New Perspectives on Paul[Cultural and Textual Contextualization]

If you are anything like me you will get a theological nosebleed from listening to this one from Dr. Thomas Holland, speaking at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. It goes on for well over an hour (including question time) and a lot of it is way over my head, so I wouldn't blame anybody who reads my blog if they just gave it a pass.

Ostensibly the lecture deals with some fine points about what is known as "The New Perspective on Paul", and contains elements of seminarian and theological dispute that people like me are just not that familiar with, and not really equipped to fully understand. I didn't pick this one so much for the theological debate as for the observations it contains about how culture and presuppositions regarding the cultural milieu of certain writings can be used to misrepresent facts and draw wrong conclusions.

Just one example is the misconception by certain Higher Biblical Critics in the last century about the nature of the Greek language that is found in the early New Testament Biblical texts. It was thought that the language was Classical Greek and they inferred thereby that certain words had meaning exactly corresponding to the classical meanings. But it turned out that the ancient authors were using the meaning of the Greek as employed by the Septuagint translators, which had been "Judaised" during the itertestamental period to make certain classical words fit Jewish concepts. So it was dangerous and wrong to proceed to pontificate about nascent Christianity without making such distinctions. Yet a whole generation of theological academia had plowed into this error willy-nilly.

Anyway, if you have the intestinal fortitude, here is something that speaks again to the need not only for textual context, but cultural context as well, in studying what people in the past believed and why they acted the way that they did. Enjoy...(if you can)...

New Perspectives on Paul - Dr. Thomas Holland