Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 336 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by M. John-Patrick O’Connor     The Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University, Paula Fredriksen, has contributed a gem to Pauline studies in her recent publication, Paul the Pagans’ Apostle. The rigorous Augustine and historical Jesus scholar has turned her attention to the Apostle Paul, in a delightful reframing of his life and mission. Fredriksen organizes her work in five major sections with a “Postscript” (167–74) and “Acknowledgments” section appearing at the end (175–78). Her first two chapters, “Israel and the Nations” (8–31) and “Fatherland and Mother City” (32–60) deftly provide the Jewish, Greek, and Roman...

    Forbearance: A Theological Ethic for a Disagreeable Church James Calvin Davis. Forbearance: A Theological Ethic for a Disagreeable Church. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017, 240 pp. $25.00. Reviewed by Naomi Ketchens     There are better and worse ways to disagree. Christians once regularly tortured non-believers, executed heretics, and went to war over theological disputes. Churches have since largely recognized that division is preferable to violence as a means of navigating controversy (5–6). In his book, titled Forbearance: A Theological Ethic for a Disagreeable Church, James Calvin Davis advises a better way for Christian communities to traverse theological disagreement. The fulcrum of Davis’s argument is forbearance, itself a virtue by being a commitment to other unifying virtues. Throughout his book, then, Davis constructs a robust account of forbearance for a church that wishes...

    The New Testament: A Translation David Bentley Hart. The New Testament: A Translation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017, 616 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by Matthew A. Smith     In attempting to translate the Bible, the most frequent norm is ‘translation by committee,’ wherein a number of scholars settle upon the most agreeable renderings, and disagreements are handled by democratic process. Enter David Bentley Hart and his translation of the New Testament. By contrast to this approach, Hart has no interlocutors and no committees; instead, he alone translates the New Testament in its entirety from its various manuscripts (albeit not without reference to scholarly consensus). He writes, “I have come to believe that all the standard English translations render a great many of the concepts and presuppositions upon which the books of the New Testament are built largely impenetrable ....

    Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology James K.A. Smith. Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017, 256 pp. $22.99. Reviewed by Michael Nichols     Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology completes the three-part “Cultural Liturgies” series by James K.A. Smith, a project dedicated to recovering an anthropological account of humans as lovers shaped by liturgies. The first two books focus on Christian worship and imagination, and are recommended prior to engaging the third. In book three, Smith takes this anthropology public and rebuffs prevailing tendencies to spatialize and rationalize politics. He successfully realizes both aims of the work: to “work out the implications of a ‘liturgical’ theology of culture” and “offer an alternative paradigm that moves us beyond contemporary debates in political theology” (8). Chapters one and...

    The Grammar of Messianism Matthew V. Novenson. The Grammar of Messianism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017, 384 pp. $74.00. Reviewed by Nathan C. Johnson     The debate over how to properly define “messiah” is one of the most complicated in the study of early Judaism and Christian origins. It seems that every scholar has her or his preferred definition and the attendant list of texts in which this definition does or does not apply. Matthew V. Novenson, senior lecturer at Edinburgh University (PhD, PTS ’09), offers a fresh way forward. For Novenson, previous scholarship has worked with the wrong set of questions—namely, how to best define “messiah” and what texts attest to this definition. These inadequate questions have produced equally inadequate results. By contrast, Novenson argues that “messiah” cannot, and indeed should not, be given a single definition in antiquity...

  Thinking Theologically and Writing Theologically Thinking Theologically. Edited by Eric D. Barreto. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015, 100 pp. $14.00. Writing Theologically. Edited by Eric D. Barreto. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015, 157 pp. $14.00 Reviewed by Melissa A. Martin   In second grade I had a teacher who loved United States history. Her love eventually led me to believe that even I could play a part in U.S. government. I found a similar love in Thinking Theologically and Writing Theologically, two books in Fortress Press’s recent “Foundations For Learning” series. The “Foundations for Learning” series seeks to introduce first-year seminary students or those considering seminary to the “skills, practices, and values to succeed in seminary” (http://fortresspress.com/foundations). However, these books are not just about skills or values. These two volumes are about...