Kirjahaku

The letters of 1 and 2 Peter and of Jude come from a time in Christian history about which we know little; thus they represent rare voices from a crucial time in Christianity's development. And the picture of early Christianity suggested by these letters is a fascinating one.

In this clearly written introduction to the latter half of the New Testament, Lewis Donelson begins by asking, if we read this text in this way, what voices do we hear? Such a reading strategy requires historical imagination because the documents are separated from us by time, space, language, and culture. It also requires making these texts conversation partners in our understanding about God and ourselves.

Paul's influence on Christian thought has been powerful and formative. The deuteropauline epistles, attributed to but not written by Paul, were actually authored by early Christians in an attempt to apply Pauline insights to particular challenges not addressed specifically by Paul. According to Lewis Donelson, this rearticulation and reinterpretation of Pauline wisdom served these early communities by linking them more closely to their apostolic roots. It also provided them with a living gospel that had continuing relevance for their particular time and place.Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.

By employing analyses of the literary structure of ancient pseudepigraphical letters and of the logical structure of ethical argument, Lewis R. Donelson discovers in the Pastoral Epistles a consistent theological ethic which has cosmological and cultic grounding. First, an investigation of Greco-Roman religious pseudepigraphical letters identifies those literary patterns which determine the form of argumentation in the Pastoral Epistles. Second, an investigation of the structure of ethical argument produces categories for organizing and analyzing the apparently disorganized arguments in these letters. Finally, this study concludes that the author of the Pastoral Epistles builds a coherent theological ethic by falsifying Pauline history and by grounding his ethical warrants in church officers."Donelson has made important contributions to unraveling the mystery of these three small epistles, which bear the name of Paul ..."Robert J. Karries in Journal of Biblical Literature, Dec. 1988, 558ff."Dr. L.R. Donelson has written an interesting and potentially fruitful study of the Pastoral Epistles ..."Anthony Hanson in The Expository Times 12 (1986)"Insgesamt ist die vorgestellte Arbeit uneingeschränkt zu begrüßen. Sie ermöglicht einen gut fundierten hermeneutischen Ansatz für das Verständnis der Past und läßt diesen drei Briefen zugleich eine gerechte sachliche Beurteilung zukommen."Eckart Reinmuth in TLZ 7 (1990), S. 508