Sunday, March 01, 2009

Nijay points to a forthcoming book called Paul's Parallels: An Echoes Synopsis, to be published by Continuum (T&T Clark). Amazon lists it under a slightly different title (Pauline and Pseudo-Pauline Parallels, Echoes, and Musings (amazon.com)), the Continuum site says April 2009. It sounds awesome:

PaulsParallelsPaul's Parallels is the first and only New Testament resource text in tables format presenting Paul's verses in column one, next to a row of parallels, echoes, or like-minded quotes from Old and New Testament resources as well as other extant biblical materials. The passages are cited in full.

This master of the epistolary writings, gives a verse by verse demonstration of Paul's thoughts, his ethic, and his actions that were picked-up by later Christian writers, copied by pseudo-Pauline admirers. It delineates some as distinctively Christian while others remained only in Paul's writing.

In addition, Luke's history about Paul in Acts is presented using the same format so the reader can easily cross-reference each epistle to its chronological setting. Documenting the history of Paul’s ministry in the same text allows the reader to instantly turn to the time and place in which Paul wrote that particular message. While investigating serious textual, literary, genre, and other theological characteristics, the reader has the opportunity of simultaneously locating Acts in its historical context.

But there's a catch: It is priced at $225.00! (No, the '2' on my keyboard didn't stick, that $225.00 is correct; Amazon provides some savings with a price-as-of-this-post of $163.87). I can safely say that I will never get this book, unless someone with unlimited income and kindness sends it my way, or I happen upon a really cheap used copy somewhere. I realize these are basically books targeted to libraries with budgets (though that customer base is surely shrinking) and not single-person users, for the most part. I also realize these things can be spendy to produce, but also have limited audiences. But cryin' in the night, that's spendy! Of course, if someone at Continuum/T&T Clark would like to send a review copy my way, I'd be interested. (Hey, had to try!)

 

Update (2009-03-01): I saw a comment from Michael Bird on Nijay's post referring to a similar book by Walter Wilson to be released soon. A search on Amazon informs me the title is Pauline Parallels: A Comprehensive Guide (amazon.com), published by Westminster/John Knox. This sounds relatively similar to the above book, but is priced at $32.97! And Amazon has a release of Jan 27, 2009, so that means it is available for purchase. I'd love to see a smackdown between the two titles, particularly to see if the one book is really $200 better than the other. Again, I'd consider doing the smack-down if the publishers can get copies of the books my way.

Also, please don't confuse either of these books with the similarly-named Pauline Parallels (amazon.com) by Fred O. Francis and J. Paul Sampley. That book is published by Fortress Press and puts the Pauline epistles (sans the Pastorals, sadly) in topical synopsis. It's a handy book, and it is also affordable: the new book price is $21.78; used copies from about $13 (as of this posting, anyway)! I've found Francis & Sampley's work useful. It's a great place to turn when examining one Pauline passage to see if there may be other similar Pauline passages worthy of examination.

 |  | 
Post Author: rico
Sunday, March 01, 2009 8:03:10 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) 

#     |  Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]