Fortress Press

"Esler's fresh approach to the relationship between New Testament scholarship and the concerns of Christian discipleship inaugurates a new departure in biblical theology. His novel and challenging engagement with questions of method, social history, hermeneutics, theology, identity and conflict, and Christian community urges the reader to think beyond paralysing divisions in historical and theological research. Christian faith needs a reappraisal of the great potential of communication within the communion of saints, both with the living and the dead. Such communication requires not only historical and hermeneutical consciousness, but also a will to enter into intercultural, interpersonal and critical dialogue with our ancestors and our contemporaries in faith. Establishing relationships with our biblical ancestors, e.g. Paul, frees them from their usual status as dead authors of textual monuments to becoming real voices again in the ongoing reflection on God's creative and redemptive project in this universe. Listening to the plurality of voices today sharpens our horizon for relating anew to our biblical ancestors. For Esler, theological systems must never be the ultimate aim of biblical scholarship. Rather he wants to bring New Testament research into renewed contact with everyday Christian life, experience and identity. This work offers a critical, constructive and much welcome proposal for the renewal of both theological scholarship and the Christian church."
— Werner G. Jeanrond, Professor of Systematic Theology at Lund University, Sweden.

"The whole project fills me with enthusiasm. Philip Esler is developing a genuinely alternative way of carrying out the aims of New Testament theology."
— Robert Morgan, Linacre College Oxford

"In New Testament Theology Philip Esler tackles questions that most historically-oriented scholars avoid with a passion: how can authors from the past be engaged; what would inter-personal communication with long-dead authors look like; how can the New Testament more fruitfully become a resource for contemporary Christian living? In engaging such foundational but oft-ignored issues Esler utilizes and evaluates a dazzling array of literary, social-scientific, cross-cultural, communications, and hermeneutical theories. His study of such theories is both impressive and useful, especially since he is able to express complex theories in readily understandable language. His dialogue with reader-response criticism is particularly illuminating, as he argues for a form of inter-personal and dialogical communication with the authors of the New Testament documents that is anchored in a reappraisal and rehabilitation of Schleiermacher's hermeneutics. Written in a style that is itself inter-personal, Esler knows how to use examples from literature and film as well as from his own life. His studies of 1 Corinthians 10-14 and Hebrews 10-12 illustrate the value of the approach he argues for. His creative and fertile mind stretches and challenges the reader to reevaluate cherished and usually unexamined ways of approaching the Bible. Although he provides a succinct summary of scholarship from the 18th century to the 21st, his primary goal is nothing less than a new way of connecting the results of historical study of the New Testament with Christian belief, practice, and identity."
— Rev. Walter F. Taylor, Jr., Ph.D.
Ernest W. and Edith S. Ogram Professor of New Testament Studies
Director of Graduate Studies
Trinity Lutheran Seminary
Columbus, Ohio

		Introduction;   Adobe Acrobat Document
		Preface;   Adobe Acrobat Document
		Table of Contents;   Adobe Acrobat Document

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