Daily Gleanings: RBL (3 July 2019)

In the Review of Biblical Literature, Gordon Zerbe reviews Fiona Gregson’s, Everything in Common? The Theology and Practice of the Sharing of Possessions in Community in the New Testament (Wipf & Stock, 2017). According to Zerbe,

Gregson’s first stated interest is to discern common themes that occur across diverse examples and genres. A second core concern is to see how “the Christian theology and practice of sharing possessions in the NT texts” differs from similar examples in the surrounding culture. (1)

Zerbe’s primary evaluation is that

This book will be useful for Christian scholars and practitioners who are looking for a synthesized New Testament theology of sharing possessions in community. Disappointing to others may be the overtly apologetic and piecemeal (and not mainly illustrative) use of comparative materials, in search of finding how “the NT is consistently different from its surrounding contexts.” Others may find the choice of New Testament materials for investigation somewhat arbitrary or inconsistent. (4)

For the full review, see RBL‘s website.

---

In the Review of Biblical Literature, Jonathan Hicks reviews Jason Maston and Benjamin E. Reynolds’s edited volume, Anthropology and New Testament Theology (Bloomsbury, 2018).

According to Hicks, the volume tries to answer both the question of the New Testament’s teaching about humanity and the implications of this teaching for “decisions we make now regarding the right performance of a human life” (1). The volume includes contributions that address the New Testament’s anthropological context, traces human identity as sketched in various New Testament corpora, and concludes by “assisting readers to see how the volume’s contents might be brought into conversation with other disciplines/issues” (1).

Hicks’s main critique is that “more clarity is needed on how to move from the exploration of New Testament texts to the applicative sense of those texts for contemporary anthropological debates” (6). But overall, he finds the volume a helpful beginning to further discussion (6–7).

For Hicks’s full review, see RBL‘s website.