Paul (1971 @1969 Bornkamm), book (English ed.)

Paul (1971) is the English edition of Paulus (1969 Bornkamm), book. Translated from the German by D.M.G. Stalker.

Abstract

This is Bornkamm’s companion volume to his Jesus of Nazareth, which he wrote more than a dozen years before in 1956. Bornkamm is particularly concerned with demonstrating continuity between Jesus and Paul, thereby refuting the widespread idea that Paul was the pervertor of the pure spirituality of the man of Galilee. Paul is a summary of Paul’s life and theology with an emphasis on the way each influenced the other. The book breaks down into two parts. The first part addresses Paul’s life and work and is biographical in nature. The second part expounds his theology. Bornkamm emphasizes throughout the text Paul’s grounding in Hellenistic Judaism and OT theology, as well as his continuity with Jesus. Bornkamm was a German Protestant theologian; not surprisingly he considered justification by faith the centerpiece of Pauline theology. In his reconstruction of early church history he favors Paul’s own epistles over Acts, which Bornkamm believed oftentimes was ignorant of what actually happened.

Editions

Published in London [England]: Hodder & Stoughton, 1971; and New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1971. Reissued in Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995.

Table of contents

Part One: Life and Work

1. Paul’s descent and environment before conversion

2. Paul’s persecution of the church and his conversion and call

3. First missionary activity

4. The Apostolic Assembly in Jerusalem

5. The first journey to Cyprus and Asia, and the conflict at Antioch

6. The world-wide scope of the Pauline mission

7. The first church in Greece: Philippi, Thessalonica, and Athens

8. Corinth

9. Ephesus

10. Romans as Paul’s testament

11. Paul’s final journey to Jerusalem, imprisonment, and death

Part Two: Gospel and Theology

1. Paul and the gospel of the primitive church

2. Lost: man and the world

3. The saving event

4. Present salvation

5. Future and present (eschatology and ethics)

Conclusion: Paul and Jesus

Appendixes

I. Authentic and inauthentic Pauline letters

II. Critical Problems in 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, and Romans

III. Christology and Justification