Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series)

`The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters' is a superb reference source if your primary objective is the study of Paul's writings. As a one-volume source, unlike, for example, the six volume Anchor Bible Dictionary, it is a far less expensive reference of all Pauline issues on your desk. For most people, the very best aspect of the volume is its dedication to contemporary scholarship. This focus has many good points and a few problems.The only problem I see with its `contemporary' focus is that some important works on Paul may not cited. This is only a theoretical concern, as my biggest fear, that the article on `Mysticism' would not refer to Albert Schweitzer's important `The Mysticism of St. Paul', but it does.On the other side of the coin, all major articles include generous bibliographies to both books and articles in English, German, and French. I find no references to Italian articles, but if there were important articles written in Italian, I believe they will be here.While some major Pauline scholars such as Ed Sanders and N. T. Wright are missing from the list of contributors, there are many authorities that do weigh in. Foremost among these are James Dunn, F. F. Bruce, and David Wright. There are over a hundred contributors, so I'm certain I'm unfamiliar with many major authorities. From what I know, the credentials of the contributors are impeccable.While I learned early in my elementary school years that an encyclopedia was always a good place to start a research project, it was often not enough for first class work, but there were always things an encyclopedia could do which no other reference could do quite as well. And, this volume does a great job on those tasks.First, as already mentioned, it has great bibliographies on all major articles. My only complaint is that since all the entries run together (no break to a new line when beginning with the author's name), the bibliographies are hard to read. I commonly miss an important reference when my aging eyes skip over the lines just a bit too quickly.Second, the text has superior cross-referencing. Every time a word or phrase is used which is itself the subject of an article, the word or phrase is asterisked. I don't recall that even the mighty Encyclopedia Britannia did so well in cross-referencing. I know the Britannia's bibliographies were not nearly as good.Third, there are lots of useful articles with information you simply don't find anywhere else, at least not with a certain amount of luck. Two examples stand out. The first is a list of Pauline colleagues, all those co-workers mentioned in Acts and in Paul's own letters, with indications of their roles. The second is the list of Old Testament citations in Paul, divided by those where the quote from the Septuagint is exact and those where the quote is paraphrased. Most of this is reprinted from classic papers on the subject, primarily by E. E. Ellis.There is one area where one needs to use additional references. While there are excellent articles on each of Paul's letters, they do not constitute complete exegeses of the letters. Fortunately, again, the bibliographies offer excellent lists of full commentaries; however, they are not complete and they are limited to `modern' exegeses. The bibliography on Romans, for example, does not include either N. T. Wright's very long commentary in `The New Interpreter's Bible' or references to classical commentaries such as those by Martin Luther or John Barth. Second, I would not entirely trust the information here on very early Judaism, for example. On the other hand, long general articles about, for example `Law' are extremely good guidance on research on this subject going back over 100 years.This book will not replace more specialized works, but it will do an excellent job of helping you find and understand the mountain of scholarly research on Paul from the last century.

An outstanding reference compilation!

Great value for the title. Though the research is dated in this volume, it is nonetheless overall still relevant and precise. Very detailed, cross referenced well with other extra-biblical sources, i.e., targums, psuedepigraha, Dead Sea scrolls, ancient writers, Church Fathers (yes but limited), post Reformation Scripture canon which is well done (including intra-biblical text theme associations), and adjacent terms. Definitions basic but true to form and for Catholic's doctrinally sound (if vague) at least within my limited frame of knowledge and use.

The IVP dictionary series is one of the best, if not the best reference series for those who don’t have access to the Society of Biblical Literature or other academic communities. The articles are written by those within Biblical academia, and vetted by their peers. A must have for every church leader and serious student of the Bible.

I have purchased all four of the IVP Dictionaries for the New Testament: two in print version (Dictionary of New Testament Background (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series) and Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Developments (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series)), and two in Kindle version (Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series) and Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (The IVP Bible Dictionary Series)). I am thoroughly pleased with the content in all four books. However, the Kindle versions are a big disappointment.I've purchased Kindle books in the past and have been very pleased with them. I love the search function and I thought it might be particularly helpful for reference books like these. However, it's a little nightmarish. I'll try to spell the problems out in a list:1. There are hardly any hyperlinks in the text. The Table of Contents will only take you to the first article under "A" or to the list of article entries. The list of article entries is not hyperlinked.2. To find a given article, therefore you need to use the search function, but in book with this many words, the search lists come back too long. For example, if I want to look up the article on "Christology" I enter it as a search term, I get back a list of 100 items which I then have to dig through to find the one for the article. That is, every article that has the word "Christology" in it comes back with no easy way to sort them out from the one article on "Christology."3. The Kindle search function is not intelligent. If I want to qualify my search by entering more than one word, it will only find two contiguous words. It won't find anything that has both words in the same sentence or on the same page.4. There are hyphenated words in the middle of text which I assume means that they were originally hyphenated in the print version because they came at the end of a line. But in the conversion from print to Kindle, the words moved elsewhere but the hyphens were not removed. In a two-column reference works like these there are lots of hyphenated words. The search function thinks "combined" and "com-bined" are two different words so I have to search twice.The combination of these four factors make the Kindle version much harder to navigate than a print version. This has never been a problem with any of the other Kindle books I've bought. I suppose this is something that applies only to large dictionaries like this, and I didn't anticipate it. It's very frustrating. Moreover, the discounted price for the Kindle edition is very slight. I thought the smaller discount meant that to have a Kindle version would be more valuable than usual. To think I could have had two print versions instead of these two Kindle versions for almost the same price is just very disappointing.You're forewarned.

This Dictionary was needed in a timely manner, it was needed to work on my bachelor's in theology it came right in time for my studying it is excellent and it explores every part of Paul's accomplishments and ministry in the gospel

Book arrived promptly and was in good condition

Such an awesome book. I bought it as a requirement for a class but I am going to keep this book and use it in the future. This look literally addresses every concept, misconception and theological issue one can think of with evidence of when and why the Apostle Paul did or wrote what he did. This book is a great reference for teaching, writing papers, speaking or just answering someones or your own questions on why the Paul wrote what he wrote.

Bon livre à lire!!!

fantastic