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HELMUT KOESTER, Paul and His World: Interpreting the New Testament in Its Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007). Pp. xvi + 301. $39.
Koester, professor at Harvard for half a century, republishes twenty-five articles organized into three sections: (1) Paul's letters and their interpretation, (2) the cultural and religious environment, and (3) early Christianity. Section 1 covers 1 Thessalonians (chaps. 1-5, 7) and 1 Corinthians (chap. 8). The second part is diverse: "Suffering Servant and the Royal Messiah" (chap. 10), "Divine Human Being" (chap. 11), "natural law" (chap. 12), and Egyptian deities and cult (chaps. 13-15). The third section includes the Spirit and authority (chap. 19), apostolic tradition and Gnosticism (chap. 20), theology and heresy (chap. 21), Rudolf Bultmann and the history of religions (chap. 24), and insights from his career (chap. 25).
Koester was the final director of my own teacher's dissertation (Abraham J. Malherbe) and that of my former colleague and co-author (Carolyn Osiek). K.'s students include the dean (Harold W. Attridge) and the professor of NT (Adela Yarbro Collins) at Yale Divinity School, where I studied. When teaching the core doctoral seminar at Brite Divinity School, the textbook I chose was K.'s two-volume Introduction to the New Testament (New York: de Gruyter, 1995). All NT and patristics scholars know of K.'s own and his students' astounding contributions. My task, however, is critical; I have two basic observations.
Koester interprets with a rational, deductive, either/or mind-set that obscures more complex social-historical phenomena. For example, Israel's Scriptures are divided by two mutually exclusive expectations: (1) the royal Davidic, messianic hope, and (2) the prophets' critique of royal authority (pp....