2016.04.05 | Michael Cover. Lifting the Veil: 2 Corinthians 3:7-18 in Light of Jewish Homiletic and Commentary Traditions. BNZW 210. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015.
Review by Benjamin Winter, St Louis University.
In the preface to this dense yet rewarding monograph, Cover submits that his “project might be summarized as a voyage from Paul’s epistolary interpretation of scripture to Philo’s exegesis in the Allegorical Commentary and back again” (vii). Indeed, Cover takes readers on a journey through both the form and content of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and early Christian commentaries—considering a full spectrum of “allegorical, dialectical, rhetorical, and prophetic reading strategies” for those commentaries (6). The subjects of Cover’s monograph can be categorized as follows: (1) ancient Jewish scriptural hermeneutics in general; (2) the influence of Hellenism on Jewish exegetical and homiletical traditions; and (3) Paul’s mediation of (1) and (2) in his epistles. By focusing on the introduction and control of background scriptural texts, Cover succeeds in his goal of analyzing Paul’s “pattern of exegesis” in 2 Corinthians 3:7–18. Read the rest of this entry »
Biblical and Early Christian Studies 