Joseph Marchal: Studying Paul’s Letters
Marchal’s illustration is Galatians 4. This chapter appropriately concludes the collection since it summarizes some of the common features to these approaches, especially the feminist, postcolonial, African-American, and Asian-American.
Marchal has certainly succeeded in his goal of challenging the reader to consider approaches that call for a critical and reflective engagement with the letters of Paul in a new way. While these do not directly dismiss or attack more traditional or confessional methods, they do introduce the reader to new perspectives and approaches. While the presentations are not user-friendly in that they require advanced hermeneutical skills to put them into practice, they are clearly described and explained in terms of the area of current biblical studies, followed by a demonstration on a Pauline passage and a selection of relevant readings.
Besides suggesting different perspectives on Paul’s writings, these essays encourage the development of thinking and reading skills which enable readers to engage their own world and culture in a new and fresh way.
The essays generally present these new methods in a non-threatening and constructive manner, but they may still provide a challenge to the evangelical scholar who may only be familiar with traditional hermeneutical approaches to the text. This is truly a new perspective on Paul. But can Paul now mean almost anything? With this approach, can the reader determine what Paul says at all? Or has his message become so flexible that it fluctuates according to the times? Does this means that we interpret Paul in light of our current world situations rather than the reverse?
The excellence of the questions brought forward by the approaches in Studying Paul’s Letters is commendable, even if one does not agree with the assumptions inherent in these.
Reviewed by Rebecca Skaggs
Preview Studying Paul’s Letters: books.google.com/books?id=03GKBFBiWH8C
Publisher’s page (including videos with Joseph Marchal): http://store.augsburgfortress.org/store/productgroup/539/Studying-Paul-Letters-Contemporary-Perspectives-and-Methods?c=285662
Category: In Depth, Spring 2014
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