As it stands, it seems like the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) will be dominating my reading for the New Year.
Dunn
Wright
Sanders
So if I end up sounding like E.P. Sanders or N.T. Wright or James D.G. Dunn, you’ll know why.
As a footnote, reading Paul in light of the NPP is even proving to be decisive in choosing an English Bible translation for the New Year.
Having read all three at various times I can assure you it will be a year of rich learning and discovery…and I would probably give up entirely on the TNIV!
Mark,
Yes, so far each one has a different emphasis. The TNIV and I have parted ways as my primary.
I’m curious – in what ways has the NPP influenced your choice of translations?
I haven’t looked all that deeply into it, but it seems to me that the NET might be the most favorable to a NPP reading, especially given its preference in many places for the objective genitive in regard to “pisteou Christou” type readings.
On the other hand, while the TNIV (like the NIV before it) definitely precludes a NPP reading in spots in Romans, interestingly, I’ve found it to work the most effectively of any translation when I’ve tried reading Romans through NPP lenses (though I haven’t adopted those lenses personally). I think that may be at least partly due to Fee’s influence. He’s not NPP, per se, but he has some affinities, especially given his close ties with Dunn and Wright.
Tim,
Good question. There is a sort of concordance, technical terms, if you would, going on in Paul, esp. Romans and Galatians that I tend to value. The TNIV has short changed me on that.
Well, the TNIV is more sensitive, for sure, than the NIV, as evidenced by its footnotes, and rightfully so.
TC,
It would be cool for you to do a post on your general thoughts and on Paul and then chronicle whether or not any of you opinions are changed through you reading.
Daniel,
Sounds like a great idea. But I would need to put a time limit on the matter. Perhaps after the first three months of reading. What you think? Suggestions???
If you were asking for N.T. Wright’s recommendation, he’d hand you a copy of the NRSV without a second thought.
Nothingman,
Though he objects to some of the gender choices.
I would go with NET for this year then.
Jake,
NET needs better Bibles. I struggle with the quality paper.
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In 2009 what could anyone really know about “Paul” and the times in which he lived?
It is all conjecture.
We cant even account for our own appearance here, because to do so you would have to describe how the entire Cosmic Process, with all of its space-time paradoxes, somehow coalesced into “creating” the body-mind with which you currently identify.
Nor for what happened at 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon anywhere in the world.
And yet you (they) somehow presume to “know” so much about long ago “Paul”.
John,
You assumption is clearly based on some pointless skepticism of yours, which extends to everything else.
BAH! TC, I am obviously going to be the oddball here, but while there are points of commendation with parts of the NPP, on the whole, the NPP is almost purely sociological in its reading of Paul – at the heart, it desires to make Rabinnic or Palestinian Judaism seem more palatable and therefore acceptable (which if we note rejected Jesus as the Messiah), it notes boundary markers and such, who’s in and who’s out (again, purely sociological stuff, not necessarily biblical stuff). It is suff they read INTO the text and not OUT OF the texts.
Brian,
I’ll like to know what are these “points of commendation.” For example, Sanders differ from Dunn and Dunn from Wright. What then do you mean?
Second Temple Judaism is quite instructive in understanding Paul. Our Lutheran reading of Paul is the chief problem. What the NPP does is strike that balance, though not without its faults.
How can we read Romans 3-5 and Galatians without that sociological import that you seemingly want to dismiss because of some a priori position? Those “boundary markers” are there.
More on the matter in the New Year…