The latter half of the twentieth century saw the beginning of a new era: the age of electronic communications. This age is exemplified by the development of the Internet: a system of global communications connecting people from all over the world. By means of a relatively inexpensive personal computer persons from remote places can enjoy the benefits of worldwide communication. By 2011 it has been estimated that some 2.095 billion persons, about 30.2 percent of the world’s population, were connected by the Internet. This new method made older means of communication—telephone, telegraph, newspapers, and (alas) books—increasingly obsolete. The new method was so popular that persons working in the same building would email their colleagues rather than walk a few feet down the hall.
This new technology has been a boon for NT research. The catalogs of libraries from all over the world are available for perusal. Through WorldCat virtually all books in print can be located in libraries across the world, and borrowed by interlibrary loan. Individual scholars can communicate across land and sea by e-mail. For instance, when working on this chapter I lacked biographical information about James D. G. Dunn. I simply sent an email to Professor Dunn. His answer, with attached curriculum vitae, arrived the same day.
As a setting for this chapter, the information revolution reminds us that excellent scholarship can be found outside of the acclaimed academic centers like Oxford and Cambridge. Of course, readers of Volume 2 of this History will not be surprised to discover superb NT research in Durham. That had been the seat of two of the greatest scholars of an earlier generation: J. B. Lightfoot and B. F. Westcott.[1] This notice of important scholarship in peripheral places also points to a seriously neglected locus of NT research: scholarship in Scandinavia.
Charles Kingsley Barrett was born in Salford, Lancashire, England, the son of a Methodist minister.[2] Educated at Pembroke College and Wesley House at Cambridge, he was awarded a BD in 1947 and a DD in 1956. Barrett was ordained to the Methodist ministry and served for a time as minister of the Methodist Church in Darlington. He spent most of his academic career in the shadow of the great Norman cathedral at Durham. He was named lecturer in theology in 1945 and was promoted to professor of Divinity at the university in 1958. Barrett’s reputation as a teacher attracted students from across Europe and from America. He was elected president of the SNTS in 1973. Many would agree with John Painter: “C. K. Barrett is the outstanding British New Testament scholar of the second half of the twentieth century.”[3]
In 1943 a manuscript was circulated among a group of scholars who saw it as a sign of great things to come. The manuscript, the work of a scholar still in his twenties, was published a few years later under the title The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition—a work that remains one of Barrett’s most important books.[4] Part One deals with Jesus and the Spirit. Here Barrett begins with the conception of Jesus by the Spirit. Barrett is more concerned with the theological significance than with the search for pagan parallels. “The part played by the Holy Spirit in the birth narratives is thus seen to be the fulfilment of God’s promised redemption in a new act of creation, comparable with that of Gen. 1.”[5] Barrett believes that Jesus’ submission to the rite of baptism shows his affirmation of John’s eschatological outlook. “The work of the Spirit is to call into being part of the New Creation of the Messianic days, namely, to inaugurate the ministry of the Messiah, and this Messianic conception underlies the whole intention and significance of the narrative, and stands in closely interlocking unity with the conception of the Spirit involved.”[6] Barrett also discusses the conflict of Jesus with the evil spirits seen in the exorcisms and the role of the Spirit in the miracles of Jesus. The miracles, according to Barrett, are signs of the coming kingdom, yet Jesus refused to perform signs. “It is in this paradox, of the fullness of God’s power and its inevitable concealment, that we shall find the clue to the problems connected with the doctrine of the Spirit in the Synoptic Gospels.”[7]
Part Two deals with the Spirit and the church. In this section Barrett rejects the idea that Jesus predicted the existence of a community endowed with the Spirit. “We have found no sayings of Jesus which unmistakably pointed to such a gift of the Spirit, and the passages which come nearest to doing so are demonstrably late, and reflect the events which took place after the crucifixion.”[8] Barrett notes that the Gospels say little about the church, but instead emphasize the eschatological kingdom of God. Indeed, Jesus’ view of the future left little room for the church. “We may suppose, then, that Jesus foretold his suffering and death, and that these would be followed by a divine act of vindication, in which he did not differentiate between a resurrection and a parousia.”[9]
C. K. Barrett made an important contribution to the study of the Johannine literature. His commentary on the Gospel of John first appeared in 1955 and a second, revised edition was published in 1978.[10] The commentary features a long introduction (over 140 pages). As to the Gospel’s main characteristics and purpose, Barrett believes the author was a man with two convictions. “The conviction is, first, that the actual history of Jesus of Nazareth is of paramount significance because in it the eternal God confronted men, enabling faith and offering to faith the gift of eternal life; and, secondly, that the mere historical data of the life of Jesus are trivial, apart from the faith God-given, that he is the Word become flesh.”[11] Barrett is skeptical of source theories and notions about displacement and redaction. In regard to the non-Christian background, he reviews material from the OT and Judaism. He recognizes the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls but displays his usual reticence. “Now that the excitement of the first discoveries is past it is possible to see that Qumran has not revolutionized the study of the New Testament—certainly it has not revolutionized the study of John.”[12]
In regard to the Christian background, Barrett believes the author knew Mark and possibly Luke. John, according to Barrett, is not primarily interested in the historical details but in theological interpretation of the tradition.
He sought to draw out, using in part the form and style of narrative, the true meaning of the life and death of one whom he believed to be the Son of God. It is for this interpretation, not for accurate historical data, that we must look in the Fourth Gospel.[13]
In regard to the theology of the Fourth Gospel, Barrett discusses eschatology and Christology. He believes the miracles to be an expression of John’s Christology. John, according to Barrett, is not a systematic theologian but a person of faith who expresses a profound theological understanding of the Gospel. “The story of Jesus requires that, just as God must be understood in terms of Jesus, so the humanity of Jesus, and with that the humanity of the race, must be seen and understood in terms of God. For God and for man the future lies only in the unity of the two, a unity to which the figure of Jesus points.”[14]
In regard to traditional questions—date, place, and authorship—Barrett offers an imaginative reconstruction.
John the apostle migrated from Palestine and lived in Ephesus, where, true to character as a Son of Thunder, he composed apocalyptic works. These, together with his advancing years, the death of other apostles, and predictions such as Mark 9.1, not unnaturally gave rise to the common belief that he would survive to the parousia. A man of commanding influence, he gathered about him a number of pupils. In course of time he died; his death fanned the apocalyptic hopes of some, scandalized others, and induced a few to ponder deeply over the meaning of Christian eschatology. One pupil of the apostle incorporated his written works in the canonical Apocalypse; this was at a date about the close of the life of Domitian—c. A.D 96. Another pupil was responsible for the epistle (probably 1 John came from one writer, 2 and 3 John from another). Yet another, a bolder thinker, and one more widely read both in Judaism and Hellenism, produced John 1–20.[15]
Reconstructions of this sort—with a disciple who moves to Ephesus and forms a community that produced the Johannine literature—are common. The distinctive feature of Barrett’s construct is that this disciple, one of the Sons of Thunder (that is, John) is an apocalyptic teacher. The writer of the Gospel, the “bolder thinker,” produced what Barrett accepts as an apostolic book: a document that presents both history and interpretation.
The rest of Barrett’s book consists of commentary and notes: over 400 pages of critical analysis of the text. Barrett orders the material into forty-two sections. In each, he presents an overview of the whole section. This is followed by notes on every verse. The notes include textual, linguistic, grammatical, and historical detail; no stone is left unturned.
A few examples, taken out of context, can provide only a hint of the breadth and depth of Barrett’s research. In regard to the prologue, Barrett’s overall commentary notes that John has set his Gospel in a theological framework. Barrett points out that Logos is used as a christological title only in the prologue. These general comments are followed by twenty pages of notes. On v. 1, discussing Logos, Barrett investigates the various backgrounds: Greek usage, Gnosticism, OT, Jewish wisdom, and Philo. He emphasizes the Christian background, that is, the tradition in which the “Word” was the “Gospel.” For Barrett the most important feature is not the background but the distinctive way John has developed the concept of the Logos.
Barrett’s interpretation of the sign at Cana is important for his understanding of the miracle stories of John. He believes that this is the first of Jesus’ miracles. The action of Jesus in turning the water from the jars for the Jewish rites of purification into a huge amount of fine wine is symbolic. “Jesus as the fulfiller of Judaism, as the bearer of supernatural power, becomes henceforth an object of faith to his disciples.”[16] Barrett mixes historical and symbolic-theological interpretation: he says that Cana may be one of three possible locations, but “the third day” is a reference to the resurrection. Similarly, Barrett believes “my hour” refers to the crucifixion. “The hour had not come for manifesting the glory; yet, as indeed in all the signs, a partial and preliminary manifestation was granted that the disciples might believe.”[17]
In regard to the raising of Lazarus, Barrett notes that this is the most striking miracle in the Fourth Gospel. The meaning of the story, according to Barrett, is that “Jesus in his obedience to and dependence upon the Father has the authority to give life to whom he will.”[18] Barrett discusses the historical value of the story without reaching a definite conclusion. He rejects the approach that assumes a priori that miracles are impossible. However, he recognizes that the failure of Mark to recount this miracle constitutes a serious problem for its historicity. In his note on 11:24, where Martha says “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day,” Barrett observes, “Martha’s statement of faith is thus orthodox Pharisaism.”[19] On the problem of the anger of Jesus recorded 11:33 and 11:38, he says: “It is clearly the presence and grief of Mary and the Jews which form the occasion of the anger of Jesus, but it is far from clear why the sight of lamentation should have moved him to anger. . . . We must consider more seriously the suggestion that it was the unbelief of the Jews and Mary that provoked the indignation of Jesus.”[20]
Barrett also made important contributions to the study of Paul. An overview of the apostle’s theology is presented in Paul: An Introduction to His Thought.[21] Barrett begins with a survey of Paul’s career. He believes the primary sources are the seven undisputed letters of Paul, but also thinks that Acts provides additional information. The Damascus Road experience, according to Barrett, is both call and conversion. Barrett believes a way into the study of Paul’s theology can be found in the apostle’s controversies. “As a preacher he was despised, as a pastor he was flouted, and as a theologian he was constantly engaged in controversy with those who bitterly disagreed with him.”[22] Barrett reviews the controversies at Galatia, Corinth, Philippi. In all these venues he tends to discover Judaizers as Paul’s opponents. In any case, controversy seems to be a feature of Paul’s vocation. “It was however because he was a theologian . . . that he was obliged to fight; in turn, the fighting made him the kind of theologian that he was, and gave his letters the combative air that most of them have.”[23] In these controversies Paul’s argument is Christocentric. “Solus Christus, Christ alone, is the primary motto of Paul’s theology, and most of the errors against which he fights can be regarded as in some form or other qualifications of that solus.”[24]
Barrett presents a lengthy chapter discussing Paul’s primary theological themes: law and covenant, grace and righteousness, Christ crucified, the Church, the Holy Spirit and ethics. The Christocentric note is sounded again at the conclusion.
Solus Christus is the substance of Paul’s theology, and justification by faith is its cutting edge. The theological task that Paul has left to his successors is, first, the refinement of Christology in terms of developing philosophical and psychological concepts of being and personality, and, secondly, the application of the principle of justification by faith to all the apparatus of Christendom—church order, church dogmatics, liturgy, ethics—and all those individual lives of which the church is made up.[25]
Barrett also wrote commentaries on Romans and the Corinthian correspondence for the Harper’s (or Black’s) New Testament Commentaries (HNTC, BNTC). Barrett’s Romans begins with a short introduction: thirteen pages.[26] He believes the epistle was written from Corinth, where Paul spent three months prior to his trip to Jerusalem, probably in 55. Barrett discusses the complex problem of the ending of Romans and concludes that the original letter consisted of 1:1—16:23; later the letter circulated in shorter editions. In regard to theology, Barrett believes that Paul’s thought had been revolutionized by his conviction that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The result was a new eschatology: the Messiah had come and the first fruits were available for faith. Paul also recognized that Jesus had been condemned by the law. This meant that the law was no longer mediator between God and humans; Christ was mediator.
The material is divided into forty-two sections. Each section is introduced by a translation, followed by running commentary on the text in which quotations from the text are presented in bold type. The character of Barrett’s exegesis may be illustrated by a few examples. He titles 1:16-17 “The Gospel.” He believes these verses constitute the text for the epistle and provide an introduction to Paul’s thought. Although he is writing to a church where his credentials might be questioned, Paul says he is not ashamed. In the gospel, God’s power works for salvation. In the gospel, God’s righteousness is revealed—the first mention of the theme of the epistle. This theme, the “righteousness of God,” becomes the title of the section exegeting 3:21-31. According to Barrett this phrase means both that God is righteous and that God is also the justifier. All humans need the gift of righteousness because they have fallen short of the glory of God, the glory Adam had at creation. The righteousness of which Paul speaks is, according to Barrett, a new, non-legal righteousness. This righteousness is received by faith—faith in Jesus, the means of reconciliation. “So far, then, we see God moved by love to perform an act of grace by means of which it becomes possible for him to manifest his righteousness in justification.”[27]
A little over a decade later, Barrett published a commentary on 1 Corinthians for the same series.[28] Here he has written a longer introduction: over twenty-six pages. In the introduction Barrett follows the convention of describing the city of Corinth and its history. Barrett believes 1 Corinthians was a unity, not a composite, written from Ephesus in early 54 or late 53. He notes that this epistle presents developments in Paul’s theology, notably in Christology and anthropology. For the modern reader 1 Corinthians provides information about the structure and institutions of the early church. The commentary on 1 Cor 1:10-17 deals with “The Corinthian Groups.” Although there are divisions, Barrett notes that Paul assumes that all would come together for the reading of the letter. Barrett assumes the traditional view: the groups are related to the leaders who have worked in the church. This leads him to conclude that Peter had worked in Corinth and that the faction of Cephas represents Jewish Christianity. Barrett offers no solution to the problem of those who claim to belong to Christ, but concludes that the text as it stands in the best MSS suggests the existence of a fourth group. The section on 1 Cor 11:2-16 focuses on “Men and Women.” In this section Paul presents a hierarchy: God, Christ, man, woman. Verse 5 says that “any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head.” Barrett observes that this verse proves that women did speak in church, despite 14:34-35. He believes Paul is instructing women to wear the veil, for two reasons: woman is the glory of man, and “her veil represents the new authority given to the woman under the new dispensation to do things which formerly had not been permitted her.”[29]
A few years later, Barrett published a commentary on 2 Corinthians.[30] In this commentary the introduction totals fifty pages. The space is needed for Barrett’s complicated discussion of the special problems of 2 Corinthians. He notes various theories that treat the epistle as composite. His own view strives for simplification: 2 Corinthians is composed of two letters, 2 Corinthians 1–9 and 2 Corinthians 10–13, written in that order. Barrett identifies the opponents as Judaizers.[31] In a section on theology Barrett notes the importance of Christ crucified and risen for Paul’s understanding of eschatological existence; the believer lives in the time between the resurrection and the parousia, the time of already, but not yet. The discussion of 5:11-21 is entitled “The Treasure: The Ambassador’s Message of Reconciliation and New Creation Arising out of the Death of Christ.” With good reason Barrett contends that “this is one of the most pregnant, difficult, and important in the whole of the Pauline literature.”[32] In v. 16, the phrase “according to the flesh” should be understood as adverbial; Paul is describing how one knows, not the nature of Christ who is known. The reference to new creation in v. 17 is another instance of Paul’s belief in eschatological existence. “Christian existence means that by faith one lives in the midst of the old creation in terms of the new creation that God has brought about through Jesus.”[33]
Readers who expect these “middle-level” commentaries of the Harper (Black) series to be simple are in for a surprise. Barrett rarely simplifies, and these commentaries are no exception. Although the comments are on the English translation, Greek terms often appear in the exegesis, and comments in German (without translation) are sprinkled through the commentaries. Besides these commentaries on Romans and the Corinthian correspondence, Barrett published a book on Galatians that is topical rather than exegetical.[34]
An important work on Paul’s theology is From First Adam to Last: A Study in Pauline Theology.[35] The book is essentially an investigation of Paul’s anthropology through a study of the representative figures in Paul’s thought. Barrett begins with Adam. Adam sinned and the result was death. According to Barrett’s reading of Paul, everything that can be said about Adam can be said about humankind as a whole. Turning to Abraham, Barrett writes that Paul sees him as believer, as model for the person of faith. Moses is important for the giving of the law, but for Paul the glory of the law was superseded by the glory of Christ. Barrett believes that Paul views all the previous figures in relation to Christ. Christ was a man like Adam, but he was the obedient man. He was the seed of Abraham. He was the interpreter of the law who understood it as the law of love. Barrett discusses “The Man to Come” as the risen Christ who will appear at the parousia. He will bring the new creation of the individual (justification), the new creation of the church, and the new creation of the world. The conclusion is vintage Barrett. “The Pauline conception is delicately balanced,” he says, “and impossible to express in simple and rigid terms. Its delicacy stands out most clearly when it is compared with the heavy-handed attempts of later Christian generations to hammer Paul’s theology into dogmatics.”[36]
Barrett’s magnum opus is his massive, two-volume commentary on Acts in the International Critical Commentary series.[37] Scholars who are accustomed to seeing on their shelves the dull green binding of the venerable ICC will rejoice to view the bright red cover of Barrett’s 2004 paperback edition. Once inside, however, they will be confronted by pages in small print and a labyrinth of critical and exegetical detail. A distinctive feature of Barrett’s work is his location of the main introduction at the beginning of the second volume. His theory is that introductory matters are best considered after the reader has already wrestled with some of the text. A short introduction in Volume One deals with the text, the author, the sources, the plan and content of Acts 1–14. Each section begins with a translation of the text, followed by bibliography, commentary, and notes.
A couple of examples can illustrate Barrett’s exegesis. In his five-page commentary on “Peter’s Pentecost Sermon” (2:14-40) he notes that Acts views the first preaching of the Gospel as attached to the Pentecost event. At 2:22 Peter turns to christological interpretation. Jesus had been killed by his own people, but God had set right this wrong by raising him from the dead. In general, Peter’s speech, according to Barrett, does not display a developed theology or ascribe positive significance to the death of Jesus. Barrett’s notes extend from pages 133 to 157. As an example, Barrett observes that 2:14, where the text refers to “the eleven,” seems to ignore the Matthias tradition. Barrett’s note on v. 22 points to the identification of Jesus as a “man.” Luke, according to Barrett, never abandons the humanity of Jesus and tends to embrace a low Christology. “Luke’s Christology cannot by any means be described as advanced or developed; it does not include the notion of the incarnation of a pre-existent divine being.”[38]
In regard to “Saul’s Conversion” (9:1-19a), Barrett presents the main points of the three Acts accounts (9:3-19; 22:6-16; 26:12-18) in parallel columns. He finds the agreements to be greater than the discrepancies. Barrett believes the background to the experience is found in Isa 6:1-13 and Jer 1:4-10. “What happened to Paul was not the resolution of an inward conflict in an unhappy, divided, and unsatisfied man; it was the appearance of Christ to a self-satisfied and self-righteous man, an appearance that had the immediate effect both of providing a new basis for his personal life and of initiating the Gentile mission.”[39] However, Barrett believes that major questions remain. How and when was the substance of the Gospel communicated to Paul? Why is there no reference to Ananias in the Pauline letters? Typical of Barrett’s penchant for detail is his three-page note on 9:2. He investigates the question of the authority of the high priest over provincial synagogues. He provides information about the city of Damascus. He notes the use of “the Way” in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In regard to Paul’s arrest and bringing to a place of trial, Barrett cites Aristophanes.
The introduction at the beginning of Volume 2 considers the conventional questions. Barrett discusses the two main text-types, Old Uncial (represented by B and Sinaiticus) and Western; he believes the former provides the more reliable text. In regard to sources, Barrett gives considerable attention to the famous “we-sections.” He notes three main views: “we” is a reference to the author of the whole work; “we” represents a source used by the author; “we” is a fiction. Barrett acknowledges that it is difficult to conclude that the whole book was written by a companion of Paul, so he understands the we-sections as a source. Why the author left “we” in the text is a problem with no easy solution. As to Acts as a historical document, Barrett characterizes it as “popular history.” “That means that it is biographical, focusing on a few outstanding characters, episodic in style, highly coloured with wonderful and exciting incidents, and not given to philosophizing about the nature and meaning of history or about the theological content of the message.”[40] Barrett believes the council of chapter 15 is the central event of the whole document and the important point for understanding the author’s view of early Christian history. In regard to the author, Barrett notes Cadbury’s disproof of the argument from medical language. He says, perhaps with tongue in cheek, “Luke’s use of technical vocabulary suggests, if anything, that he was not a doctor but a sailor.”[41]
Turning to the theology of Acts, Barrett notes the importance of eschatology. The author recognizes the interval between resurrection and parousia, and views the gift of the Spirit as the first step in the fulfillment of the of the eschatological hope. “There is in Acts no profound Christological thought, yet it is clear that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the person who initiated and will conclude the whole story and directs the whole course of it.”[42] Barrett also discusses the theology of Acts in relation to church, ministry, baptism and the Christian meal, the Jews, the Law, the Gentile mission. In the end, Luke is a well-informed historian. He celebrates the victory of the Hellenists—the center party. In composing the Gospel and Acts he gave the church its first New Testament.
Barrett discusses “The Council in Jerusalem” (15:6-29). He investigates various theories about sources and believes that Luke may have found the Apostolic Decree (15:20, 29) in use in the churches. The council concluded that Gentile converts need not be circumcised but did need to follow the ritual food laws of the decree. Barrett’s notes on this subsection are over twenty pages long. On v. 7, he observes how Peter functions as instigator of the Gentile mission. “The verse affirms the absolute priority if not the primacy of Peter in the Gentile mission.”[43] In v. 11, Barrett views Peter’s support of salvation by grace to be superficial Pauline language. Verse 13 presents James as the leader of the church. Verses 19 and 20 present the decision of James that Gentile converts must abide by the four abstentions: food that has been sacrificed to idols, fornication, what is strangled, and blood. Barrett notes that the Western text has added a negative version of the Golden Rule, thus turning the decree into an ethical admonition. The decision of the apostles and elders is confirmed by the Holy Spirit. The provisions of the decree are repeated, with slight variations, in the letter of v. 29.
Important for understanding Barrett’s thought is his book, Jesus and the Gospel Tradition, lectures given at Yale in 1967.[44] He begins with a discussion of “the Tradition.” Paul points to the importance of the tradition in 1 Corinthians 15. The Gospels, according to Barrett, present us with a paradoxical understanding: they preserve the tradition that Jesus was Messiah and Son of God, though Jesus claimed neither. “Thus the historical tradition was obliged to go beyond history, precisely because it was historical. This fact,” says Barrett, “constitutes the problem of the historical Jesus; at the same time it contains the only solution of the problem that we are likely to find.”[45]
Barrett turns next to “Christ Crucified.” He believes that Jesus predicted his own death and interpreted it. However, the tradition about the meaning of the death of Christ continued to develop.
It is perhaps not unnatural that before the passion, the notion of the suffering with the Son of man should be unclearly and variably expressed, and connected mainly with the apocalyptic vindication of the suffering group; and that afterwards, as the Church looked back upon the cross in which one died alone for all, it should make the comment, Christ died for our sins, and in our place.[46]
The concluding chapter is a discussion of “Christ to come.” Barrett believes that the basis for this is the idea of the Son of man. Early tradition understood Jesus as foreseeing his death in relation to the purposes of God; this would be followed by resurrection and ultimately by his vindication as the Son of man. “The great achievement of those who transmitted and edited the gospel tradition was so to reconstruct the eschatological framework of the teaching of Jesus as to make room for the continuing existence of a community between the resurrection and the coming Son of man.”[47]
All in all, Barrett may not be one of the most exciting NT scholars in the history of research, but he is certainly one of the most competent. He was master of all the elements of the discipline: textual criticism, linguistic and grammatical analysis, historical backgrounds, patristic usage, and theological application. Barrett remained throughout his career devoted to the church and its ministry, a commitment that motivates and refines his work.[48] He avoided fads and easy answers. He was convinced that NT research is important for life and faith today.
A notable NT scholar has written, “Professor James Dunn is the most prolific New Testament scholar of his generation.”[49] The son of Scottish parents, Dunn was born in Birmingham, UK.[50] He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he earned an MA in Economics and Statistics (1961), education that would later serve him well in his role as treasurer of SNTS. Dunn was awarded the BD with distinction from Glasgow’s Trinity College. He studied at Cambridge under the tutelage of C. F. D. Moule and was granted the PhD in 1968. After completion of his doctorate Dunn moved to Edinburgh, where he served as chaplain to the overseas students at the University. He served on the faculty at the University of Nottingham from 1970 to 1982. In 1982 Dunn was appointed Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham (succeeding C. K. Barrett), and in 1990 was named Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham, a chair honoring the memory of J. B. Lightfoot, Dunn’s academic hero. Over his years of teaching Dunn supervised more than thirty PhD students, several becoming significant scholars in their own right; all of the contributors to the Festschrift, Jesus and Paul, were his students.
Throughout much of its life Dunn was an active member of the seminar on the theology of Paul of the SBL. At the meeting of 1991 he participated in the famous debate with Richard Hays on the disputed phrase pistis Iesou Christou, arguing that the genitive is objective: “faith in Jesus Christ.” N. T. Wright recalls that at the end of the vigorous argument some members of the audience called for a vote. The jovial Leander Keck, who was in the chair, replied, “Nope, this ain’t the Jesus Seminar.”[51]
The magnitude of Dunn’s research—his long list of publications, some in mammoth proportions—defies succinct summary.[52] Of interest is Dunn’s own assessment of his work.
One of my besetting sins as a scholar (but perhaps it’s a strength!) is the desire to see the large picture, to gain (so far as possible) comprehensive overview. . . . It’s not that I am unwilling to engage in the fine detailed work necessary in the analysis of particular texts. Far from it. But all the time I want to step back and see how my findings cohere with the rest of our information (not just the New Testament, but the New Testament writings within their historical contexts). Like a painter of a large canvas, I need to step back time and again to check how the fine detail of particular parts blends into the whole.[53]
Actually, Dunn’s work moves forward in a trajectory that set its course early, then shifted direction, and finally resumed its progress toward its ultimate target.
Dunn’s first major publication is Baptism and the Holy Spirit.[54] Based on his Cambridge dissertation, this book responds to the claim of Pentecostals that the baptism of the Spirit is a second, higher experience after the original experience of conversion. Dunn investigates the records of Jesus’ baptism, the accounts concerning the gift of the Spirit in Acts, and the understanding of the Spirit in Paul and the rest of the NT. His conclusion regarding Paul is representative: “Our study has shown: that Paul knows of only one reception of the Spirit, not two; that concepts of anointing, sealing, outpouring, gift, etc., all refer to that one coming of the Spirit; that this coming of the Spirit is the very heart and essence of the conversion-initiation.”[55]
Dunn’s second major book, Jesus and the Spirit, evolves naturally out of the first.[56] He begins with an investigation of the religious experience of Jesus. Fundamental, according to Dunn, is Jesus’ experience of God—an experience of sonship. Dunn believes this experience is evident in Jesus’ address to God in prayer as “Abba.” He proceeds to discuss Jesus’ experience of God in relation to the Spirit. According to Dunn, Jesus viewed himself as heir of prophetic expectations. “Jesus believed himself to be the one in whom Isa. 61.1. found fulfilment; his sense of being inspired was such that he could believe himself to be the end-time prophet of Isa. 61.1; he had been anointed with the Spirit of the Lord.”[57]
Turning to the religious experience of the earliest Christian communities, Dunn observes an important shift: Jesus becomes the object of religious experience. The fundamental feature of this religious experience is the conviction of the early Christians that the risen Christ had appeared to them. An important event in the post-resurrection communities was the gift of the Spirit on Pentecost. Dunn believes the account in Acts to be largely historical, although he supposes the event was an outburst of glossolalia rather than a miracle of linguistics. Turning to Paul and the Pauline churches, he discusses the religious experience of the individual communities as the “body of Christ,” Paul’s term for the charismatic community. “Each church becomes Christ’s body through charisma.”[58] Dunn concludes with a glance toward the second generation, seeing the vision fade. It almost disappears with the Pastoral Epistles. “Spirit and charisma have become in effect subordinate to office, to ritual, to tradition—early-Catholicism indeed!”[59]
After tracing the varieties of religious experience, Dunn took up another issue in his Unity and Diversity in the New Testament,[60] originally published in 1977. The second edition updates the bibliography, adds notes, and makes a few minor changes in the text. In 2006, a third edition was published, including a foreword that reviews Dunn’s recent thinking on the major issues of the book; the final chapter is revised, and an appendix, “Unity and Diversity in the Church: A New Perspective,” is added. The introduction states the purpose: “Our basic question thus becomes: Was there a unifying strand in earliest Christianity which identifies it as Christianity?”[61] In the first part Dunn deals with unity in diversity. He begins with a discussion of the kerygma or kerygmata. The kerygma of Jesus, according to Dunn, included the proclamation of the kingdom, the call for repentance and faith, and the offer of forgiveness. He detects a core kerygma in Acts: the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, the call to repentance and faith in Jesus, and the promise of salvation and the gift of the Spirit. Paul, according to Dunn, had a clear definition of the gospel but recognized a variety of forms—a variety attested in the rest of the NT. Dunn says that “within the NT itself we have not simply diverse kerygmata, but in fact kerygmata which appear to be incompatible.”[62] Dunn proceeds to investigate early Christian confessional formulae: Jesus is the Messiah; Jesus is the Son of God; Jesus is Lord. All these confessions witness to what Dunn believes to be the fundamental unifying feature of the NT: the oneness of the earthly Jesus and the exalted Christ. He concludes: “In short, the identity of historical Jesus with kerygmatic Christ is the one basis and bond of unity which holds together the manifold diversity of first-century Christianity.”[63]
In the second part of the book Dunn reverses the topic and writes about diversity in unity. He pursues the issue by investigating four main types of early Christianity, beginning with Jewish Christianity, where he finds abundant evidence of diversity. In regard to Hellenistic Christianity, Dunn recalls that the first split in the church resulted from the conflict between the Hellenists and the Hebrews in Jerusalem (Acts 6). However, the real threat within Hellenistic Christianity is to be seen in gnostic tendencies. “Gnosticism was able to present its message in a sustained way as teaching of Jesus only by separating the risen Christ from the earthly Jesus and by abandoning the attempt to show a continuity between the Jesus of the Jesus-tradition and the heavenly Christ of their faith.”[64] Dunn identifies a third type as “apocalyptic Christianity.” According to him, “Christianity began as an eschatological sect within Judaism, a sect which in its apocalypticism was in substantial continuity with the messages both of John the Baptist and of Jesus.”[65] Within this type, according to Dunn, unity could be maintained by confessing the oneness of “the man of Nazareth and the coming Christ.”[66]
Finally, Dunn investigates “early Catholicism.” This movement within Christianity is distinguished by the fading of the eschatological hope, the increasing emergence of institutionalism, and the crystallization of the faith into fixed forms. Dunn finds evidence for this development in the Pastoral Epistles, 2 Peter, and Jude. “Perhaps then the tragedy of early catholicism was its failure to realize that the biggest heresy of all is the insistence that there is only one ecclesiastical obedience, only one orthodoxy.”[67] He concludes with a discussion of the authority of the NT. The canon, he argues, witnesses to both diversity and unity.
The point is, of course, that only when we recognize the full diversity of function of the canon as well as the full diversity of the NT material can the NT canon as awhole remain viable. Or, more concisely, only when we recognize the unity in diversity and the diversity in unity of the NT and the ways they interact can the NT continue to function as canon.[68]
Dunn’s recognition of the unity of the NT in Christ led to his next major work: Christology in the Making,[69] first published in 1980. The second edition, a reprint, is prefaced with a Foreword in which Dunn responds to the critics of the earlier edition, notably to the charge that he had not given adequate attention to the Hellenistic backgrounds. In the introduction he articulates the thematic question: “How did the doctrine of the incarnation originate?”[70] He purports to answer the question by “a historical investigation into how and in what terms the doctrine of the incarnation came to expression.”[71] Following a well-worn path, he pursues the answer by an investigation of NT titles. He begins with “Son of God” and notes the wide usage and varied meaning of the title in the ancient world. “Certainly ‘son of God’ as applied to Jesus would not necessarily have carried in and of itself the connotation of deity.”[72] In regard to Jesus’ understanding of the title, Dunn denies that Jesus thought himself to be the unique, preexistent Son of God. He does believe, however, that Jesus’ sense of sonship implies a “high christology.”[73] In the earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, Dunn notes the evidence of a pre-Pauline tradition (Rom 1:3-4) in which “the resurrection of Jesus was regarded as of central significance in determining his divine sonship.”[74] Dunn observes that Paul refers to the sending of the Son (Gal 4:4; Rom 8:3), but finds in this expression no clear affirmation of preexistence. According to Dunn, Hebrews “seems to be the first of the NT writings to have embraced the specific thought of a pre-existent divine sonship.”[75] The high point is reached, however, in the Fourth Gospel:
In short, for the first time in earliest Christianity we encounter in the Johannine writings the understanding of Jesus’ divine sonship in terms of the personal pre-existence of a divine being who was sent into the world and whose ascension was simply the continuation of an intimate relationship with the Father which neither incarnation nor crucifixion interrupted or disturbed.[76]
Next Dunn tackles the notorious problem of the Son of Man. He reviews the evidence from Daniel 7 and the Similitudes of Enoch and concludes that “we have thus far found no evidence of a Son of Man concept in pre-Christian Judaism.”[77] As to the Christian understanding, Dunn believes the first identification of the Son of Man of Dan 7:13 is to be found in earliest Christianity, perhaps with Jesus himself. Very important for Dunn’s view of NT Christology is the title “the last Adam.” Dunn, employing questionable exegesis, detects Adam Christology in Phil 2:6-11.
The Christ of Phil. 2.6-11 therefore is the man who undid Adam’s wrong; confronted with the same choice, he rejected Adam’s sin, but nevertheless freely followed Adam’s course as fallen man to the bitter end of death; wherefore God bestowed on him the status not simply that Adam lost, but the status which Adam was intended to come to, God’s final prototype, the last Adam.[78]
At any rate, Dunn finds no evidence in this text or in 2 Cor 8:9 for a doctrine of preexistence.
Also very important for Dunn is the concept of the Wisdom of God. Although he believes the idea of pre-existent Wisdom to have influenced early Christian Christology, Dunn finds “it is very unlikely that pre-Christian Judaism ever understood Wisdom as a divine being in any sense independent of Yahweh.”[79] According to Dunn, Paul’s Wisdom Christology affirms that “Christ fully embodies the creative and saving activity of God,” but this does not imply belief in the preexistence of Christ.[80] Closely related to the Wisdom of God is the title “Word of God.” As Dunn points out, this title takes on dramatic meaning with the author of the Fourth Gospel. Dunn says that “the author of John 1.1-16 was the first to take the step which no Hellenistic-Jewish author had taken before him, the first to identify the word of God as a particular person; and so far as our evidence is concerned the Fourth Evangelist was the first Christian writer to conceive clearly of the personal pre-existence of the Logos-Son and to present it as a fundamental part of his message.”[81] He concludes that apart from the Johannine literature no NT writing affirms the preexistence of Christ. However, with the development of Wisdom in the later Pauline letters (notably Colossians) we see “the womb from which incarnational christology emerged.”[82] “‘Incarnation’ means initially that God’s love and power had been experienced in fullest measure in, through and as this man Jesus, that Christ had been experienced as God’s self-expression, the Christ-event as the effective re-creative power of God.”[83]
The change in the course of the trajectory of Dunn’s writings was caused by his adoption of the “new perspective on Paul,” a phrase he himself coined. His original view of the new perspective is expressed in his Manson Memorial Lecture at the University of Manchester in 1982, but a fuller account of his mature understanding is presented in his essay, “The New Perspective: whence, what and whither?”[84] Dunn had lectured on Romans during his early days at Nottingham, and at the time he assumed the traditional Lutheran/Reformation picture of Paul as the foe of a literalistic, self-righteous Judaism. Reading E. P. Sanders’s revolutionary Paul and Palestinian Judaism brought about Dunn’s conversion.[85] He abandoned his former view of Paul and embraced Judaism, in Sanders’s terms, as a religion of “covenant nomism.” But while he applauded Sanders’s correction of the old caricature of Judaism, Dunn found Sanders’s assessment of Paul to be flawed. According to Dunn, Sanders did not properly identify what Paul was battling against. Dunn found his solution in Paul’s attack on the “works of the law” (Gal 2:16; 3:2, 5). According to Dunn this phrase did not refer, as the in the traditional view, to Jewish egocentric striving for salvation by works, but served a social function: the “works of the law” were boundary markers to identity the distinctive and separate character of the true people of God. The “works of the law,” according to Dunn, reinforced Israel’s exclusive claim on God—the claim to the primary status of Israel. In contrast to this Jewish view, “Pauline scholarship simply must not diminish the importance for Paul of the gospel as the power of God in breaking down barriers (not least of the law) between Jew and Gentile.”[86] Dunn’s final comment focuses on his view of Paul’s doctrine of salvation.
The significance Paul saw in Jesus Christ remains the primary difference between his gospel for all and the understanding of salvation in the scriptures and traditions of Israel. The eschatological significance of Christ put the old covenant into the past tense and signalled the opening of God’s grace to all who believe, the fulfilment of God’s purposes through Israel to the world.[87]
Dunn’s first major publication to show the impact of the new perspective is his two-volume commentary on Romans.[88] In the introduction he discusses the recipients of the letter. Dunn believes the majority of the Christians in Rome were Gentile, and that Paul had considerable information about the situation there. As to the purpose of the epistle, he surmises that Paul writes for three reasons: a missionary purpose (he is seeking support for his mission to the West); an apologetic purpose (Paul wants the Romans to understand his message); a pastoral purpose (Paul is promoting unity among believers). On the question of the original composition of the letter, Dunn believes that chapter 16 belongs to the original. In a final section of the introduction Dunn, advocating the new perspective, insists that Romans must be interpreted in the context of Paul’s view of the law and “covenant nomism.”
In view of the magnitude of Dunn’s Romans (over 900 pages), only a few examples of his exegesis can be offered. In presenting the material, Dunn follows the format of the Word Biblical Commentary (WBC): Notes, Translation, Form and Structure, Comment, and Explanation. In the Explanation sections Dunn presents a running commentary on the text; he understands the section on Comment to be notes on the Explanation.
Within the first section of the epistle (1:1-17), Dunn interprets “Introductory Statement and Greetings” (1:1-7). Under Notes he deals with text critical issues, for example, the omission ἐν Ῥώμῃ from some manuscripts. Following the notes, Dunn presents his translation of the text. In regard to Form and Structure, he observes that Paul follows the conventional epistolary opening but expands the introduction of himself. Under Comment, Dunn notes that in this greeting, in contrast to most of his epistles, Paul mentions no associates. In the Explanation he observes that Paul identifies himself in relation to the gospel and defines the gospel in relation to Christ. Christ, in turn, is presented according to a pre-Pauline creedal formula that designates Jesus Christ as Son of God by his resurrection; Dunn sees here evidence of the developing of early Christology.
Later in this introductory part of the epistle Dunn investigates the “Summary Statement of the Letter’s Theme” (1:16-17). His translation renders the quotation from Habakkuk: “He who is righteous by faith shall live.” Under Notes, Dunn observes that πρῶτον is omitted in some witnesses, perhaps the result of Marcion’s opposition to Jewish priority. In the Comment section Dunn discusses the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. Reflecting the new perspective, he understands this phrase to refer to God’s covenant faithfulness. Dunn’s Explanation affirms “the gospel” as the theme of the letter. “It not merely contains somewhere in it the secret of or bears witness to the power of God through other channels, but is itself the power of God to salvation.”[89]
In the main section of the epistle, “God’s Saving Faith” (Rom 3:21—5:21), Dunn interprets 3:21-26 (“The Decisive Demonstration of God’s Righteousness in the Death of Jesus”). Under Form and Structure he affirms the centrality of this text, confirmed by the reappearance of the theme (1:16-17), seen in the terms “righteousness” and “faith.” Dunn summarizes the meaning of the text: “Christ’s death, a sacrifice for sin provided by God in accordance with the law, is God’s means of extending his righteousness to all who believe (including those outside the law).”[90] In his Comment, Dunn investigates the controversial phrase διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (3:22). He argues at some length and with considerable vigor that the genitive is objective. “What Paul says is that God’s righteousness comes to expression through faith in Christ.”[91] In regard to the phrase ὃν προέθετο ὁ θεὸς ἱλαστήριον (v. 25), Dunn notes that ἱλαστήριον is used in the LXX with the meaning “mercy seat,” but also in Jewish literature to mean “means of expiation.” Dunn recommends avoiding an either/or and adopting “means of atonement” in order to preserve the ambiguity. He says that “it can hardly be doubted that Paul (and the pre-Pauline tradition) was thinking of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice . . . a judgment that is confirmed by the reference to Jesus’ blood.”[92] Dunn provides an extensive Explanation of this text. He notes the decisive shift in perspective signaled by the use of “now” (v. 21): the now of eschatological salvation, the new state of affairs resulting from God’s act in Christ. In v. 22 he highlights Paul’s turn from the faithfulness of God to human faith in Christ. In antithesis to works of the law, this faith depicts “a relationship which is not dependent on specific ritual acts, but is direct and immediate, a relying on the risen Christ rather than a resting on the law.”[93] Dunn understands the double qualifier, “grace as a gift” (v. 24), to prove that the redemptive action depends “entirely from start to finish on God’s gracious power.”[94]
Dunn’s exegesis of Romans 7 goes against the stream of most interpreters who follow the course of the monumental monograph of W. G. Kümmel.[95] In his Comment on 7:7-25, Dunn notes that the first use of ἐγώ in Romans is in v. 9. In his Exposition concerning 7:7-13 Dunn finds allusions to the fall of Adam; the “I” in these verses represents Adam. However, in 7:14-25 Paul, according to Dunn, is speaking autobiographically and depicting his own Christian experience.
The existential anguish of v. 15 must therefore express or at least include Paul’s experience as one who has already been accepted by and through Christ and already received the Spirit. . . . It is not Paul the pious Pharisee who speaks here, but Paul the humble believer; and whoever else he speaks of, he certainly speaks of himself.[96]
Dunn does not see Romans 9–11 (“The Righteousness of God—From God’s Faithfulness: The Outworking of the Gospel in Relation to Israel”) as an excursus or an appendix but as a major exposition of Paul’s understanding of the church’s continuity with Israel. Paul’s argument reaches a climax in 11:25-32 (“The Final Mystery Revealed”). In his Comment, Dunn raises the crucial question: Whom does Paul include in the “all Israel” who will be saved? “There is now a strong consensus that πᾶς Ἰσραήλ must mean Israel as a whole, as a people whose corporate identity and wholeness would not be lost even if in the event there were some (or indeed many) individual exceptions.”[97] This does not mean, Dunn insists, a remnant or “spiritual” Israel. In his Explanation, Dunn observes that Paul believes that the fall of Israel has a purpose within the mystery of history’s outcome. The blindness of Israel was only temporary, awaiting the fullness of the Gentiles. “Certainly there will be a full measure of the Gentiles, the full number intended by God, but how many that would be Paul does not say—all, many, or only some; he is content simply to specify all that God will call.”[98] As to Paul’s assertion that “all Israel shall be saved” (11:26), Dunn says, “Whatever is happening to Israel now, Paul has been given the divinely revealed assurance that all will come out right for Israel in the end, that God’s faithfulness to his first love will be demonstrated for all to see.”[99] This indicates, according to Dunn, that the Jews will abandon their rejection of Jesus as Messiah and accept the gospel. In 11:29 (“for irrevocable are the gifts and call of God”) Dunn sees Paul’s ultimate expression of the faithfulness of God. “But now at last he states in clear and unambiguous terms what is obviously one of the basic postulates of his faith as both Jew and Christian, reaffirmed no doubt by the mystery revealed to him—that God is faithful to the covenant relationship he first established with Abraham and his seed.”[100]
Dunn’s continuing reflection on the new perspective led him to publish a remarkable book, The Partings of the Ways.[101] As the subtitle suggests, this book takes up the question of when and how Christianity separated from Judaism. Originally presented as lectures at the Gregorian Pontifical University in Rome, the book was first published in 1991; the second edition is a reprint with new preface and added appendix. Dunn investigates the split between Christianity and Judaism on the basis of what he calls the “four pillars” of Judaism: monotheism, election, Torah, and Temple.
Dunn begins with the Temple. Jesus, Dunn points out, is presented in the Gospels as a loyal Jew who participated in the worship of the Temple. Dunn interprets the “cleansing” of the Temple as a prophetic, eschatological act that provoked the lethal hostility of the hierarchy. He writes that “the most probable historical reconstruction of the death of Jesus is that on the Jewish side the principal movers were the high-priestly faction.”[102] According to Dunn the decisive break with the Temple was provoked by the Hellenists of the Jerusalem church (Acts 6). Stephen, the spokesman of the Hellenists, presented a lengthy speech in which he launched a frontal attack on the Temple, a house “made with humans hands” (Acts 7:48). Dunn observes that “the Stephen episode marks the beginning of a clear parting of the ways, between Christian and Jew.”[103] With Paul, the break with the Temple has become complete. “In sum, so far as Paul was concerned, the whole conception of sacred space, cultic sacrifice, priestly ministry and the question of who may enter and engage in their eschatological equivalents had been wholly transformed.”[104]
Next, Dunn considers the pillars election (covenant) and Torah. Dunn believes that Jesus challenged the boundaries drawn by the Pharisees. However, he observes, “There is no parting of the ways evident here, on either Torah or covenant.”[105] Dunn views Paul vis-à-vis Judaism in the light of “covenant nomism.” According to Dunn, Paul agreed with the Jewish view of the covenant: that God had given the covenant by grace and that the law included the rules for life within it. Paul’s conversion, however, commissioned him to go to the Gentiles. Therefore, according to Dunn, Paul’s dispute with Second Temple Judaism was the claim that the “works of the law” were intended to demonstrate Israel’s distinctiveness, its separation from “Gentile sinners.” Dunn says that “we can indeed say that it was Paul who effectively undermined this third pillar [Torah] of second Temple Judaism.”[106] Nevertheless, despite the harsh words of Matthew and John about the Jews, Dunn concludes that “the issues of Torah and election need not have proved sufficient in themselves to cause the final split between Christianity and rabbinical Judaism.”[107]
Dunn turns to the most basic pillar of Judaism: the absolute commitment to monotheism. In regard to Jesus, Dunn sees him as “at heart a devout Jew whose basic springs and expressions of piety were Jewish through and through.”[108] Dunn considers the titles of Jesus he reviewed in his Making of Christology and finds nothing in their meaning that conflicts with the Jewish affirmation of the oneness of God. He does admit: “The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel would have put a severe strain on Jewish monotheism.”[109] Dunn also recognizes the problem created by the confession of Jesus as Lord—a confession complicated by the fact that Kyrios is the translation of the name of God in the LXX. However, Dunn concludes, “To call Jesus ‘Lord’, therefore, was evidently not understood in earliest Christianity as identifying him with God.”[110]
A final chapter summarizes the partings of the ways. As to the time of the final split, Dunn believes it occurred in the period between the two Jewish wars (70 and 132). In this period rabbinic Judaism took the form of orthodox, normative Judaism. Christianity became increasingly Gentile as Jewish Christianity separated and died out. Dunn says that “by the end of the second Jewish revolt, Christian and Jew were clearly distinct and separate.”[111] In reflecting on the ongoing history, Dunn acknowledges the claim of Christians to be the true people of God—a claim that encouraged a blatant anti-Judaism. Dunn believes a way to begin repairing the damage is to acknowledge “the enduring Jewish character of Christianity.”[112] “My thesis restated is that Israel cannot understand itself, cannot be Israel, unless the Christian recognizes that the Jew is also Israel and the Jew acknowledges that without the Christian Israel’s destiny is incomplete.”[113]
Dunn’s work on Judaism and his exegetical research on the Pauline letter culminates in his magnum opus, The Theology of Paul the Apostle.[114] At the outset Dunn makes a decision concerning the way to order his analysis of Paul’s thought: the use of Romans as template.[115] He begins with a prolegomenon to a theology of Paul that states his method and goal.
So my endeavour in the following pages is, first of all, to get inside the skin of Paul, to see through his eyes, to think his thoughts from inside as it were, and to do so in such a way as to help others to appreciate his insight and subtlety and concerns for themselves. At the same time I wish to theologize with Paul, to engage in mutually critical dialogue with him, as one would hope a maturing student would engage critically with the thought of his or her teacher.[116]
As a point of departure Dunn investigates Paul’s understanding of God and humankind. God, according to Dunn, is the foundation of Paul’s theology—the one God who is creator of the cosmos and final judge. Dunn investigates Paul’s understanding of humanity according to his use of anthropological terms, concluding that humans function at different levels: as embodied, we are social; as fleshly, we are vulnerable; as rational, we can soar to intellectual heights. Turning to the dark side of humanity, Dunn investigates the indictment of humankind in Rom 1:18—3:20: humans seen as sinners, enemies of God. According to Dunn, Paul develops this portrait of the human plight in parallel to Adam and his fall (Genesis 2–3). Like Adam, humanity was created for relationship with God, but humans revolted against the creator and lost their share of divine majesty; instead of sharing life, humanity is dominated by death. Dunn believes that Paul views sin as a personified power. Death, for Paul, is not a natural outcome of life; it is punishment for sin. Dunn discusses Paul’s understanding of the law in relation to sin and death. The law is the measure of God’s requirements; it functions in identifying sin. The law has a special relation with Israel, to protect and discipline, but, as Dunn points out, Israel failed to recognize the role of the law as temporary and misconstrued the possession of the law as evidence of a privileged relation to God.
Paul finds the answer to the human plight in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul believed his gospel was based on the scriptures, which, as Dunn points out, he exegeted according to a Christocentric hermeneutic. Paul claimed that his gospel was given by revelation, an apocalypse (Gal 1:12), an eschatological turning point. “The point to be emphasized in conclusion, however, is that Paul’s gospel, the divine response to the divine indictment, was centred wholly on Jesus Christ.”[117] This centrality of Jesus Christ leads Dunn into a discussion of Paul’s understanding of Jesus. He points out that Paul had received tradition about Jesus and could assume with his readers common knowledge about the man from Nazareth. “It can be demonstrated with a fair degree of probability, then, that Paul both knew and cared about the ministry of Jesus prior to his passion and death.”[118]
Although Paul had information about the life and teaching of Jesus, his primary concern, as Dunn observes, is the crucified Christ. As to Paul’s theology of atoning sacrifice, Dunn does not believe it should be described as “substitution.” “But Paul’s teaching,” says Dunn, “is not that Christ dies ‘in the place of’ others so that they escape death (as the logic of ‘substitution’ implies). It is rather that Christ’s sharing their death makes it possible for them to share his death.”[119] Dunn notes that Paul uses other metaphors to describe the saving work of Christ, including “redemption” and “reconciliation.” As in his Making of Christology, Dunn finds no evidence in the Pauline letters to support the doctrine of the preexistence of Christ. He notes Paul’s emphasis on the resurrection. However, he does not believe that Paul gave major attention to the imminent return of Christ, and he thinks the “delay of the parousia” made no impact whatsoever on the theology of Paul.
According to Dunn, Paul believed salvation had two stages: a beginning and a process. The primary feature of the beginning is God’s action of grace. In the history of Pauline interpretation, emphasis has been placed on the doctrine of justification by faith. As Dunn had argued in his earlier writings, this doctrine must be understood from the new perspective on Paul. From this perspective it is clear that Paul’s quarrel with the Jews is not about their effort to attain salvation by works but about their understanding of the “works of the law” as boundary markers to maintain their covenant distinctiveness and separation from the Gentiles. Indeed, Dunn implies that Paul understood “covenant nomism” better than the Jews; he knew that Abraham had been justified by faith and the covenant promised inclusion of the Gentiles.
This, then, is what Paul meant by justification by faith, by faith alone. It was a profound conception of the relation between God and humankind—a relation of utter dependence, of unconditional trust. . . . That was why Paul was so fiercely hostile to the qualification which he saw confronting him all the time in any attempt to insist on works of the law as a necessary accompaniment of or addition to faith. . . . Justification was by faith alone.[120]
As well as justification, Dunn believes Paul viewed salvation as participation in Christ—the so-called “Christ mysticism.” This neglected concept is expressed, according to Dunn, in the Pauline phrases “in Christ” and “with Christ.” Closely related is Paul’s understanding of the gift of the Spirit, which functions in human life providing freedom, ethical guidance, and hope.
Turning to Paul’s understanding of the process of salvation, Dunn emphasizes the eschatological tension. Paul believed the new age had arrived with the coming of Christ, but it was not yet complete. Reminiscent of Cullmann, Dunn thinks that Paul viewed Christ as the midpoint in time and saw the parousia as the end.[121] Thus the present is the time of tension between the “already” and the “not yet.” Dunn finds this eschatological tension in the divided “I” of Romans 7 and in the conflict of the flesh and the Spirit; the Spirit is the present pledge of the Spirit’s triumph in the future. In concluding this chapter Dunn notes the importance of the Spirit in both stages of salvation: the Spirit functions in the beginning and in the eschatological tension of the salvation process.
After a discussion of the problem of Israel, ground he had plowed in his commentary on Romans 9–11, Dunn takes up Paul’s doctrine of the church. Paul explicates this doctrine by the metaphor of the “body of Christ,” which highlights the corporate character of the Christian communities. Dunn points out that these are religious communities without cult: no temple, no priests, no sacrifices. Paul describes these churches as charismatic communities—communities in which the gifts of the Spirit are active. Dunn observes that the central element of worship in the Pauline churches is the Lord’s Supper. Paul’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper, according to Dunn, is wholly christological: the Supper is the sharing of the body of Christ; the Supper is observed at the table of the Lord. The Lord’s Supper remembers the death and resurrection of Christ and anticipates his coming; it is the bridge across the eschatological tension.
The final chapter of Dunn’s Theology of Paul is dedicated to ethics. As to the motivating principles, Dunn notes the importance of the indicative (the new situation resulting from the event of Christ) and the imperative (the response of the believer in Christ). The believer responds to the “law of Christ,” the law of love. As to the practice of ethics, Dunn observes that the life of the believer is lived out in a social context. In Corinth the Christians lived between two worlds: the external world of Hellenistic society and the inner world of the Christian community. In this dual context Christians face problems about sexual conduct, slavery, and food that has been offered to idols. Dunn points out that in this situation Paul does not advocate asceticism but stresses opposition to idolatry and devotion to the Lord.
Dunn adds an epilogue he titles “postlegomena to a theology of Paul.” According to Dunn, Paul viewed his new faith as a fulfillment of the old. Christ, for Paul, is the fulcrum point in Paul’s theological development: Christ as the revelation of God, Christ as the eschatological event.
The centrality of Christ, as showing what God is like, as defining God’s Spirit, as the channel of Israel’s blessing for the nations, as demonstrating what obedience to Torah means, as the light which illumines Israel’s scriptures, as embodying the paradigm of creation and consummation, his death and resurrection as the midpoint of time, as the magnet of faith, as the focus of all sacramental significance, as determining the personal and corporate identity of Christians, as the image to which the salvation process conforms, is simply inescapable in the theology of Paul the apostle.[122]
Late in his career Dunn launched a project of phenomenal dimensions: a three-volume history of early Christianity from the beginning until 150, entitled Christianity in the Making. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century the first two volumes had been published. The sheer bulk of these books defies the possibility of an adequate review within limited space. However, since much of Dunn’s work focused on Paul and the early church, some attention must be given to the first volume: Jesus Remembered.[123] In the first part of this hefty tome (over 900 pages) Dunn is concerned with the quest of the historical Jesus.[124] He notes two movements in the Enlightenment view of Jesus: the flight from dogma and the flight from history. In the former he traces the rejection of revelation from Reimarus to the Jesus Seminar. As to the flight from history, Dunn argues that the “objective” application of historical criticism led to relativizing and skepticism. With Rudolf Bultmann the quest for the historical Jesus was seen as both impossible and unimportant. However, the pupils of Bultmann, notably Ernst Käsemann, detected historical elements in the kerygma and proposed a new (second) quest.[125] Dunn thinks a third quest is possible, this time inspired by the work of E. P. Sanders, who stressed the Jewishness of Jesus, a quest in which Dunn is ready to enlist.
Dunn’s chapter, “History, Hermeneutics and Faith,” explores the methodology of the third quest. The quest is necessary, he says, because of the importance of the historical figure of Jesus. The study of history, according to Dunn, can offer the perspective of historical distance and provide probability, not certainty. In place of the illusion of objectivity Dunn calls for a “critical realism” that opposes historical positivism and recognizes the importance of meaning. Dunn’s method focuses on the text in its historical context. He believes the recent allegiance to the “autonomy” of the text to be an illusion. “The meaning intended by means of and through the text is still a legitimate and viable goal for the NT exegete and interpreter.”[126] Dunn favors a hermeneutic that recognizes the role of faith. Interpretation, he believes, should be a dialogue that includes listening to the text, being sensitive to both the objective and subjective meaning. Recognition of the role of faith in interpretation prompts Dunn to the historical question: When did a faith perspective first influence the Jesus tradition? The answer, according to Dunn, is that faith was present from the beginning: a truth form criticism missed. The key issue in the quest for the historical Jesus is the hermeneutical tension between faith and history.
The second part of Dunn’s Jesus Remembered traces the path from the Gospels back to Jesus. Dunn accepts the Two-Document Hypothesis with minor qualifications. He recognizes the priority of Mark and thinks both Matthew and Luke had distinctive material of their own as well as oral tradition. As to the Gospel of Thomas, Dunn does not believe it preserves tradition independent of and older than the Synoptics. He is impressed with recent studies that find the genre of the Gospels in ancient biographies. Dunn is also impressed with studies of the oral tradition, notably the work of Birger Gerhardsson (reviewed in the next section). As a result, he believes some of the variants visible in the Synoptic parallels are better explained by the analysis of oral tradition than by traditional literary source criticism. Like Gerhardsson, Dunn thinks the tradition goes back to the original encounter of the disciples with Jesus. In his quest for the historical Jesus, Dunn does not resort to the conventional list of criteria. Instead, he advocates beginning with the big picture. “The criterion is this: any feature which is characteristic within the Jesus tradition and relatively distinctive of the Jesus tradition is most likely to go back to Jesus.”[127] “In short, there is a ‘historical Jesus,’ or better, a historic Jesus, who is the legitimate and possible goal of further questing.”[128]
In Part III, Dunn investigates the “Mission of Jesus.” The mission begins, according to him, with John the Baptist. Dunn hesitates to identify Jesus as a disciple of John, but he acknowledges that Jesus was for a time associated with the Baptist. Jesus’ baptism by John, which according to Dunn is better understood as an anointing with the Spirit, marks the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. The major feature of this ministry was the proclamation of the kingdom of God. Dunn believes the investigation of the meaning of the kingdom must begin with the recognition of the present/future tension preserved in the tradition. The understanding of the kingdom as future is expressed in sayings that announce that the kingdom has drawn near and in the parables of crisis that call for vigilance. On the other hand, Dunn calls attention to evidence indicating that the kingdom is already present. This is seen, for example, in Jesus’ claim that exorcisms demonstrate that the kingdom has come. Dunn interprets the parables of growth as pointing to the end of the development: the harvest has already happened. In sum, Dunn finds the understanding of the kingdom as both future and present to be firmly rooted in the tradition. He rejects the theory that the earliest stratum of Q and the Gospel of Thomas provide an early, reliable tradition of a non-eschatological Jesus. Instead, the historian has to admit that Jesus expected imminent events that did not happen. Dunn says that the early Christian could accept failed prophecy without deserting the core faith expressed in the prophecy—faith in God as King and Father.
Dunn turns to the question: “For whom did Jesus intend his message?” He believes the message was addressed first and foremost to Israel. It was a call to return to trust in God. Dunn observes that the call was also directed to sinners. Here again he hears the language of Jewish factionalism: “sinners,” like toll-collectors, were those who, according to the “righteous,” had put themselves outside the covenant people. Those who heard and accepted the message with repentance and faith became disciples of Jesus. The disciples, according to Dunn, were accepted as children of the Father. Dunn believes that Jesus taught the disciples to address God in prayer as he himself did, as “Abba.” He also notes that discipleship involved suffering, taking up a cross. In the life of the disciples, love is the fundamental motivation. This life comes to expression in a new family, an open fellowship without boundaries that separated insiders from outsiders. Jesus affirmed “the character of kingdom life, lived already here and now in anticipation of God’s ordering of society when his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.”[129]
With Part IV the plot thickens: Dunn takes up the murky question of Jesus’ self-understanding. He begins with the easier question: How did others see Jesus? Most obvious is the answer that he was recognized as Messiah. Dunn rejects the view that this recognition did not occur until after the resurrection, and he detects evidence to the contrary. However, for the larger question this evidence is counterproductive: Dunn finds abundant evidence that royal messiahship was a role Jesus resolutely rejected. He does believe that some of Jesus’ contemporaries hailed him as a prophet and a doer of extraordinary deeds. No one doubts that Jesus was recognized as a teacher, but astonishing is the authority with which he taught. Dunn points out that Jesus’ expression, “I say to you,” is stronger than the prophetic assertion, “Thus says the Lord.” In summing up the significance of these various designations of Jesus, Dunn sees two lasting impressions:
One is that Jesus’ mission seems to have broken through all the most obvious categories by which his mission could be evaluated; he evidently did not fit into any of the pigeon-holes by which observers might have wished to label him. The other is the tantalising possibility that Jesus deliberately claimed a degree of distinctiveness for his mission, for all its thoroughly Jewish character, which left both hearers and disciples struggling for words to express the significance of what they were seeing and hearing—and remembering.[130]
Dunn moves to the more difficult question: “How did Jesus see his own role?” As in his Christology, he pursues the question according to the conventional titles. The crucial title, of course, is “Son of Man,” and Dunn devotes almost forty pages to it. He rehearses the two basic approaches to the question: the philological (various understandings of the Aramaic phrase with generic meaning) and the apocalyptic (reference to Son of Man in Dan 7:13-14). Turning to the evidence, Dunn is impressed by that fact that virtually every allusion to the Son of Man in the NT is put into the mouth of Jesus. Dunn says that the phrase “was remembered as a speech usage distinctive of Jesus because that is precisely what it was.”[131] As to the philological approach, Dunn finds occasions where Jesus uses the Aramaic phrase with the meaning “I” or “humankind.” He also finds evidence for the influence of Daniel and references to the Son of Man who would come on the clouds. As to the apocalyptic being of the Similitudes of Enoch, Dunn believes this figure does not appear until late in the first century. He hypothesizes that Jesus’ reference to Dan 7:13 does not indicate identification with an apocalyptic figure but is an allusion to the Son of Man as symbol of the suffering role of the faithful of Israel. In concluding what he has to say about Jesus’ self-understanding, Dunn says that Jesus laid no claim to any particular title and rejected some that others tried to impose on him. Dunn thinks the closest expression is the non-titular use of “son of man” as an anticipation of Jesus’ suffering and hope of vindication.
The last part of Jesus Remembered deals with the climax of the mission of Jesus. This part addresses two final features: the crucifixion and the resurrection. In regard to the crucifixion, Dunn notes the role of Pilate and the Romans as decisive. He thinks the best attested word from the cross is “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As to the question of why Jesus was executed, Dunn thinks that Jesus’ action in “cleansing” the temple and his disregard of cultic regulations provoked the hostility of the high-priestly families and the Temple authorities, the officials most responsible for handing Jesus over to the Romans. Also important is the question whether Jesus anticipated his own death, and if so, how he understood it. Dunn finds sufficient evidence that Jesus did anticipate his death, but he rejects the theory that Jesus saw himself as the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah. More likely, Jesus viewed himself as an heir of the tradition of the righteous sufferers, and recognized that he would have to endure the woes of the eschatological tribulation. Dunn is convinced that Jesus would not have understood his execution to be a sign of the failure of God’s purpose. The vindication Jesus expected was “to share in the general and final resurrection of the dead.”[132]
In investigating the resurrection, Dunn begins with the tradition of the empty tomb. He concludes that this tradition is early, reliable, and independent of the tradition of the resurrection appearances. As to the latter, he examines the various accounts and finds a common core: the witnesses saw Jesus and they received a commission. “What we should recognize as beyond reasonable doubt is that the first believers experienced ‘resurrection appearances’ and that those experiences are enshrined, as with the earlier impact made by Jesus’ teaching and actions, in the traditions which have come down to us.”[133] Dunn is dismissive of any interpretation that smacks of subjectivity. He concludes that the tradition requires us to recognize that something had happened to Jesus, not that something had happened to the disciples. Nevertheless, Dunn designates the resurrection as metaphor, as interpretation of the data. “In short, resurrection of Jesus is not so much a historical fact as a foundational fact, or meta-fact, the interpretative insight into reality which enables discernment of the relative importance and unimportance of all other facts.”[134]
A final chapter reflects on the title of the book, Jesus Remembered. Dunn understands the book to reflect “a new perspective on the Jesus tradition.”[135] According to this view, “The primary formative force in shaping the Jesus tradition was the impact made by Jesus during his mission on the first disciples, the impact which drew them into discipleship.”[136] Two features of the new perspective should be highlighted: the recognition of the importance of oral tradition for assessing the sources and the emphasis on seeing Jesus in his Jewish context. According to Dunn, the impact of the Jesus tradition can still be felt today. “In short, through the Jesus tradition the would-be disciple still hears and encounters Jesus as he talked and debated, shared table-fellowship and healed. . . . Through that tradition it is still possible for anyone to encounter the Jesus from whom Christianity stems, the remembered Jesus.”[137]
Looking back over the work of James Dunn, the viewer stands in awe. The sheer magnitude of the work, built on exegetical detail and informed by a mastery of a mountain of secondary sources, staggers the imagination. Dunn’s writings are marked by thoughtful order and clarity of style. Above all, Dunn is a biblical theologian; his work is characterized by a devotion to the text. He has a high view of biblical authority, and some of his critical judgments tend to be conservative. Nevertheless, Dunn’s view of the unity of the NT message does not compromise his recognition of the New Testament’s diversity. Dunn’s theology is Christocentric, and he embraces a high Christology. However, he seems reluctant to acknowledge that some texts (notably in the Pauline letters) imply the preexistence of Christ. Nevertheless, sensitive to theological distinctions, Dunn affirms the doctrine of the incarnation.
A distinctive feature of Dunn’s NT research is his emphasis on Jewish backgrounds. His critics are correct, however, in noting his inadequate attention to the Hellenistic setting. In regard to Judaism, Dunn’s view is dominated by the new perspective. While he is certainly correct in preferring this view to the traditional caricature of Judaism, he may have gone too far. He sees Paul as more knowledgeable about “covenant nomism” than the Jews, and he finds a continuity between Paul and Israel that can hardly explain Paul’s conflict with the Jews. There must have been more than a quarrel about boundary markers to result in five sentences of forty lashes (2 Cor 11:24). Despite the Christocentric character of his own theology, Dunn does not sufficiently stress Paul’s major difference from his fellow-Jews: Paul had accepted Jesus as the Messiah.
The twentieth century witnessed the research of some outstanding Scandinavian scholars. The pioneer of historical-critical research in Scandinavia in that time was Anton Fridrichsen. After study in his native Norway, Fridrichsen did additional academic work in Germany and completed a doctorate at Strasbourg. He spent most of his career as a professor at Uppsala. Among Fridrichsen’s important works are his The Apostle and His Message[138] and The Problem of Miracle in Primitive Christianity.[139] Fridrichsen was a demanding teacher who numbered among his students such luminaries as Bo Reicke, Harald Riesenfeld, and Krister Stendahl (who became a professor and, later, Dean at Harvard Divinity School). Another important Scandinavian NT scholar was Nils Dahl; educated at Oslo, where he taught for a time, Dahl was a professor at Yale from 1965 to 1980. Birger Gerhardsson, therefore, serves as representative of a larger group. Moreover, he deserves attention in his own right: Gerhardsson has a distinctive view of the history of early Christianity that has enjoyed a revival early in the twenty-first century.
Birger Gerhardsson was educated at the University of Uppsala, where he studied with Harald Riesenfeld.[140] From 1965 to 1992 Gerhardsson served as professor of exegetical theology as the University of Lund. He was honored by election to the presidency of the SNTS (1990). According to a notable British scholar, “Birger Gerhardsson is well known throughout the international New Testament scholarly world as a scholar of highest repute.”[141]
Gerhardsson is recognized primarily for his major work, Memory and Manuscript.[142] Based on his Uppsala dissertation of 1956, the book was first published in 1961. It was reprinted in 1998 with a new preface by the author and a foreword by Jacob Neusner. In the new preface Gerhardsson recalls his original purpose in writing: previous research had not provided a clear picture of the origin and transmission of early Christian tradition. Gerhardsson believed, and still does, that in the time of Jesus the only coherent methods for handling tradition were to be found in Pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism. This conviction provided the key to Gerhardsson’s analysis of early Christian tradition. Neusner’s foreword confesses a conversion: he regrets his review of the first edition (following the lead of Morton Smith) in which he attacked Gerhardsson’s use of later sources in the exposition of first-century tradition. In the foreword Neusner praises Gerhardsson for discovering a model of how tradition was formed: one that was explicit in later rabbinic literature, but relevant for the time of Jesus.
In the introduction to the original book Gerhardsson asserts that the prevailing theory of the origin and development of tradition (form criticism) has not provided an adequate understanding of early Christian tradition. “It seems therefore highly necessary to determine what was the technical procedure followed when the early Church transmitted, both gospel material and other material.”[143] In the first and largest part of the book Gerhardsson discusses, oral and written tradition in rabbinic Judaism. He begins by investigating written and oral Torah. It is important, he contends, to differentiate between the two. “The distinction is therefore this: the one part of Torah is in principle Scripture, Scripture which is read, whilst the other is oral tradition, tradition which is repeated.”[144] In his research Gerhardsson concentrates on the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods. “Our task is to attempt to give a concrete picture of how, from a purely technical point of view, the sacred Torah was transmitted during these centuries.”[145]
Gerhardsson begins with a discussion of the transmission of written Torah. Great care, he says, was taken for the preservation of the text. The Torah was copied by experts who were skilled in writing and knowledge of Scripture. “Thus the centuries of care lavished on the sacred text by learned copyists and Scripture teachers has spread, and become an overall effort, approved of by all Rabbis, to give all Israel copies, correct in the most minute detail, of those sacred Scriptures in which not even the smallest point was without importance.”[146] Gerhardsson notes the importance of schools where boys were taught Torah by experts. The students, he says, learned by memorizing. Gerhardsson also recognizes the importance of public worship (where Scripture was read and interpreted) for the preservation of the text.
Gerhardsson turns to the transmission of oral Torah, an issue of greater importance for his purposes. He investigates the way the oral Torah was transmitted in rabbinic Judaism. Gerhardsson refers to oral Torah as “text,” that is, as a fixed form. “The balance of probability is that the basic material in the oral Torah was transmitted and learned in a fixed form as early as during the last century of the Temple.”[147] Oral as well as written Torah was studied in the schools, and again the method was memorization. The teacher taught by repetition of the text (according to a convention, four times) and the pupils repeated until they learned by heart.
Gerhardsson proceeds to discuss the theory and practice of the transmission of tradition. Emphasis was placed on preservation of the authentic words. “The pupil is thus in duty bound to maintain his teacher’s exact words.”[148] The material to be learned was condensed and put into concise expression. Mnemonic techniques—catch-words and word associations—were employed. Pupils used notebooks or scrolls to assist their memories. Oral tradition included sayings tradition (the sayings of the older teachers) and narrative tradition (the stories about teachers). “There is no distinct boundary between these deliberate pedagogical measures and the teacher’s way of life as a whole.”[149]
The second part of Memory and Manuscript investigates the “Delivery of the Gospel Tradition in Early Christianity.” Here Gerhardsson applies the results of his research on Judaism to the study of early Christian tradition. At the outset he underlines the importance of the evidence from Luke. According to Gerhardsson, Luke is concerned with Torah, what Luke calls “the word of the Lord.” This word in closely connected to Jerusalem, the center of the world, the messianic city. Also concerned with the “word of the Lord” are the apostles, whose main task is to witness to their teacher, Jesus. The early Christians viewed Christ as the fulfillment of Scripture; their interpretation of Scripture Gerhardsson characterizes as a “Christ-midrash.”[150]
The connection between the tradition of Christ and the Holy Scriptures was thus according to Luke not merely an idea or a concept but a reality that determined the entire method of the early church when presenting the Logos. And the apostles were considered to be the bearers both of the tradition of Christ and of the correct interpretation of the Scriptures.[151]
Gerhardsson sees the division of labor between the Twelve and the Seven (Acts 6:1-6) as fortuitous: “The college of Apostles is therefore freed from even the important diaconal work in order to be able entirely to devote themselves to prayer and the service of the Word.”[152] The service of the word, according to Gerhardsson, included teaching. He sees in the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) an early Christian “General Session” and finds parallels in the general sessions at Qumran and in the ancient Sanhedrin. Gerhardsson claims that “what Luke is here describing is the way in which an important doctrinal question is referred to the Church’s highest doctrinal authority in Jerusalem.”[153]
Gerhardsson detects important information about early Christian tradition in the life and letters of Paul. Although Paul claimed that his gospel was given to him by revelation, he recognized the importance of the Jerusalem apostles. The conference in Jerusalem (Galatians 2), according to Gerhardsson, resulted in two apostolates and two gospels: one to the uncircumcised (the apostolate of Paul) and one to the circumcised (the apostolate of Peter). Although Paul claimed independence, he recognized the centrality of Jerusalem. He acknowledged that his preaching began in Jerusalem (Rom 15:19), and his effort to collect and deliver the offering acknowledged the precedence of the Jerusalem church. Paul explicitly refers to “traditions of my fathers” (Gal 1:14; RSV) in depicting his former life in Judaism.
According to Gerhardsson, Paul had acquired the rabbinic method of learning and transmitting tradition at the feet of Gamaliel. In describing his receiving and handing on of tradition after his conversion, Paul uses the technical terms παραλαμβάνειν and παραδίδοναι. These terms are used for the traditions of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:3) and of the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:23). Gerhardsson believes the fundamental element of the Christian tradition is the gospel. “The only reasonable conclusion in this case is therefore that what we have here is a logos fixed by the college of Apostles in Jerusalem.”[154] Paul received this tradition, according to Gerhardsson, during his visit with Cephas, three years after his conversion (Gal 1:18). Paul also knew and transmitted the tradition of Jesus. In 1 Cor 7:10 he applies the word of the Lord to the practical life of the community and at the same time distinguishes his own teaching from the Lord’s command. Gerhardsson asserts that “Paul is here reproducing a tradition which he believed to have been derived from Jesus via the college of Apostles.”[155]
A final chapter of Memory and Manuscript deals with the origin and transmission of the gospel tradition. According to Gerhardsson the source of the tradition is Jesus. Jesus was a teacher who taught and interpreted Scripture in the synagogues. Gerhardsson supposes that his teaching methods were similar to those used by the Jewish teachers of his time. “He must have made his disciples learn certain sayings off by heart; if he taught he must have required his disciples to memorize.”[156] This teaching of Jesus was transmitted by the Twelve, not as individuals but as a collegium. Gerhardsson, contra Acts 4:13, objects to the characterization of the apostles as “unlearned and ignorant men” (KJV). Their function, according to Gerhardsson, was to present the “word of the Lord” as an eyewitness account, confirmed by Scripture. They remembered the teachings of Jesus and his actions. In contrast to the rabbis, the disciples believed there was only one teacher (Matt 23:10). The traditions of Jesus were gathered into blocks or, to use Gerhardsson’s term, “tractates.” These can be identified in the Gospels; for example, Mark 4 is a parable tractate. Gerhardsson stresses his conviction that the tradition was passed on orally. The teachings, he thinks, were taught by continual repetition and learned by memorization. He concludes: “They [the Evangelists] worked on the basis of a fixed, distinct tradition from, and about, Jesus—a tradition which was partly memorized and partly written down in notebooks and private scrolls, but invariably isolated from the teachings of other doctrinal authorities.”[157]
Three years after the original publication of Memory and Manuscript, Gerhardsson published Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity.[158] In this shorter work he attempts to clarify issues raised by the earlier book and answer criticisms directed against it. He begins by addressing a basic objection of his critics: Gerhardsson had used later rabbinic sources to represent the method of teaching in the time of Jesus. In response, Gerhardsson argues that the pedagogical principles used by the rabbis had a continuity that goes back to OT times, and he claims that the instruction by repetition and memorization is attested prior to Aqiba (ca. 50 CE–135 CE). Gerhardsson also contends that the Pharisees were the predominant group in Judaism in the first century and used teaching methods that were in widespread use in Judaism and the larger world. “We conclude that for an observer these men were noteworthy less as members of a particular party than as representatives of a professional teaching class.”[159]
Turning to the tradition and teaching methods of early Christianity, Gerhardsson observes that Jesus and early Christianity operated in a sphere where Pharisaic teachers had wide influence. He believes (in accord with Acts 22:3) that Paul had been trained in a Pharisaic school and certainly would not have forgotten what he learned. “When all is said and done there remains the incontestable historical fact that Jesus and the early Church had a great deal in common with their milieu, including Pharisaism-Rabbinism.”[160] Although he interprets early Christian tradition within the context of rabbinic tradition, Gerhardsson affirms its distinctiveness. He insists that the Christ-tradition was on a higher plane than the oral Torah of the rabbis: Jesus was the Messiah, the only teacher. This higher tradition, according to Gerhardsson, was altered very little. “The evidence suggests that memories of Jesus were so clear, and the traditions with which they were connected so firmly based that there can have been relatively little scope for alteration.”[161]
Gerhardsson provides further clarification of his understanding of early Christian tradition in three lectures, all collected into a single volume entitled The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition.[162] In 1976 he gave lectures in Germany under the title Die Anfänge der Evangelientradition,[163] and an English translation, The Origins of the Gospel Tradition, appeared in 1979.[164] The English translation is reprinted in The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition (pp. 1–58). In the introduction Gerhardsson states his concern “to work out the historical truth about Jesus of Nazareth.”[165] He charges that form criticism’s attempt to understand oral tradition was not “sufficiently historical.”[166] Gerhardsson begins his own investigation with a review of the Jewish understanding of tradition. For Judaism the norm was Torah, which encompassed all revelation and instruction. Torah, according to Gerhardsson, functioned in three forms: verbal tradition (words or texts imprinted on the mind), practical tradition (normative conduct presented by verbal instruction and example), and institutional tradition (embodied in the temple and taught in the synagogue). To learn Torah, one had to go to a teacher; students learned by listening and observing. Gerhardsson acknowledges that the written evidence for these pedagogical methods dates from the years following the Jewish War, “but in essential aspects these methods are clearly ancient.”[167] The most important feature of the method was memorizing; the texts and sayings were learned by heart. The teacher spoke clearly and concisely and used didactic devices, for example, alliteration and parallelism. The method involved repetition: the teacher repeated the teaching many times and the students were drilled until they learned the texts by heart.
Gerhardsson, as in his earlier work, finds parallels in the NT. He says that “in Paul’s time early Christianity is conscious of the fact that it has a tradition of its own—including many traditions—which the church leaders hand on to the congregations, which the congregations receive, and which they are to guard and live by.”[168] Again, he presents evidence of Paul’s concern with the Jesus tradition. Gerhardsson contends that tradition like that recounted in 1 Cor 11:23-25 was communicated orally and learned by heart. Since the early Christians revered only one teacher, one ultimate source of tradition, they believed the Jesus tradition was of utmost importance. “If one thinks about this, it becomes extremely difficult to imagine that there ever was a time when Jesus’ followers were not interested in preserving his teachings and committing his deeds to memory.”[169] Gerhardsson vigorously rejects the notion that tradition about Jesus did not arise until after the resurrection. He is convinced that the tradition was preserved by select persons, the collegium of the apostles, eyewitnesses of the tradition.
Gerhardsson presumes that Jesus mirrored the teaching methods of the rabbis. His teachings “consist of brief, laconic, well-rounded texts, or pointed statements with a clear profile, rich in content and artistic in form.”[170] Jesus taught in parables or meshalim. “If Jesus created meshalim during his public ministry, it is reasonable to assume that his disciples preserved these texts right from the beginning.”[171] After reviewing the evidence, Gerhardsson concludes, “It thus seems historically very probable that the Jesus traditions in the Gospels have been preserved for us by persons reliable and well-informed.”[172] In regard to variations in the Synoptic parallels, Gerhardsson rejects the view that they prove that the tradition was not memorized. To him, the kinds of variations—additions, omissions, transpositions, minor alterations—indicate that they rest on a fixed text. “My position is that one must proceed on the belief that the synoptic material in principle comes from the earthly Jesus and the disciples who followed him during his ministry, but that one must also do full justice to the fact that this memory material has been marked by insights and interpretations gradually arrived at by the early Christian teachers.”[173]
In 1982 Gerhardsson presented a paper at a symposium in Tübingen on “The Gospel and the Gospels,” entitled “Der Weg der Evangelientradition.”[174] This paper was revised and published in English translation in The Reliability of the GospelTradition.[175] In it, Gerhardsson begins with a basic presupposition: “In short, we make the following statement of fact: in the New Testament the concrete Jesus tradition is treated as an independent entity.”[176] By this Gerhardsson means that the Jesus tradition is isolated in special “texts” that preserve a unique tradition, one that is concerned exclusively with Jesus. Gerhardsson believes this tradition was isolated from the beginning and not, as the form critics supposed, filtered out of general tradition and shaped by the later Sitze-im-Leben. This precise tradition was needed, according to Gerhardsson, for worship services, catechetical instruction, and regular study of the words and deeds of Jesus.
Gerhardsson delineates two forms of the Jesus tradition: the sayings tradition and the narrative tradition. In regard to the former, he believes the sayings were transmitted in fixed form. As to the narrative tradition, Gerhardsson observes that it is one step removed: it is formulated by someone who saw or heard about what had happened. Nevertheless, he believes this kind of tradition was also handed down in memorized form. He is ardently opposed to the notion of the form critics that tradition was shaped (even created) by the life situations of the community. According to Gerhardsson, Christian tradition had its origin in Jesus. He also attacks the view of the form critics that the tradition was transmitted by anonymous persons. According to Gerhardsson, Christian tradition was handed down by important leaders, selected and trained for the task: Peter and the apostles. He concludes “that early Christianity took its starting point in something handed down, and, in the final analysis, something historical. Briefly expressed: it only gave an interpretation where there was something to be interpreted.”[177]
The last of the trilogy of lectures was a paper presented at a symposium on the Gospels held in Jerusalem in 1984. Gerhardsson’s lecture was published as a separate monograph, The Gospel Tradition, and reprinted in The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition.[178] In this chapter Gerhardsson focuses on the Gospel tradition within Christian tradition. His method applies phenomenological insights about the ways humans function and uses insights from the historical setting of early Christianity. In regard to the latter, he investigates early Christian tradition in relation to its Jewish mother tradition. In this investigation Gerhardsson draws a distinction between inner and outer tradition. Inner tradition he describes as animated and living; it inspires. Outer tradition, according to Gerhardsson, refers to the forms in which tradition is expressed: verbal, behavioral, institutional, and material. In Christianity’s Jewish mother tradition, inner tradition is rich and multifarious: remembering the true God, reciting the Shema. Outer tradition in Judaism takes four forms: verbal (the words of Torah), behavioral (life in Torah), institutional (social structures and hierarchy), and material (temple, synagogue, scrolls).
Gerhardsson finds a parallel in early Christianity and proceeds to discuss the Christian understanding of inner and outer tradition. Regarding inner tradition, he believes Jesus created a new tradition in the bosom of the mother tradition. Christianity was “a new tradition with an eruptive center of inner tradition which expresses itself in words and behavior.”[179] Gerhardsson reviews Christian outer tradition in reverse order, beginning with the least important form—material tradition. He believes the early Christians related to the Jewish material tradition (temple, synagogue) with freedom. The early Christians venerated the OT Scriptures, but Christian writings were not regarded as holy Scripture until later. In regard to institutional tradition, Gerhardsson notes that Jesus gathered around himself a primary group from which emerged an embryonic organization with the Twelve as leaders. As to the behavioral tradition, Jesus showed little interest in halakic minutiae, but he embraced the central mother tradition and stressed the first and greatest commandment.
Gerhardsson gives major attention to verbal tradition, the central element of early Christian tradition. He believes this kind of tradition—one first reported by eyewitnesses and handed on by faithful traditionists—is depicted in the Lukan prologue. Gerhardsson discusses the origin and character of the Christian tradition. This tradition begins, he believes, when Jesus teaches and gains adherents. Jesus teaches in parables and logoi, forms of speech Gerhardsson designates as “texts.” These “texts,” he thinks, were transmitted and memorized in much the same way as teaching and learning were practiced in Judaism. Although Jesus wrote nothing, the Gospels, according to Gerhardsson, were composed by the late 60s. He rejects the notion that each of the later gospels (particularly Luke and John) was written to replace the earlier. He seems to suppose that a fourfold gospel was envisaged early. “The written gospel of the church is a polyphonic gospel—or tetraphonic gospel.”[180] Gerhardsson concludes:
Jesus and the early Christians presented their own, new, specific message—from the eruptive center of their inner tradition—in oral forms first of all, and did so in a cultural setting where writings were never far away. This means that the transition to a stage where the oral gospel had basically become one of many books was not a superficial, technical triviality. Granted this significant change did not occur immediately when the Gospels were written (the oral tradition and the oral activity of other forms continued), something started which would have important consequences. One hundred years later the written gospels had attained the stature of holy scripture and of primary sources for the Christian message.[181]
Although Gerhardsson had investigated gospel tradition in the last lecture reviewed above, he had given little attention to actual texts. This lacuna is filled to considerable degree by his essay, “Illuminating the Kingdom: Narrative Meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels.”[182] This essay, too, had originally been presented as a paper at another symposium, this time on oral tradition, with a session in Dublin and a second in Italy in 1990. Gerhardsson’s paper was read at this second session. In the introduction he notes that Jesus taught in parables, what the Jews called “meshalim.” The parable or mashal was a short, carefully crafted “text” of two kinds: aphoristic and narrative. In this paper Gerhardsson is concerned with the latter. His overview of the material finds fifty-five narrative meshalim in the Synoptic Gospels. “Our central question is how these 55 texts have been transmitted in the period between Jesus and the evangelists.”[183]
Gerhardsson’s analysis of this material begins with some general observations. As to the location of the meshalim, they are incorporated into the composition of the story of Jesus and set in the context of Jesus’ teaching. Regarding the external details, Gerhardsson observes that the meshalim are usually short. He identifies two basic types: the similitude (comparison with a universal phenomenon) and the parable (presentation of an individual case). The purpose of the meshalim, according to Gerhardsson, is to illuminate the teaching, to make the lesson concrete, to lead the listener to understand and agree. He points out that, in general, the message of Jesus’ parables is the kingdom of God; they are not about Jesus. In comparing the parallel accounts of the same parable in the Synoptics, Gerhardsson notes variations; this indicates that the evangelists felt free to change wordings.
Gerhardsson turns to the transmission of the meshalim. He draws conclusions from the textual material preserved in the Gospels. Gerhardsson believes that this was material that was taken over: the evangelists passed on what they had received. The traditionists who transmitted the meshalim were, at the beginning, disciples of Jesus, and later, early Christian teachers. He grapples with the problem of the variability of the parables, observing that it is “very difficult to decide if a narrative mashal has been created by Jesus himself or by a disciple,” but he concludes that “the secondary meshalim are few.”[184] “The main impression our material gives us is that the teachers of the early Church have, despite their didactic freedom, treated our narrative meshalim as texts, texts susceptible of a certain reformulation but yet fixed in form.”[185] Gerhardsson also supposes that conclusions can be drawn concerning Jesus’ method of teaching. “Although not a word is said about it, this ought to mean that, according to the evangelists, Jesus had implanted the text of the mashal in the minds of its listeners; he has not just narrated it but also repeated it. Shall we guess that he narrated it four times?”[186]
Gerhardsson believes that when the Gospels were eventually written and canonized they lost their vital linguistic character. “The Synoptic narrative meshalim,” he says, “became teaching material rather than teaching tools. They no longer had the simple purpose of illuminating and making concrete one specific point in the message about the Kingdom.”[187]
Related to his work on early Christian tradition is Gerhardsson’s The Testing of God’s Son (Matt 4:1-11 & Par).[188] In this intriguing monograph he is again concerned with Jewish/Christian parallels. However, here he does not focus on the history of tradition, but on the composition of midrash—on the parallel between Jewish midrash and Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus. In the introduction he outlines the purpose of his study: to trace the origin and development of the temptation narrative and to explicate its meaning. Gerhardsson believes the two versions of the narrative, Matthew-Luke and Mark, are two versions of one tradition. He supposes (without providing much evidence) that Mark is the abbreviation of the longer and older tradition found in Matthew (not Luke).
Gerhardsson’s point of departure is his conviction that the temptation narrative is haggadicmidrash. The tempter bases his arguments on Scripture and Jesus answers with quotations from Deuteronomy 6–8. This text, according to Gerhardsson’s exegesis, relates how God had allowed his “son” (Israel) to wander in the desert for forty years so that he might be tested. The temptation account is “a narrative whose every detail bears the stamp of the late-Jewish (and early Christian) scribal tradition.”[189] It is an example of an early “Christian midrash.”
Gerhardsson proceeds to investigate the temptation narrative (Matt 4:1-11) in relation to Deuteronomy 6–8. At the outset Jesus, the Son of God, is led into the wilderness by the Spirit of God. Gerhardsson observes that, in the Judaism of the time, negative actions of God were often attributed to Satan. Thus the temptation of Jesus, like the testing of Israel, is actually a testing by God. After forty days of fasting (a motif with OT parallels), Jesus is hungry (the first temptation). This recalls the account of the wilderness wandering (Deut 8:2-6), when the people did not trust YHWH to provide food. Gerhardsson sees in this a lack of faith and the divided or hardened heart. Whereas Israel failed the test, Jesus resists the temptation and, quoting Deut 8:3, expresses his trust in “every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Gerhardsson believes the issue of the second temptation is divine protection. During the wilderness wanderings YHWH protected Israel from snakes and scorpions (Deut 8:15). Gerhardsson detects this motif throughout the OT and notes that in the exodus Yhwh bore Israel on “eagles’ wings” (Exod 19:4). He points out that the temple was the place of protection par excellence. This is expressed in Psalm 91, the very text Satan quotes—a text that, according to Gerhardsson, the rabbis associated with the wilderness wandering. He insists that πτερύγιον, the word usually translated “pinnacle,” means “wing,” and symbolizes the protective function of the temple. Satan’s temptation, according to Gerhardsson, admonishes Jesus to endanger himself by testing God’s promise of protection. Jesus replies by quoting Deut 6:16, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
In reaction to the third temptation, Jesus cites Deut 6:13, evidence that convinces Gerhardsson that the themes of Deuteronomy are still in view. He imagines that the transport of Jesus to a high mountain recalls Moses on Mount Nebo. From that high point Moses viewed the promised land—a vision that, Gerhardsson says, the rabbis understood to include the whole world. Gerhardsson also calls attention to the references to the high places that were scenes of pagan worship and idolatry. The temptation, therefore, is to seek for worldly riches (mammon) and to succumb to idolatry (the worship of Satan), a temptation Jesus soundly rejects.
In summary, Gerhardsson asks if the link between the temptation narrative and Deuteronomy 6–8 has a fundamental theme. He finds the answer in the love command of the Shema (Deut 6:5). Echoing the method of the rabbis, the narrator of the temptation account interprets the threefold command of love. In the first temptation Jesus resists the temptation of the divided heart: he loves with the whole heart. In the second he resists the temptation to protect his life: he loves with the whole soul. In the third he resists mammon: he loves with his whole might (property). Gerhardsson concludes that the narrator was an early Christian scribe with knowledge of the Scriptures and familiarity with the exegetical tactics of the Pharisees. He is convinced that “the creator of the temptation narrative must have been highly educated in the Jewish (pharisaic) learning of his time. One result of our study is the conviction that the young Christian church numbered among its ranks more that one learned ex-pharisee of the stature of Paul.”[190] In contrast to Gerhardsson’s earlier work, this book appears to call attention to the creativity of the early church, not to memorized tradition from Jesus.
Gerhardsson published two other books, not primarily concerned with tradition, that are worthy of review. His The Mighty Acts of Jesus According to Matthew is an analysis of the miracle narratives in the first Gospel.[191] In the first part of the book he investigates the Matthean accounts of the “therapeutic activity” of Jesus. Gerhardsson’s analysis attends to such matters as the persons, the places, and the diseases mentioned in Matthew’s summaries. In overview, he notes that attention is focused on Jesus as the one who performs the healings; the disciples rarely appear. Gerhardsson proceeds to review the individual pericopes in which the healing miracles of Jesus are presented. He lists a total of fourteen examples in Matthew and offers some generalizations. The descriptions of the diseases include both general accounts and specific diagnoses. As to the persons, Gerhardsson notes a variety, but observes that Jesus is always the leading actor. The principal themes include the power of Jesus and the faith of those seeking help.
Gerhardsson turns to the “non-therapeutic miracles,” which are, in his view, improperly designated “nature miracles.” He finds six clear examples in Matthew of this type of mighty deed. The personae are Jesus and, in the main, the disciples. As to the meaning of these miracles, Gerhardsson writes: “It seems to me that Matthew has seen these miraculous events as revelations, clarifying mysteries of the Reign for the disciples.”[192] Gerhardsson analyzes each of the pericopes. For example, in regard to the stilling of the storm he finds two features of the narrative to be significant: the plea of the disciples for help and their confession at the conclusion. This miracle, like all the others of this type, reveals the power of Jesus and reflects the christological interests of the narrators.
Gerhardsson draws some illuminating comparisons between the two types of miracle: The therapeutic respond to a request; the non-therapeutic are instigated by Jesus. The therapeutic are public; the non-therapeutic are faith experiences of the church. The non-therapeutic are more difficult to accept as historical and more likely to be seen as symbolic. After a discussion of the miracle texts that reflect resistance and controversy, Gerhardsson concludes, “It is obvious that the driving force behind Matthew’s interpretation and presentation of Jesus’ mighty acts is the endeavour to reach a positive understanding of the mysteries around Jesus and his exousia and the desire to teach the community about them—and not apologetic intentions.”[193]
In sum, Birger Gerhardsson’s major contribution to NT research is his innovative appraisal of early Christian tradition, an area in which his approach has enjoyed a revival.[194] However, Gerhardsson appears to have begun with a view of how rabbinic tradition was transmitted and then imposed that view on the NT texts. The question, of course, is whether Gerhardsson’s approach provides a better method for understanding the history of Jesus and early Christianity than the model offered by form criticism.[195] Gerhardsson argues that form criticism attributes too much to the Sitz-im-Leben for the creation and shaping of tradition, and it attributes too little to the role of special persons in the transmission of the tradition. One can certainly agree that much tradition goes back to Jesus, but surely not all. One can recognize the role of leaders like Peter, but some members of the Twelve are virtually “anonymous,” and what of the five hundred faceless witnesses of the resurrection? Do the Twelve really constitute an official “collegium,” in view of the evidence that the Seven broke with them and became the leaders of the more significant mission? There can be no doubt that the eyewitnesses remembered what Jesus said and did, but is it realistic to suppose that Jesus repeated the words of institution four times? There is the suggestion, notably in Mark, that the disciples didn’t even “get” it, let alone memorize it.
For all of his insightful analysis of early Christian tradition and his commendable command of the Jewish sources, Gerhardsson’s main weakness may be his failure to take the eschatological setting of early Christianity with adequate seriousness. One might quip that Jesus didn’t have time to repeat his message again and again. The sort of tradition the rabbis transmitted was for the long haul—for an extended earthly history. Jesus, it seems, thought that one should not worry about tomorrow.
Little needs to be said beyond the summaries that have been offered in this chapter in regard to the work of each of the scholars. Barrett and Dunn develop their research along the well-established lines of historical criticism. They demonstrate skill in all the major elements of the critical method: text criticism, linguistic analysis, knowledge of the context, theological sensitivity. With Dunn the observer is struck with the magnitude of his work, the tireless energy and discipline, the mastery of secondary sources. In this regard he is reminiscent of Brown and Meier. With Gerhardsson the reviewer recognizes that, even after a couple of centuries, new and imaginative hypotheses are possible. On common ground, all three of these scholars tend toward conservative conclusions—certainly when compared with the radical criticism of Bultmann, the Bultmann school (especially the Americans), and above all, the Jesus Seminar. Barrett and Dunn have a high view of biblical authority, and with Gerhardsson a new method is devised to promote the reliability of the gospel tradition. Related to this conservatism—and typical of conservative trends in the history of research—is the stress on Jewish rather than Hellenistic backgrounds. For Dunn, Paul is a champion of “covenant nomism,” and for Gerhardsson, Jesus, the disciples, and Paul appear in the garb of the rabbis. That these views would not remain unchallenged will be apparent in the following chapter.
804-4. C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (London: SPCK, 1947, repr. 1954). ↵
804-26. C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, HNTC (New York: Harper, 1957). ↵
804-32. Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 163. ↵
804-38. Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Acts, 141. ↵
804-40. Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Acts 2: xxxv. ↵
804-44. C. K. Barrett, Jesus and the Gospel Tradition (London: SPCK, 1967). ↵
804-49. Graham Stanton, “Profile: James Dunn,” EpRev 27 (2000): 28–37, at 29. ↵
804-51. Wright, “Foreword,” Jesus and Paul, xviii. ↵
804-85. See pp. 286–89 above. ↵
804-86. New Perspective, 32. ↵
804-88. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, WBC 38A; Romans 9–16, WBC 38B (Dallas: Word, 1988). ↵
804-95. See pp. 318–19 above. ↵
804-116. Theology of Paul, 24–25. ↵
804-121. See pp. 447–49 above. ↵
804-122. Theology of Paul, 729. ↵
804-125. See pp. 136–37 above. ↵
804-126. Remembering Jesus, 122. ↵
804-136. Jesus Remembered, 882. ↵
804-138. Anton Fridrichsen, The Apostle and His Message (Uppsala: Lundequist, 1947). ↵
804-141. Christopher Tuckett, “Form Criticism,” in Jesus and Memory, 21. ↵
804-159. Tradition and Transmission, 21. ↵
804-175. “The Path of Gospel Tradition,” Reliability, 59–87. ↵
804-178. Reliability, 89–143. ↵