What do you think?
Rate this book
The State of Pauline Studies: A Survey of Recent Research
In every generation, the study of Paul evolves with new insights and questions. This enigmatic ancient figure continues to ignite interesting conversations and vigorous debates.
Complementing the successful The State of New Testament Studies, this book surveys the current landscape of Pauline studies, offering readers a concise guide to contemporary discussions in Pauline scholarship. It brings together a diverse team of leading scholars, providing up-to-date, expert analysis on important issues in Pauline studies, such as Christology, salvation, the Spirit, gender, and empire. In addition, each of the Pauline letters is examined in detail.
This book will serve as an ideal supplemental textbook for Paul courses. Contributors include Ben Blackwell, Dennis Edwards, Timothy Gombis, John Goodrich, Nijay K. Gupta, Erin Heim, Chris Hoklotubbe, Joshua Jipp, Scot McKnight, Peter Oakes, B. J. Oropeza, Angela Parker, Kris Song, Jennifer Strawbridge, Sydney Tooth, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Kent Yinger.
Complementing the successful The State of New Testament Studies, this book surveys the current landscape of Pauline studies, offering readers a concise guide to contemporary discussions in Pauline scholarship. It brings together a diverse team of leading scholars, providing up-to-date, expert analysis on important issues in Pauline studies, such as Christology, salvation, the Spirit, gender, and empire. In addition, each of the Pauline letters is examined in detail.
This book will serve as an ideal supplemental textbook for Paul courses. Contributors include Ben Blackwell, Dennis Edwards, Timothy Gombis, John Goodrich, Nijay K. Gupta, Erin Heim, Chris Hoklotubbe, Joshua Jipp, Scot McKnight, Peter Oakes, B. J. Oropeza, Angela Parker, Kris Song, Jennifer Strawbridge, Sydney Tooth, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Kent Yinger.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2024
9 people are currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Nijay K. Gupta
47 books198 followersNijay K. Gupta is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He has written or edited more than twenty books and has published dozens of academic articles. He is an award-winning researcher and a member of the Society of New Testament Studies.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 15, 2025
Bad. Probably a useful reference, tho.
August 23, 2024
For those of us who identify as Christian, I think it's likely true that there are those biblical figures with whom we identify, with whom we are furious, with whom we don't particularly identify, and those with whom we simply want to learn more.
Paul is, I think, one of the most intriguing figures in Scripture. "The State of Pauline Studies: A Survey of Recent Research" surveys the current landscape of Pauline studies and offers readers a surprisingly clear, concise, and engaging guide to contemporary discussions in Pauline scholarship.
Scholars such as Scott McKnight, Nijay K. Gupta, Ben Blackwell, Dennis Edwards, Timothy Gombis, John Goodrich, Erin Heim, Joshua Jipp, Angela Parker, Kris Song, Jennifer Strawbridge, Sydney Tooth, Chris Hoklotubbe, B.J. Oropeza, Peter Oakes, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Kent Yinger provide remarkably diverse perspectives on Christology, salvation, the Spirit, gender, and empire. Beyond this, they go into each of the Pauline letters in detail - often beginning with whether current research would indicate they really are Pauline letters.
"The State of Pauline Studies," it should be obvious, really isn't for the casual reader. It's for those who want to dig deeper, study more comprehensively, and/or for those in seminary, teaching settings, or pastoral settings. A basic knowledge of Paul is likely essential along with a basic knowledge of theological terms. As a seminary graduate, I was fine. However, I could also easily see someone being confused by the material without a fundamental background in theology.
For those with that basic knowledge, "The State of Pauline Studies" is a terrific place to begin the deeper dive. If you're like me (You're probably not, I'm a weirdo.), you'll likely find yourself taking the hundreds of resources offered here and diving even deeper after finishing the book. What "The State of Pauline Studies" does really well is encourage a truly deeper dive into these remarkable professors, theologians, researchers, and scholars.
Paul is a fascinating figure and "The State of Pauline Studies" really captures that quite briliantly in a myriad of ways. Utilizing diverse voices and contemporary approaches, "The State of Pauline Studies" is a book that informs, inspires, and challenges from beginning to end. It's a perfect seminary companion and practically a must-read for anyone wanting to better understand Pauline studies.
Paul is, I think, one of the most intriguing figures in Scripture. "The State of Pauline Studies: A Survey of Recent Research" surveys the current landscape of Pauline studies and offers readers a surprisingly clear, concise, and engaging guide to contemporary discussions in Pauline scholarship.
Scholars such as Scott McKnight, Nijay K. Gupta, Ben Blackwell, Dennis Edwards, Timothy Gombis, John Goodrich, Erin Heim, Joshua Jipp, Angela Parker, Kris Song, Jennifer Strawbridge, Sydney Tooth, Chris Hoklotubbe, B.J. Oropeza, Peter Oakes, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Kent Yinger provide remarkably diverse perspectives on Christology, salvation, the Spirit, gender, and empire. Beyond this, they go into each of the Pauline letters in detail - often beginning with whether current research would indicate they really are Pauline letters.
"The State of Pauline Studies," it should be obvious, really isn't for the casual reader. It's for those who want to dig deeper, study more comprehensively, and/or for those in seminary, teaching settings, or pastoral settings. A basic knowledge of Paul is likely essential along with a basic knowledge of theological terms. As a seminary graduate, I was fine. However, I could also easily see someone being confused by the material without a fundamental background in theology.
For those with that basic knowledge, "The State of Pauline Studies" is a terrific place to begin the deeper dive. If you're like me (You're probably not, I'm a weirdo.), you'll likely find yourself taking the hundreds of resources offered here and diving even deeper after finishing the book. What "The State of Pauline Studies" does really well is encourage a truly deeper dive into these remarkable professors, theologians, researchers, and scholars.
Paul is a fascinating figure and "The State of Pauline Studies" really captures that quite briliantly in a myriad of ways. Utilizing diverse voices and contemporary approaches, "The State of Pauline Studies" is a book that informs, inspires, and challenges from beginning to end. It's a perfect seminary companion and practically a must-read for anyone wanting to better understand Pauline studies.
April 11, 2025
This was a pretty good read. Not some thing I would pick up on my own, but I did enjoy the various contributors exploring the current issues in Pauline studies.
May 13, 2025
The title is accurate and it’s a good overview. If you’re into this sort of thing, it’s no doubt a good starting point. If you’re not (like me) it’s a drag.
June 27, 2025
This book accomplishes, in many ways, what it sets out to do. This edited volume serves as a companion text to the more wide-ranging The State of New Testament Studies. The editors of that work, still McKnight and Gupta, noticed “a clear gap: the Pauline texts were not covered in depth due to space limitations” (1). The first half of the book covers major Pauline topics—the Messiah, Judaism, salvation, the Spirit, gender, empire, and approaches to Paul from feminist, postcolonial, and womanist angles. The second half of the book walks through each letter (or set of letters) in Paul to survey major advances in research and subjects of conversation. The authors also offer reflections on these findings. While any edited volume is a mixed bag, some major themes emerge, coinciding with the original topics surveyed broadly in part one of the book.
This work helpfully orients readers of Paul to the academic conversations of the last several decades, even situating those conversations into the broader contours of research over the last several centuries. Overall, I think that reading a work like this would help aspiring researchers (and pastors as well with the right mindset—namely, I want to contribute through preaching and teaching on debated issues) find areas of interest and “homes” within the scholarly world. While I think overspecialization is certainly a danger (see below), there is an equal and opposite problem of not really advancing the conversation in substantive ways.
I found several research trends of research encouraging. First, the authorship debates over the “disputed letters” have seemed to pendulum swing back to, if not a complete return to Pauline authorship, at least a lack of certainty about Paul’s involvement in these letters. For example, T. Christopher Hoklotubbe writes of 1–2 Timothy and Titus, “The truth of the matter is that the evidence is ambiguous and fragmentary, and our criteria and methods for determining authenticity are subjective” (299). Another encouraging element is seeing at least an acknowledgment of an over-specialization problem. John Goodrich writes on 1 Corinthians, “monographs have, regrettably, become increasingly narrow. As is well known, this much is true across biblical scholarship,” and he prescribes a solution, “What is needed are more publications outside the commentary genre that emphasize synthesis and holistic reading” (183). Timothy G. Gombis notes a similar phenomenon in Ephesians by noting how many pastors preach and teach from Ephesians, and that “the tides of scholarship are catching up to the wisdom of the church” (248). If scholarship followed Goodrich’s encouragement, and also did theology from and for the church, I believe academic research would once again become compelling and edifying for the church, rather than an exercise in navel-gazing inside an echo chamber.
The most discouraging piece of this work comes in the framing of “diversity” in research as a desired goal. For example, Jennifer Strawbridge writes of research in Romans, “The desire for more diversity in the field is still wanting, but the increased prominence of new approaches and greater access to resources is encouraging” (162). In Philippians, Nijay K. Gupta comments similarly, “Much can be learned and gained through understanding readings of Philippians from long ago and far away, and also from the neighborhood down the street or across the train tracks” (263). This type of thinking—assuming a secret knowledge rooted in background, experience, or ethnicity—is completely unnecessary. Acknowledging that someone who is different from you might approach the text from a different angle is excellent, but assuming that they can see things in the text that you cannot is dangerous.
An area of advance in scholarship that I am still debating whether it is good or bad is the “noticeable trend…away from either/or arguments to more complex both/and approaches,” which proves true in B. J. Oropeza’s summary of 2 Corinthians but also features in other books as well (202). Is this dialectic move toward synthesis an act of humility or a compromising of conviction?
So, overall, I think this is a helpful research for someone interested in Paul, but I think that some of the desired emphasis is a waste of time and focus, giving into the spirit of the age under the guise of "professional" research.
This work helpfully orients readers of Paul to the academic conversations of the last several decades, even situating those conversations into the broader contours of research over the last several centuries. Overall, I think that reading a work like this would help aspiring researchers (and pastors as well with the right mindset—namely, I want to contribute through preaching and teaching on debated issues) find areas of interest and “homes” within the scholarly world. While I think overspecialization is certainly a danger (see below), there is an equal and opposite problem of not really advancing the conversation in substantive ways.
I found several research trends of research encouraging. First, the authorship debates over the “disputed letters” have seemed to pendulum swing back to, if not a complete return to Pauline authorship, at least a lack of certainty about Paul’s involvement in these letters. For example, T. Christopher Hoklotubbe writes of 1–2 Timothy and Titus, “The truth of the matter is that the evidence is ambiguous and fragmentary, and our criteria and methods for determining authenticity are subjective” (299). Another encouraging element is seeing at least an acknowledgment of an over-specialization problem. John Goodrich writes on 1 Corinthians, “monographs have, regrettably, become increasingly narrow. As is well known, this much is true across biblical scholarship,” and he prescribes a solution, “What is needed are more publications outside the commentary genre that emphasize synthesis and holistic reading” (183). Timothy G. Gombis notes a similar phenomenon in Ephesians by noting how many pastors preach and teach from Ephesians, and that “the tides of scholarship are catching up to the wisdom of the church” (248). If scholarship followed Goodrich’s encouragement, and also did theology from and for the church, I believe academic research would once again become compelling and edifying for the church, rather than an exercise in navel-gazing inside an echo chamber.
The most discouraging piece of this work comes in the framing of “diversity” in research as a desired goal. For example, Jennifer Strawbridge writes of research in Romans, “The desire for more diversity in the field is still wanting, but the increased prominence of new approaches and greater access to resources is encouraging” (162). In Philippians, Nijay K. Gupta comments similarly, “Much can be learned and gained through understanding readings of Philippians from long ago and far away, and also from the neighborhood down the street or across the train tracks” (263). This type of thinking—assuming a secret knowledge rooted in background, experience, or ethnicity—is completely unnecessary. Acknowledging that someone who is different from you might approach the text from a different angle is excellent, but assuming that they can see things in the text that you cannot is dangerous.
An area of advance in scholarship that I am still debating whether it is good or bad is the “noticeable trend…away from either/or arguments to more complex both/and approaches,” which proves true in B. J. Oropeza’s summary of 2 Corinthians but also features in other books as well (202). Is this dialectic move toward synthesis an act of humility or a compromising of conviction?
So, overall, I think this is a helpful research for someone interested in Paul, but I think that some of the desired emphasis is a waste of time and focus, giving into the spirit of the age under the guise of "professional" research.
September 4, 2024
With almost 1500 footnotes and with more than half the text of the book devoted to notes and bibliographies this is a serious work of scholarship. It sets out to survey the field of Pauline studies and it delivers what it promises. But even then, in places the book acknowledges that it has to break off and summarise themes which would otherwise take it beyond its scope.
One of the strengths of the book is that it provides a set of themed essays on broad generic ‘Pauline issues’ and then it also provides a detailed epistle by epistle analysis of the major themes and sets of issues which are raised in each document. This makes it an extremely useful resource for students or wider readers, regardless of how broad or specific their interests might be.
Unsurprisingly, given wider contemporary sociological interests, issues of gender and social justice feature heavily in several places. Similarly, unsurprisingly given developments in ecumenism, the denominational apologetics and doctrinal disagreements of former generations are largely marked by their absence. The epistle to the Romans still prompts contemporary engagement with themes of righteousness (of course!) but that is now just one theme among many others which are stirring academic interest.
Despite the persistent academic overtones throughout the book, it remained (surprisingly) readable with some engaging turns of phrase. For example, Thessalonians is introduced as ‘like the oddball cousins at a family reunion’ due to the fact those letters have links and relationships to the wider Pauline corpus, but they also raise some very distinctive questions of how they fit in.
Overall, this is a set of essays which will be appreciated most by readers who have a prior theological background or expertise, and are looking to deepen an already existing knowledge base by engaging with the most recent developments in the field.
(These are honest comments based on a digital ARC (Advanced Review Copy) version of the text).
One of the strengths of the book is that it provides a set of themed essays on broad generic ‘Pauline issues’ and then it also provides a detailed epistle by epistle analysis of the major themes and sets of issues which are raised in each document. This makes it an extremely useful resource for students or wider readers, regardless of how broad or specific their interests might be.
Unsurprisingly, given wider contemporary sociological interests, issues of gender and social justice feature heavily in several places. Similarly, unsurprisingly given developments in ecumenism, the denominational apologetics and doctrinal disagreements of former generations are largely marked by their absence. The epistle to the Romans still prompts contemporary engagement with themes of righteousness (of course!) but that is now just one theme among many others which are stirring academic interest.
Despite the persistent academic overtones throughout the book, it remained (surprisingly) readable with some engaging turns of phrase. For example, Thessalonians is introduced as ‘like the oddball cousins at a family reunion’ due to the fact those letters have links and relationships to the wider Pauline corpus, but they also raise some very distinctive questions of how they fit in.
Overall, this is a set of essays which will be appreciated most by readers who have a prior theological background or expertise, and are looking to deepen an already existing knowledge base by engaging with the most recent developments in the field.
(These are honest comments based on a digital ARC (Advanced Review Copy) version of the text).
January 1, 2025
This book is a very insightful look at modern day theological work on Paul’s letters. The way it uses multiple authors who have expertise in each letter to summarize the work going on to understand historical and new interpretations of each work of Paul is a fantastic approach that offers a lot of insight. As someone not formally educated in theology, I thought this book particularly excelled in demonstrating how each author approaches modern day theological challenges and their approach to analyzing them through the lens of scripture.
One slight negative aspect to this was, at least in my view, a non-obvious look at how each state of study differed for certain denominations. It would have been helpful to see the slight differences and how the authors approached the total comprehensive look at the interpretation.
Highly recommend this book and look forward to the other parts of this series.
One slight negative aspect to this was, at least in my view, a non-obvious look at how each state of study differed for certain denominations. It would have been helpful to see the slight differences and how the authors approached the total comprehensive look at the interpretation.
Highly recommend this book and look forward to the other parts of this series.
August 17, 2024
[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
4.5 stars - I loved it!
Wow! This was fantastic. Each article is a lit review of it's topic - either Paul and an area of study or a specific letter attached to him - with tons of citations so readers can dig deeper. I was fascinated by all of the research. I think this would be a great resource for pastors and instructors looking for a one-stop shop to see what some of the current thinking is in Biblical studies. I am looking forward to picking up a print copy and digging into this again. This is part of a collection - The State of New Testament Studies, already available, and then The State of Old Testament Studies releasing later this year. I plan to read them all. Highly recommend!
4.5 stars - I loved it!
Wow! This was fantastic. Each article is a lit review of it's topic - either Paul and an area of study or a specific letter attached to him - with tons of citations so readers can dig deeper. I was fascinated by all of the research. I think this would be a great resource for pastors and instructors looking for a one-stop shop to see what some of the current thinking is in Biblical studies. I am looking forward to picking up a print copy and digging into this again. This is part of a collection - The State of New Testament Studies, already available, and then The State of Old Testament Studies releasing later this year. I plan to read them all. Highly recommend!
December 31, 2024
If you need an up-to-date map of the territory, this one is pretty good.
July 25, 2025
mostly eh unless you are an avid postcolonialist.
August 27, 2025
Accomplishes its purpose in sharing a modern look at Pauline studies and the many varieties of scholarship.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews