Overview

This book presents a completely new, and much more vivid and dramatic account of the life of Paul than ever previously attempted. From his childhood in Taursus and his years as a student in Jerusalem, to the successes and failures of his ministry, this biography has no peer in terms of its detailed reconstructions of his movements and motives . Traditionally the Acts of the Apostles has provided the framework for lives of Paul. In recent years, however, the historical value of the Acts has been called into question. Despite the accuracy of many details, they have been linked in ways which reflect the interests of Luke rather than objective reality. Critical assessment is called for it they are to be incorporated into a life of Paul. The prime source for a reconstruction of the apostle's life must be his own writings, and recent advances in the study of the letters, notably rhetorical and epistolary criticism, have brought to light new depths which facilitate their exploitation for biographical purposes. This book is intended for scholars and students of religious studies; interested general readers.

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9780198267492

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Reviews

A dry historical tome that would be more aptly titled Paul: A Cultural History. The difficulties of doing ancient biography are compounded when one of the two major sources available is believed to be historically unreliable and corrupt. One of New Testament scholar Murphy-O'Connor's primary objectives is to demonstrate why Luke's account of Paul's life, contained in the Book of Acts, is an inaccurate basis for biography. Point well taken, but where to go from there? The author relies heavily on Paul's own letters, but the portrait available from them is incomplete at best. Paul revealed relatively little about his personal life, preferring to call attention to his mission. Some surprising hypotheses do emerge from this work. First, Murphy-O'Connor conjectures that Paul was not a bachelor, but a widower who had lost his family in some sort of tragedy. The psychological evidence for this is slim, and the historical evidence is nonexistent. Much stronger are the author's deductions about the letters themselves; he makes an excellent case for 2 Thessalonians as a genuine Pauline letter, a minority opinion among New Testament scholars. He also challenges Rome as the traditional site of Paul's imprisonment and demonstrates why Ephesus was a far more logical locale. The primary contribution of the book is not that it is a biography of Paul, but that it opens the door to Paul's world through geography, Roman history, and Jewish-Christian conflict. Unfortunately, the prose is mired in academic passivity and such dense phrases as abstracting from the spurious clarity of the philological argument. The book is so weighed down with cultural history that there is relatively little about Paul himself, and what there is seems to be mostly speculation. Acts, though historically imprecise, makes for a much better story. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor is Professor of the New Testament at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, Jerusalem. He is a world expert on Paul, and a contributor both to the Oxford Companion to the Bible, and the forthcoming Oxford Bible Commentary.

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