-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
2026.05.05 | Yurong Zhao. Early Christian Widows and their Social-economic Situation, Support, and Contribution to the Church. Library of New Testament Studies 687. London: T&T Clark, 2025. pp. xvii + 242. ISBN: 9780567721365. Review by Aogu Suzuki, University of St Andrews. Wayne Meeks, in his The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (1983), stated: […]
2026.03.04 | Vladimir Olivero. 1 Enoch: An Ethiopic Reader’s Edition. Resources for Biblical Study 110. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2025. pp. viii + 359. ISBN: 9781628377606. Review by Kai Akagi, Rikkyo University. While 1 Enoch is among the scriptures of the Ethiopic Orthodox Church and Geʿez serves as the liturgical language and language of scripture for various […]
2026.03.03 | Douglas S. Huffman. Understanding the New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Forms, Features, Framings, and Functions. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024. pp. xix + 268. ISBN: 9781540966407. Review by Kai Akagi, Rikkyo University. The use of the Old Testament in the New Testament is studied within various frameworks, using various paradigms and methods, […]
2026.03.02 | Sofia Puchkova. Re-envisioning Theodore: Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Biblical Exegesis in His Catechetical Homilies. SVC 185. Brill, Leiden-Boston: 2024. Review by Marius Portaru, Pontificium Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Rome. The present monograph addresses a gap in the scholarship on Theodore of Mopsuestia by examining his ‘invisible’ biblical exegesis in the Catechetical Homilies. While this topic […]
2026.01.01 | Mark Goodacre. The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John’s Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Eerdmans, 2025. 191 pp. Review by Ched Spellman, Cedarville University. Goodacre advances a straightforward thesis: John’s Gospel was written with an awareness of the Synoptic Gospels. More specifically, Goodacre argues that the author of this Gospel “knew, used, presupposed, and transformed the […]
2025.08.04 | Christian A. Eberhart and Wolfgang Kraus, eds. Covenant—Concepts of Berit, Diatheke, and Testamentum. WUNT 506. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023. Review by Levi Baker, William Tennent School of Theology. Arising from a 2019 interdisciplinary conference at the Lanier Theological Library, this volume of twenty-eight essays explores various aspects of covenant across the social world and literature […]
2025.01.03 | Todd D. Still and David E. Wilhite. The Apologists and Paul. Pauline and Patristic Scholars in Debate. London: T&T Clark, 2024. Pp. xiv + 346. ISBN: 9780567715456. Review by Jonathon Lookadoo, Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, Seoul, Republic of Korea The Apologists and Paul provides a wide-ranging analysis of how Paul’s letters were […]
2025.01.02 | Thea Gomelauri (with a contribution by Joseph Ginsberg). The Lailashi Codex: The Crown of Georgian Jewry (Oxford, UK: Taylor Institution Library, 2023). Review by Teófilo Correa, Adventist International Institute of Advance Studies (AIIAS) The Lailashi Codex is an ancient Hebrew manuscript, considered the earliest nearly complete surviving medieval version of the Pentateuch (Ori […]
2025.01.01 | Dragos Andrei Giulea. Antioch, Nicaea, and the Synthesis of Constantinople: Revisiting Trajectories in the Fourth-Century Christological Debates. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 200. Brill, 2024. 309 pp. Review by Ched Spellman, Cedarville University. In this monograph, Dragoș Andrei Giulea undertakes an ambitious revisioning of the intellectual landscape of the fourth-century theological debates. Challenging […]
2024.10.07 | Ryan D. Collman. The Apostle to the Foreskin: Circumcision in the Letters of Paul. BZNW 259. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023. Review article by Paul T. Sloan, Houston Christian University. “Foreskin” stretches across Paul’s letters as a part of various discourses concerning proper Law-keeping and the relation of Jews and gentiles to one another, to Abraham, […]
Biblical and Early Christian Studies
John H. Walton
Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary
In Ancient Israel, Ancient Near East, Archaeology, commentary, HB/OT, John H. Walton, Kurtis Peters, Zondervan on June 11, 2015 at 9:52 pm2015.06.13 | Walton, John H., ed. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. 5 vols. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. $249.95. ISBN 978-0-310-25572-7).
Review by Kurtis Peters.
Many thanks to Zondervan for providing a review copy.
John Walton, chief editor of Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, has taken on an enormous task. Enormous, of course, is simply the gathering of data and contributors for a multi-volume commentary. But perhaps more significant yet is his aim: to have the evangelical world engage with the ancient Near East (hereafter ANE) in a meaningful way. 5 volumes, 32 contributors, and nearly 3,000 pages later, Walton has, it seems, succeeded at least insofar as he has provided the evangelical community with perhaps the most thorough and most accessible resource for them to grapple with the reality of the Old Testament and its ANE setting. Read the rest of this entry »