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D. A. CARSON, PETER T. O'BRIEN, and MARK A. SEtFRID (eds.), Justification and Variegated Nomism, Volume 2, The Paradoxes of Paul (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004). Pp. xiv + 544. Paper $49.99.
This is the second and final volume of an "evaluation of the multifaceted movement known as 'the new perspective on Paul'" (p. v), triggered by E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). As Douglas Moo accurately states (p. 185), "Most . . . obviously affected was Paul's teaching on Judaism and the law, as scholars scrambled to relate Paul's varied teaching on these matters to Sanders's depiction of second-temple Jewish soteriology ('covenantal nomism')."
The first volume of the assessment of the "new perspective"-ably reviewed by Frederick J. Murphy in CBQ 65 (2003) 148-50-dealt extensively with the literature of second Temple Judaism, which Sanders had examined as the basis of his justly severe critique of the (largely Teutonic) prevailing scholarship on Paul and Judaism, a body of work "based on a massive perversion and misunderstanding of the material" (Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 59), and which, nevertheless, still prevailed when he wrote. The authors of the first volume found that "covenantal nomism" was sometimes congenial to considerable parts of that literature, but that the approach to law and related matters was more "variegated" than Sanders had allowed.
The volume under review here moves directly to Paul. The contributions are: Stephen Westerholm, "The 'New Perspective' at...