Comments on: The Paul Quest by Ben Witherington III

By: Andrew Dragos

Andrew Dragos — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:53:45 +0000

To be fair, after reading some more work by Dr. Witherington, I must qualify my note on his point that Paul prefers to persuade rather than command. He wants to argue that it is a mistake to interpret texts like 2 Corinthians and Galatians as defenses of his apostleship; those sections were also part of Paul’s use of rhetoric. I have yet to read his commentaries on those books, so although I find that a stretch to say, I have not investigated the issues in much depth!

By: andyandbeyond

andyandbeyond — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:41:02 +0000

Daniela,

I think we can know substantial things about Paul from his writings and from the historical information we know about his backgrounds. (i.e. Pharisaism, hellenistic Judaism etc.) What exactly do you feel needs to be straightened out? The Paul Quest is WELL worth the read. Another great introductory one I would recommend to anyone is Rediscovering Paul by David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, and E. Randolph Richards. This is a very balanced text.

Renovator,

Thank you for your comment. If you want to honestly aide my understanding of historical Pharisaism, I would earnestly require that you point out which “conclusions” exactly you are contesting. Thank you for the link.

By: Renovator

Renovator — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:52:04 +0000

Such conclusions are sustainable only when dismissing the Judaic sources concerning Pharisees of the period versus Hellenists complemented by the documentation of the thousands of later Hellenist–revisionist–redactions of all of the NT material to which you’ve limited yourself.

The Hellenist-redacted version isn’t the HISTORICAL Pharisee Ribi Jew.

For those few who are looking for historical documentation and facts, as opposed to Christian-tradition bias, you’ll find the Judaic info in the History Museum pages of http://www.netzarim.co.il

By: Daniela

Daniela — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:47:04 +0000

Nice blog Andy

You did say you wrote a book review. But I must say I was hoping to find the information on Paul in the article. I was interested because I’d been wondering about that myself lately i.e. the times when he was evangelizing. In fact just today I was mourning him in a sense, as I was reading the end of Titus, thinking to myself this is what we need. If only he were around, he would straighten everything out.