T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint, ed. James K. Aitken (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015; Paperback, 2025)
This volume for specialists and non-specialists alike serves as an introduction to the Septuagint (LXX) in general and each individual LXX book in particular. Its goal is to provide the present state of knowledge of the LXX from thirty-six contributors from diverse perspectives in Septuagintal studies, especially from a younger generation of scholars, and to chart future paths of investigation in the subject area.
It is arranged as follows: a “Preface” (ix–x), a list of “Abbreviations” (xi–xx), “List of Contributors” (xxi–xxvi), a “Glossary” (xxvii–xxx), an “Introduction” (1–12), an introduction to and discussion of all LXX books (13–567), and an “Index of Biblical References,” (568–92).
In the “Introduction,” Aitken provides a concise introduction to the LXX. In the process, he highlights that “no one Septuagint” existed in antiquity (1). He discusses: how the LXX came to be, its various translations, the provenance(s) of its translators, the importance of the LXX for the study of the Bible, the text and manuscripts of the LXX, editions and modern translations of the LXX, and finally tools for those who wish to learn more.
For the most part, the remainder of the volume consists of a book-by-book survey of the LXX: “Genesis” (13–28), “Exodus” (29–42), “Leviticus” (43–57), “Numbers” (58–67), “Deuteronomy” (68–85), “Joshua” (86–101), “Judges” (102–17), “Ruth” (118–26), “1–2 Kingdoms (1–2 Samuel)” (127–46), “3–4 Kingdoms (1–2 Kings)” (147–66), “1–2 Chronicles” (167–77), “1 Esdras” (178–94), “2 Esdras” (195–202), “Esther and Additions to Esther” (203–21), “Judith” (222–36), “Tobit” (237–60), “1 Maccabees” (261–72), “2 Maccabees” (273–91), “3 Maccabees” (292–305), “4 Maccabees” (306–19), “Psalms” (320–34), “Prayer of Manasseh” (335–40), “Proverbs” (341–55), “Ecclesiastes” (356–69), “Canticles (Song of Songs)” (370–84), “Job” (385–400), “Wisdom of Solomon” (401–9), “Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)” (410–24), “Psalms of Solomon” (425–37), “The Minor Prophets” (438–55), “Isaiah” (456–68), “Jeremiah” (469–86), “Baruch” (487–99), “Lamentations” (500–19), “Epistle of Jeremiah” (520–27), “Ezekiel” (528–43), “Daniel” (544–54), and “The Additions to Daniel” (555–67).
Each of these chapters is structured similarly. Its author begins by providing critical editions and translations of the book in question. Then, he or she discusses the following areas of Septuagintal research associated with it: the book’s (or books’) General Characteristics, Time and Place of Composition, Language, Translation and Composition, Key Text-Critical Issues, Ideology and Exegesis, and Reception History. The last portion of every chapter contains a helpful Bibliography for those who wish to learn more about the book (or books’) in question.
To provide an example, I highlight the chapter on the Psalms, the most quoted LXX book by the authors of the New Testament. This chapter is by James Aitken who notes that the date for the Greek translation of the Psalter is unknown, but it appears to have occurred during the second century BC (320–23). He contends that one must not think of one edition of the Psalter in antiquity because the LXX (as well as one of the scrolls from Qumran) attest to an additional psalm, Psalm 151, which is no found in the Masoretic text that stands behind most modern Old Testament translations (321; for more on the Masoretic text, click here). The location whence the Greek Psalter was produced is uncertain. While some have suggested that it was translated in Palestine, linguistic evidence supports an Egyptian provenance (322–23). Some language of the LXX Psalms, especially the term used to describe God as “Deliverer” (ἀντιλήμπτωρ), seems to derive from the administrative realm of Ptolemaic Egypt and to reflect the common spoken language of the day (324).
The translation of the Greek Psalter appears to be the work of a single translator who followed his Hebrew source text closely. There are some modifications, which are theological such as the translator tended to avoid acknowledging the existence of any other god than the One God of Israel. For example, the translator rendered the Hebrew of Psalm 8:6 [8:5 in our English translations], which reads, “You have made him [a son of man or a human] a little lower than the gods (אֱלֹהִים; elohim), as, “You made him a little lower than angels” (ἀγγέλους) (325). The ancient manuscripts of the Psalter attests to much diversity among them. One scroll from Qumran, 11QPsa, includes Psalm 151, like the LXX (for more on 11QPsa and Psalm 151, click here). However, the individual psalms of this scroll are arranged differently than in the Greek Psalter and even includes other non-canonical psalms. Other Psalm manuscripts from Qumran differ from the LXX Psalms and the Masoretic text of the Psalter. What is more, the headings of the psalms differ among the Masoretic text, the Psalms manuscripts from Qumran, and the LXX Psalms. Finally, Aitken goes on to discuss the various proposals about the exegetical character of the Greek Psalter and its reception among Second Temple Jews and early Christians (327–30).
In short, the T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint, especially in its new paperback edition,is an indispensable tool for anyone conducting research on the LXX. Its book-by-book approach with bibliographies for further reading makes it very efficient for research, especially for non-Septuagintal specialists. Therefore, I highly recommend that, if possible, this work becomes part of your library!
I am grateful to T&T Clark Bloomsbury for this gratis copy, which in no way influenced by review.
The Greek New Testament, 6th rev. ed., eds. Hugh Houghton, Christos Karakolis, David Parker, Stephen Pisano, Holger Strutwolf, David Trobisch, and Klaus Wachtel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2025)
This sixth revised edition of the Greek New Testament (NT) (UBS6) is for the United Bible Societies and thus for the use of translators and students of the Greek NT. Its text is identical to the forthcoming Nestle-Aland 29th edition and the main difference between the two editions is that the UBS6 has only variation units the editors have deemed “necessary” for the understanding, revising, and translating of the NT. The committee has revised the new volume from feedback of translators who used UBS5, from new textual discoveries, and from revisions to the editorial text of the NT in the newest and ongoing critical edition, the Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior (ECM) (for more on this project and how it relates to the UBS6, see my former post here). Since the ECM volumes published to date are on St. Mark’s Gospel (2021), the Acts of the Apostles (2017), the Catholic Epistles (2013), and Revelation (2024), the changes to the Greek editorial text of UBS6 relates to these books.
This new edition witnesses six major alterations. First, the editors have revised the order of the NT books to reflect their sequence in Codex Vaticanius and Codex Alexandrinus (for more information, see my former post here). Thus, the UBS6 books are ordered as follows: the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Catholic Epistles (less Hebrews), the Pauline Corpus (with Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians), and Revelation.
Second, after reviewing every variation unit in UBS5, the committee was convinced of the need to pay “greater attention” to the Byzantine tradition, including the Textus Receptus, which stands behind the translation of the King James Bible (VIII).[1]
Third, the editors have revised the presentation of witnesses in the textual apparatus in five ways. One, they have adopted numerical sigla for Greek manuscripts. Therefore, Codex Sinaiticus is no longer represented by the Hebrew letter א but by the number 01. Two, they no longer cite individual lectionaries. Three, the editors have updated early translations of the NT to reflect the most recent research. For example, the textual apparatus separates the Christian Palestinian Aramaic witnesses from the Syriac tradition and treats them as separate. Four, the editors have reduced the number of citations to early Church Fathers, especially those who did not compose in Greek. And, five, they have reduced the number of manuscripts of Pauline letters based on the textual analysis reflected in the series Text und Tertwert der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments. The result of these changes is that the textual apparatus is smaller, compact, and not as unwieldy as it was in the UBS5. If the reader wishes to explore more textual witnesses, he or she can access them in the printed volumes of the ECM.
Fourth, the committee has removed references to modern translations of the NT, the Discourse Segmentation apparatus, the Cross-Reference apparatus, the Index of Allusions and Parallels, and the List of Alternative Readings, all of which were features of UBS5.
Fifth, the editors have rewritten the Introduction. And, finally, the committee has reexamined each variation unit redefining the confidence rating of each unit and sometimes changing it (In addition to the UBS6, one of the editors, Hugh Houghton, has prepared a new Textual Commentary on the UBS6. For more information, see my former post here).
The UBS6 is divided into seven parts. In the first part, the “Preface” (VII–X), the committee details the abovementioned changes. The second, the “Introduction” (1*–51*), contains a discussion of the history and background of the Greek NT (1*–9*), the Editorial Text of the UBS6 (9*–12*), its Textual Apparatus (12*–22*), its List of Witnesses (22*–46*), its Biblical Abbreviations (47*), and a Select Bibliography (48*–51*).
The third portion, the “Text and Apparatus” (1–619), is the bulk the UBS6 and consists of the editorial text and variation units. In the fourth part, the “List of Textual Changes Between the Fifth and Sixth Editions” of the UBS (621–26), the committee has provided the list of textual changes from the UBS5 to UBS6. For example, the phrase “Son of God” no longer remains in brackets in Mark 1:1:
UBS5
UBS6
Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [υἱοῦ θεοῦ]
Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦθεοῦ
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah, [the Son of God]”
“The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God”
This change, however, does not mean that the editors believe υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ to be part of the earliest reconstruct-able text, for they give this variation unit a C rating, which means “The Committee is doubtful about this reconstruction of the text” (13*).
The fifth part of the UBS6, the “Index of Quotations” (627–33), consists of a list of Old Testament (OT) quotations in order of their appearance in the OT (627–30) and NT (630–33). In the sixth portion, “Principal Symbols and Abbreviations” (634–36), the editors have provided a legend for the various symbols and abbreviations found in UBS6 and like previous editions, they also have given the reader an indispensable insert with these data (as well as the Greek manuscripts cited in the Textual Apparatus). The last part of the UBS6, “Maps” (637–38), consists of two maps: one of the eastern Mediterranean world in the time that the NT was being composed and another of Palestine during the same time period.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the UBS6’s look has been altered from the UBS5 with cleaner, clearer, and crisper fonts on the cover and with the Greek text itself.
This new edition of the UBS6 is a huge improvement from the UBS5 not only in appearance but also in content and layout. It is slender—the revision of the textual apparatus and the omissions of certain unnecessary features of the UBS5 has trimmed over two hundred pages of text—and it is well bound with a durable hard cover.
What is more, I praise the decision to rearrange the NT books to bring it in line with the Church’s Textual Tradition because it reminds readers that most of our interpretations have a long pedigree and that we stand on the shoulders of giant interpreters, the Church Fathers and Doctors.
Granted, some scholars will no doubt find fault with some of the decisions, especially related to the re-rating of the variation units, but, all in all, the UBS6 editorial team has produced an excellent work that will benefit the people for whom they have prepared their editorial text: clergy, beginning students of the Greek NT, and translators of the NT: Bravo, editors! Therefore, buy a copy now, either from Hendrickson Publishers (which is cheaper!!!) or on Amazon.
I am grateful to Hendrickson Publishers for the advanced gratis copy of the UBS6, which is no way influenced by review it.
[1] For a discussion of the Textus Receptus, see https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/textus-receptus.
Richard Bauckham, Who is God? Key Moments of Biblical Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020; Paperback, 2025)
In this work, renowned New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham explores the question, who is God? To answer it, he examines key moments in the Christian Bible in which God reveals who he is: Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:10–22); God’s revelation to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3); and three events in St. Mark’s Gospel: Jesus’s baptism (Mark 1:9–11), the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9:2–8), and Jesus’s death (Mark 15:37–39). In the process, Bauckham interprets these passages in their own canonical literary contexts, avoiding lengthy and dense historical reconstructions. His goals are to demonstrate that God’s identity remains “consistent” in the Old and New Testaments and to allow readers to know him better (3). To accomplish these objectives, Bauckham divides his work into an introduction and four chapters as well as an index of biblical and ancient writings.
In the “Introduction” (1–3), he lays out the abovementioned summary of the volume. Bauckham’s first chapter, “The Revelation of the Divine Presence” (5–34), explores the revelation of God’s presence to the patriarch Jacob in Bethel, as he makes his escape from Esau to sojourn in Haran with his uncle Laban. He concludes that the object Jacob sees in his dream (Genesis 28:10–22) is probably a staircase and the remarkable thing about this dream is that God stands, not at the top, but beside the staircase and thus beside Jacob. At this point, God reveals that he will be “with” Jacob, giving the patriarch assurance that wherever he goes God will be there (Genesis 28:15). That God is “with” us, in Bauckham’s words, is “probably the most important discovery anyone can make, for, once made, it colors all of life’s experiences” (11). He, then, traces this “with-ness” of the divine presence from Jacob to Christians, who through Jesus, Immanuel or God with us (Matthew 1:23), the staircase of Jacob’s dream (John 1:51), and the New Tabernacle and Temple (John 1:14) make a way for God to be “with” us (22).
In the second chapter, “The Revelation of the Divine Name” (35–60), Bauckham investigates the revelation of God’s holy name to Moses, YHWH. He concludes that it probably means “I will be who I will be,” which indicates that God is “utterly self-determining” (42). It is this God who then commits himself to Israel and to his entire creation. Bauckham moves to the New Testament to connect the revelation of God’s Name to the Lord’s Prayer and Jesus’s petition that God sanctify his Name, which he proposes is the covenant name YHWH. What is more, Bauckham hypothesizes that Jesus’s own treatment of God’s Name in the Gospels demonstrates this sanctification of it and that Jesus’s frequent references to God as Father is his substitution for the divine name, YHWH. Moving to the early Christian movement, Bauckham contends that the references to Jesus as Lord in the New Testament are conscious attempts to show that Jesus belonged to God’s identity, which sanctifies God’s Name: “The revelation of God in the humanity of Jesus is the way that God’s identity comes to be universally known. So the confession that Jesus is the Lord redounds to the glory of God the Father. His Name is hallowed” (58).
The third chapter, “The Revelation of the Divine Character” (61–88), examines the revelation of God’s character to Moses in Exodus 34, which demonstrates what God is like. Bauckham draws out the context of this chapter, Israel’s shocking idolatrous act with the golden calf (Exodus 32:1–6), God’s desire to destroy the people for this sinful act (Exodus 32:7–10), and Moses’s successful mediation between God and Israel (Exodus 32:11–14). Given that God relented of the disaster, Moses requests that God disclose more about his divine self by revealing his glory to Moses so that the latter can see him (Exodus 33:18–23). God refuses this request but allows Moses to hear who he is: he is the LORD, which means that he is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in covenant love, and faithful to the thousandth generation by forgiving the sin of his people. However, God does not clear the guilty but visits the iniquity of the parents on the children to the third and fourth generation (Exodus 34:5–8). Bauckham notes that God’s mercy, grace, slowness to anger, abundance of covenant love, and faithfulness are relational terms describing how God interacts with his people, which in turn reveal God’s character. He, then, traces other references to this revelation of God’s character, sometimes adapted, in Joel 2:12–14; Jonah 4:1–3; Psalm 145, and in Jesus (John 1:14, 16–18). The latter event “reveals not only, as in Exodus 34, what God is like in his relationship with the world but also what God is like in his inner being. The eternal love between the Father and the Son is the source from which the love of God overflows into the life of the world” (85).
Who is God? is the type of book one expects from such a seasoned, thoughtful, and careful scholar like Bauckham. It is carefully argued, well-researched, and, despite the book’s small size (it is 110 pages) chopped full of too many exegetical insights to list in such a small review as this. It was a delight to read and, at the same time, encouraging. Certainly, Bauckham has achieved his desired hope of helping readers “know God better” (3). For these reasons, I highly recommend this work, especially in its new paperback format!
I am grateful to Baker Academic for providing me with a gratis copy of Who is God?, which is no way influenced by review of it.
Frank Thielman, Paul Apostle of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025)
Thielman’s goal in this work is to compose a biography of Paul, in the same vein as F. F. Bruce’s magisterial Paul Apostle of the Heart Set Free, that helps the general reader to understand what motivated St. Paul’s extraordinary life and ministry.[i]
In short, this volume asks the question: what made the apostle tick? Thielman’s answer is that St. Paul’s experience of the Risen Messiah and his subsequent relationship with the Resurrected Jesus fundamentally changed him so much that the apostle spent the rest of his life doing everything he could for the gospel’s sake.
To accomplish this work’s goal, Thielman reconstructs St. Paul’s life from all thirteen canonical Pauline letters, which he considers to be authentic, Acts of the Apostles, other early Christian works, pagan literary sources, and archaeological evidence, attempting to present the most probable portrait of the apostle. This biography consists of twenty-six chapters with three helpful appendices and six maps interspersed throughout the work (for a list of these and their page numbers, see below). Instead of footnotes, Thielman has placed his copious references, mainly to secondary sources, in endnotes, while leaving most primary source references in the body of the text.
In the preface, Thielman lays out some of his distinctive assumptions about St. Paul and his life that the reader will meet in the volume. The first is Thielman’s use of the abovementioned sources, including all thirteen of the apostle’s letters and Acts. He notes that he has laid out his case for accepting these letters as Pauline and the historical reliability of Acts in appendix 1.
The second assumption is that Thielman considers Galatians 2:1–10 and the Apostolic Council of Acts 15 to refer to the same event. Thus, he does not accept the view common among more “conservative” leaning scholars that Galatians 2:1–10 refers to St. Paul’s and St. Barnabas’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11:27–30. However, unlike other scholars who equate Acts 15 with Galatians 2:1–10, Thielman believes Galatians is Paul’s earliest canonical letter and that he composed it to the churches in southern Galatia. Therefore, he holds to what is known as the Southern Galatia Hypothesis for the destination of Galatians, which means that Thielman believes that the apostle composed the letter to the churches in the province of Galatia that did not consist of ethnic Galatians and that he and St. Barnabas missionized in Acts 13:13–28. It is noteworthy that many scholars who accept the identification of Galatians 2:1–10 with Acts 15 posit that Galatians is not St. Paul’s earliest canonical letter and they tend to subscribe to the Northern Galatia Hypothesis vis-à-vis the destination of Galatians, which means that they propose that the apostle addressed Galatians not to the people in southern Galatia but to ethnic Galatians who lived in the province’s northern portion.
The third assumption of Thielman’s is that St. Paul composed the Pastorals in the timeframe that Acts narrates. Consequently, unlike many scholars who accept Pauline authorship of the Pastorals and have a habit of placing one or more of these letters in the life of St. Paul after the events recorded in Acts, Thielman perceptively finds space for them in Luke’s narrative, and he lays out his arguments for this in appendices 2 and 3.
Overall, this work is thoughtful, clear, concise, engaging, and historically informed. Thielman’s primary source driven volume does a masterful job of contextualizing St. Paul’s world of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman society and positioning the apostle in it. His work is too vast for me to comment adequately on it so I will discuss two important points that Thielman makes that influence his reconstruction of St. Paul. First, in his discussion of the revelation of Jesus to the apostle on the Damascus Road, Thielman rightly and convincingly argues that St. Paul was converted, not just commissioned or called as an apostle. From St. Paul’s letters, he stresses the discontinuity between the apostle’s pre-Christian and Christian life, noting that what happened to St. Paul—his life being transferred into the Resurrected Messiah (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; 6:15; Romans 6:4–11; Philippians 1:21)—is so “radical” that only the term conversion is appropriate (22–25).
Second, his appendix in which he defends Pauline authorship of all thirteen canonical letters of the apostle is well informed not only concerning the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy (or false writings in the name of someone) in Greco-Roman antiquity but also related to the discussion of the authenticity of these letters among prominent Church Fathers. For example, Thielman notes the difficulty in determining the authenticity of any document from antiquity, quoting St. Augustine who asked how people of his day knew that Plato, Aristotle, etc. composed the works attributed to them. St. Augustine’s answer: these writings have been passed down through the ages as genuine and thus they should be accepted as such. Similarly, St. Augustine argues that we can know that canonical books are genuine because “they have been handed down as genuine from one generation to another in the church from the time of their composition” (344).[ii] Thielman notes that this is not a “bad argument” and
“If no other arguments for or against a particular Pauline letter’s genuineness are decisive, and if the ancient world was awash in forgeries, then it made, and makes, sense to consider the antiquity of the document itself and the antiquity and reliability of those who testify to its authorial claims. The disputed Pauline letters fare reasonably well under those considerations, and so it seems intellectually justifiable to use them as sources to construct the apostle’s career and thought” (344–45).
In my opinion, this argument for Pauline authorship of all thirteen letters is not a bad one, either. It is honest, well thought out, humble, and, at the end of the day after the dust clouds of grammar, theology, and vocabulary have settled, presents the best defense of Pauline authorship of all epistles in the Pauline corpus. I am grateful for Thielman for expressing it so eloquently.
For this, and for many more reasons that space and time prohibit me from discussing, I highly recommend this work to any interested student of St. Paul, layperson, clergy, or scholar.
I am grateful to Eerdmans for a gratis copy of this work, which in no way influenced my review of it.
List of the content of Thielman’s Paul Apostle of Grace:
Paul before His Encounter with Christ (1–16)
A Revelation from God (17–26)
Following Christ in Damascus and Arabia (27–37)
Return to Jerusalem (38–52)
Ministry in Syria and Cilicia (53–66)
Forming and Expanding the Multiethnic Church of God (67–78)
Advancement and Opposition in Southern Galatia (79–87)
Resistance to the Multiethnic Church (88–103)
Advancing Westward with the Gospel (104–113)
Church Planting and Suffering in Macedonia (114–127)
A Cool Reception in Athens and Laying a Foundation in Corinth (128–142)
An Urgent Letter from Corinth to Christians in Galatia (143–154)
Urgent Letters to Thessalonica and Overcoming Opposition in Corinth (155–166)
A Visit to Jerusalem, a Collection for Its Needy Christians, and a New Beginning in Ephesus (167–77)
Ministry in Ephesus and a Letter to Christians in Corinth (178–192)
Trouble in Corinth and Strange Teaching in Ephesus (193–205)
“Fighting Without and Fear Within” (206–219)
A Turning Point (220–232)
Back to Jerusalem with the Collection Delegation (233–246)
Violence and Arrest in the Jerusalem Temple (247–262)
A Taste of Roman Justice in Caesarea-by-the-Sea (263–270)
A Turbulent Journey West and Respite on Malta (271–285)
House Arrest in Rome (286–298)
Visitors from Philippi and the Lycus River Valley (299–313)
Fighting from Prison against Discouragement in Ephesus (314–322)
Paul Finishes the Race (323–335)
Appendix 1: The Evidence for Paul (337–352) Appendix 2: The Historical Setting of Paul’s Imprisonment Letters (353–362) Appendix 3: The Place, Manner, and Time of Paul’s Death (363–370)
Map 1: The Roman World in the First Century AD (xviiii) Map 2: From Syrian Antioch to Cyprus to Southern Galatia and Back to Syrian Antioch (72) Map 3: From Syrian Antioch to Southern Galatia to the Aegean Region to Jerusalem and Back to Syrian Antioch (105) Map 4: From Jerusalem to Syrian Antioch to Southern Galatia to Ephesus to Macedonia, Illyricum, Achaia, and Back to Jerusalem (173) Map 5: The Temple (253) Map 6: From Caesarea to Rome (272)
[i] While his main audience is general, Thielman notes that those with a knowledge of Roman history and geography will benefit most from his work.
[ii] “You are so hardened in your errors against the testimonies of Scripture, that nothing can be made of you; for whenever anything is quoted against you, you have the boldness to say that it is written not by the apostle, but by some pretender under his name. The doctrine of demons which you preach is so opposed to Christian doctrine, that you could not continue, as professing Christians, to maintain it, unless you denied the truth of the apostolic writings. How can you thus do injury to your own souls? Where will you find any authority, if not in the Gospel and apostolic writings? How can we be sure of the authorship of any book, if we doubt the apostolic origin of those books which are attributed to the apostles by the Church which the apostles themselves founded, and which occupies so conspicuous a place in all lands, and if at the same time we acknowledge as the undoubted production of the apostles what is brought forward by heretics in opposition to the Church, whose authors, from whom they derive their name, lived long after the apostles? And do we not see in profane literature that there are well-known authors under whose names many things have been published after their time which have been rejected, either from inconsistency with their ascertained writings, or from their not having been known in the lifetime of the authors, so as to be banded down with the confirmatory statement of the authors themselves, or of their friends? To give a single example, were not some books published lately under the name of the distinguished physician Hippocrates, which were not received as authoritative by physicians? And this decision remained unaltered in spite of some similarity in style and matter: for, when compared to the genuine writings of Hippocrates, these books were found to be inferior; besides that they were not recognized as his at the time when his authorship of his genuine productions was ascertained. Those books, again, from a comparison with which the productions of questionable origin were rejected, are with certainty attributed to Hippocrates; and any one who denies their authorship is answered only by ridicule, simply because there is a succession of testimonies to the books from the time of Hippocrates to the present day, which makes it unreasonable either now or hereafter to have any doubt on the subject. How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other similar writers, but by the unbroken chain of evidence? So also with the numerous commentaries on the ecclesiastical books, which have no canonical authority, and yet show a desire of usefulness and a spirit of inquiry. How is the authorship ascertained in each case, except by the author’s having brought his work into public notice as much as possible in his own lifetime, and, by the transmission of the information from one to another in continuous order, the belief becoming more certain as it becomes more general, up to our own day; so that, when we are questioned as to the authorship of any book, we have no difficulty in answering? But why speak of old books? Take the books now before us: should any one, after some years, deny that this book was written by me, or that Faustus’ was written by him, where is evidence for the fact to be found but in the information possessed by some at the present time, and transmitted by them through successive generations even to distant times? From all this it follows, that no one who has not yielded to the malicious and deceitful suggestions of lying devils, can be so blinded by passion as to deny the ability of the Church of the apostles— a community of brethren as numerous as they were faithful — to transmit their writings unaltered to posterity, as the original seats of the apostles have been occupied by a continuous succession of bishops to the present day, especially when we are accustomed to see this happen in the case of ordinary writings both in the Church and out of I”t (St. Augustine, Contra Faustus 33.6; translation taken from https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140633.htm).
Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, 2nd ed., Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024)
This work is a revised edition of Moo’s previous commentary in the Pillar New Testament Commentary series, which was originally published in 2008. Like all commentaries in this series, it is designed for pastors and Bible teachers. To this end, Moo exegetes the text of Colossians and Philemon, interacting with it in the form of the NIV translation and transliterating any Greek terms. He does so with an eye to Biblical theology as a whole and the contemporary relevance of these two letters for the Church today. In the process, Moo references contemporary debates about aspects of these two letters without delving too deep into the details of these scholarly conversations. The updates to his commentary are his interaction with works published since 2008, the rewording of some of his prose to clarify his meaning, and his alteration of some exegetical conclusions.
This volume begins with a preface from the series editor, D. A. Carson, prefaces to the second and first editions of the commentary, a list of texts and translations of primary sources and abbreviations that Moo used,[1] and a bibliography of commentaries and secondary sources on Colossians and Philemon that he referenced.
The first portion of the commentary consists of a comprehensive introduction to Colossians (3–54) in which Moo discusses introductory matters related to the letter. He describes the Colossians, the letter’s original recipients (4–6) and then discusses the letter’s author, whom he concludes is St. Paul (6–20). Moo places the letter’s composition in Rome around AD 60–61, during the apostle’s imprisonment there (20–26), and reconstructs the following occasion: St. Paul composed the letter to “provide the resources that the Colossian Christians need to fend off some kind of false teaching to which they are exposed” (26), which stemmed from a syncretism of local pagan, Jewish, and Christian beliefs and practices (26–41).[2] He then discusses the following theological aspects that are prominent in the missive: Christology (41–44), angelology (44–47), ecclesiology (47–47), the Gospel (49–50), eschatology (50–51), and ethics (51–53). In the introduction’s final portion, Moo lays out the letter’s outline (53–54).
Skipping to his introduction to Philemon, Moo follows a similar structure as with his introduction to Colossians. He discusses the authorship of Philemon, which he (and every sensible scholar) takes to be St. Paul (351–52). Moo considers Philemon to be a Colossian Christian (353), he dates the letter to AD 60–61, and places its composition at the same time as Colossians and Ephesians, during St. Paul’s Roman imprisonment (353–54). Moo grapples with the situation behind the missive to Philemon that caused the apostle to compose the letter and leans toward the hypothesis that Onesimus was a runaway slave who had gone to St. Paul to ask him to mediate for him with his master Philemon, during which time Onesimus became a Christian (354–60). Moo contends that the epistle’s purpose is to demonstrate how Onesimus’s conversion “reconfigured” his relationship with Philemon because of the “fellowship” that they both now share in Christ (363). This new relationship may have resulted in Onesimus’s manumission (364–65). Finally, Moo provides the structure of the missive.
The bulk of the commentary consists of Moo’s comments (55–348, 371–438). For both Colossians and the letter to Philemon, Moo has structured the commentary portion of this volume in the same way. He provides general comments about the section of each letter, which he then breaks down into subsections with detailed comments. He begins each subsection with the text of Colossians or Philemon as translated by the NIV in italicized font. Thereafter, he provides a verse-by-verse exposition of the subsection. Finally, Moo supplies four indices at his work’s conclusion: an index of subjects (439–43), an index of authors (444–54), an index of Scripture (455–74), and an index of extrabiblical literature (475–78).
As expected of Moo’s work, this commentary is clear, concise, careful, well-researched, and, above all, pastoral. My only regret with this commentary is that Moo does not interact with my work on Psalm 110:1 (“The LORD said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’”) in Colossians.[3] Instead, he relies on the older, but excellent study of David Hay.[4] This small limitation notwithstanding, the second edition of Moo’s commentary on Colossians and Philemon is a great addition to any pastor’s or Bible teacher’s library!
I am grateful to Eerdmans for the gratis copy of this work that in no way influenced my review of it.
[1] Apart from the NIV translation of Colossians and Philemon, quotations from: the New Testament are from the 28th edition of Novem Testamentum; the Old Testament are from the Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS); the Apocrypha are from the NRSV; pseudepigrapha are from The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James Charlesworth, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985); and the Dead Sea Scrolls are from The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, eds. F. G. Martínez and E. J. C. Tigchelaar, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1997).
[2] Moo relies on the study by Clinton Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface between Christianity and Folk Belief in Colossae, WUNT 2/77 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995).
[3] D. Clint Burnett, Christ’s Enthronement at God’s Right Hand and Its Greco-Roman Cultural Context, BZNW 242 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). This is not because my work was unavailable to him. It came out in 2021 and appears as the sixth entry on a search of “Psalm 110 New Testament” and the twelfth entry of “Psalm 110 Early Christianity” on Wheaton College’s Library’s online catalogue. Wheaton College is where Moo is a Professor Emeritus.
[4] David Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973).
