Paul: A Critical Life
- Book Review,
by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor
From Publishers Weekly
The foundations of many of the central doctrines of Christianity, such as original sin and justification by faith, can be traced to the letters of Paul of Tarsus. While the third-person historical narratives of the book of Acts describe Paul's dramatic conversion from the persecutor of the early followers of Jesus to tireless proselytizer for the Christian faith, his letters intimately reveal the psychological and spiritual complexities of Paul's character. Using historical and literary criticism, Murphy-O'Connor (The Holy Land) draws his account of Paul's life and work primarily from Paul's letters. After an opening section in which he establishes the chronology of Paul's life and ministry, the author then explores Paul's early life and religious training and its contribution to an understanding of his life and work. Murphy-O'Connor devotes the major portion of his study to an exploration of the ways in which Paul's life and theology intersect in his letters. Lucid prose and exhaustive coverage make this biography the standard by which future lives of Paul will be measured. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Murphy-O'Connor, a professor of New Testament studies who teaches in Jerusalem, has written an important scholarly biography of Paul based on an extensive analysis of his letters rather than on Luke's Acts of the Apostles, as is traditionally done. The first chapter of the book, "The Chronological Framework," compares evidence from the Pauline corpus with that of Luke's Acts and extant extrabiblical archaeological evidence, enabling Murphy-O'Connor to postulate a more precisely delimited chronology for Paul's entire life than does Gunther Bornkamm's Paul (1971). The remaining 13 chapters, based on information extracted from the authentic Pauline letters, discuss in more detail specific events in Paul's life. One problem with this methodology is that of pure speculation due to the nature of the sources and the occasional lack of confirming extra-biblical evidence. In addition to Paul's biography, Murphy-O'Connor also treats the development in Paul's theological thought. Recommended for academic libraries.?Pius Murray, Holy Apostles Coll. & Seminary, Cromwell, Ct.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Less a critical biography than an exhaustive historical contextualization of Paul's life, this work draws on a range of sources and extends to a level of detail that is likely to prove daunting for many general readers. But Paul's indisputable importance in determining the shape and direction of Christianity will ensure more than a scholarly audience. Murphy-O'Connor's decision to give biographical, chronological, and historical data in Paul's letters precedence over Luke's account in Acts recasts the picture most familiar to both general and scholarly audiences. His thorough examination of rabbinic sources and both ancient and modern geographic and historic sources results in a richly textured picture of the multicultural Greco-Roman world in which Paul lived and worked. Combined with a close reading of Paul's writing and the writing of his students, that picture makes a significant contribution to understanding Paul as both producer and product of the communities with which he has long been identified. Steve Schroeder
From Kirkus 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. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Traditionally the Acts of the Apostles has provided the framework for biographies of the Apostle Paul. In recent years, however, the historical value of the Acts has come into question. Many scholars argue that, despite the accuracy of many details, the text as a whole reflects the interests of Luke rather than objective reality. This book presents a completely new, and much more vivid and dramatic, account of the life of Paul than any before. While continuing to give consideration to the Acts, Murphy-O'Connor reconstructs the apostle's life--from his childhood in Taursus and his years as a student in Jerusalem, to the successes and failures of his ministry--from his own writings. Reinforcing his critical analysis of Paul's letters with close attention to archaeology and contemporary texts, Murphy-O'Connor not only charts Paul's movements, but extracts a new understanding of his motives and the social and cultural aspects of his ministry. Most important of all, this biography transforms a fountain of theological ideas into a human being.
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