compelling whole. . . . To take Campbell's disciplined analysis seriously may mean, for some, to reframe Paul rather dramatically. But to ignore his argument is to miss an opportunity to check accumulated habits and prejudices that may, for a host of intellectual and theological reasons, `frame' unjustly Paul's actual, complicated, exigency-driven correspondence.”
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