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moanareads's review
it was just really hard to follow and understand and connect things
susanshilton's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
brice_mo's review against another edition
3.0
Lots I appreciated here, but I don’t feel like this necessarily feels super revelatory as “a biography.” It’s a book I enjoyed and will likely revisit, though.
marysasala's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting but ultimately unsatisfying look at one of the world's most influential people.
Wright rights from a Protestant perspective. He writes by only citing the Bible. At first I found this exciting and authentic. The more the book progressed Wright continued to make assumptions, guesses and conclusions based much to loosely for me to accept. He sounds a lot like a Pastor preaching about Paul and less like an historian telling the story of Paul. I found I wanted the latter.
Wright rights from a Protestant perspective. He writes by only citing the Bible. At first I found this exciting and authentic. The more the book progressed Wright continued to make assumptions, guesses and conclusions based much to loosely for me to accept. He sounds a lot like a Pastor preaching about Paul and less like an historian telling the story of Paul. I found I wanted the latter.
adamrshields's review against another edition
4.0
Short Review: This was really helpful to understanding the epistles and the early church. The change in format (biography instead of theological look at New Testament) gives a very different perspective in understanding Wright.
Two main features that I really appreciated. The first was understanding the early church as a group that crossed three lines (lines of national identity, class and ethnicity) in a world where no other group was crossing all three.
The second was looking at Paul's history and helping us to understand the epistles. The broad view of Paul and the message of the different epistles makes sense of the differences between the epistles in a way that I have not really understood previously.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/paul/
Two main features that I really appreciated. The first was understanding the early church as a group that crossed three lines (lines of national identity, class and ethnicity) in a world where no other group was crossing all three.
The second was looking at Paul's history and helping us to understand the epistles. The broad view of Paul and the message of the different epistles makes sense of the differences between the epistles in a way that I have not really understood previously.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/paul/
ddejong's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars- mainly for being unnecessarily repetitive. I encountered this with the other NT Wright book I read a couple years ago. He is a brilliant mind and I greatly respect him, but I can sometimes feel like I’m slogging through his books because of the repetition. There is no special revelatory biographical material on Paul outside of Scripture so NT Wright has more or less taken the details available to us in Acts and in his letters, spread them out chronologically, teased out the major themes of Paul’s mission and theology, and incorporated relevant ancient history/culture/politics. He is focused on trying to draw out what made Paul tick and what made his influence so tremendous. Some of the major themes Wright emphasizes throughout:
- Paul never stopped being a Jew or “converted” to Christianity. He saw Jesus as the fulfillment of everything the law and the prophets were pointing toward, and his lifelong Jewish identity is critical for understand him.
- He was intensely focused on teaching young church communities how to think— how to have the mind of Christ. He could never teach them everything he wanted to but if they learned to have the mind of the Messiah, the rest would follow.
- Paul was not concerned with “how to get to heaven.” This is an anachronistic concept that was not top of mind for him and his contemporaries. Heaven was not “up there” but rather another sphere of existence; in Jesus, God was fulfilling his promises to bring the heavenly realm to earth and unite them.
- He was very focused on unity because of the dangerous fault lines between Jewish and Gentile believers. There were constant efforts to erase the Jewish foundations of the gospel and, on the other side, to insist that Gentiles who were not following the Torah or getting circumcised could not be part of the family of faith. Paul was vehemently against both of these reactions and opposed them throughout his ministry.
- Paul never stopped being a Jew or “converted” to Christianity. He saw Jesus as the fulfillment of everything the law and the prophets were pointing toward, and his lifelong Jewish identity is critical for understand him.
- He was intensely focused on teaching young church communities how to think— how to have the mind of Christ. He could never teach them everything he wanted to but if they learned to have the mind of the Messiah, the rest would follow.
- Paul was not concerned with “how to get to heaven.” This is an anachronistic concept that was not top of mind for him and his contemporaries. Heaven was not “up there” but rather another sphere of existence; in Jesus, God was fulfilling his promises to bring the heavenly realm to earth and unite them.
- He was very focused on unity because of the dangerous fault lines between Jewish and Gentile believers. There were constant efforts to erase the Jewish foundations of the gospel and, on the other side, to insist that Gentiles who were not following the Torah or getting circumcised could not be part of the family of faith. Paul was vehemently against both of these reactions and opposed them throughout his ministry.
cdbaker's review against another edition
4.0
It was both interesting and sometimes annoying to read a biography of Paul written by someone who is so much of a believer. I like that Wright didn't try to hide his own perspective, but at times his assessment of Paul seemed just a little too reverent. Overall though, I enjoyed this book and I learned a lot.