Christoph Heilig

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  Paul The Storyteller

  $49.99

  An incisive study of Paul’s use of stories and narratives in his letters

  Paul is often thought of as a crafter of numerous and complex arguments, but some scholars, such as N. T. Wright and Richard Hays, have shown that narratives are vitally important in his letters. Through careful examination of the texts, Christoph Heilig demonstrates that Paul is indeed a talented teller of stories–not only explicit narratives but also implicit stories.

  In this volume, after a decade of research and writing, Heilig presents his definitive report on narrative in Paul. While Richard Hays and N. T. Wright have argued that Paul’s letters contain implicit narratives, Heilig stresses that a sound methodology requires beginning with text-linguistic investigation of explicit narratives. As Heilig argues, focusing on explicit narratives repeatedly redirects our attention to implicit (“almost”) stories. On this basis, he shows that Hays’s “narrative substructures” and Wright’s “worldview” narratives can also be fruitfully integrated into a narratological approach. Paul is a different kind of storyteller than the gospel writers, for example, but at countless points miniature narratives play a crucial role for Paul’s communicative goals.

  Students and scholars of the New Testament will welcome Heilig’s expert guidance through a hotly debated area of Pauline studies.

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  Hidden Criticism : The Methodology And Plausibility Of The Search For A Cou

  $39.00

  Paul has been regarded as being uncritical of the Roman Empire for a long time, not least because of his apparent call to obey the state in Romans 13:1-7. However, recent scholarship has questioned this assumption by pointing to “hidden criticism” in the letters of the apostle. But how can we decide, in a methodologically sound way, whether such a counter-imperial message lies beneath the surface of the text? On the basis of insights from the philosophy of science, Christoph Heilig suggests several analytical steps for examining this paradigm. He concludes that the hypothesis that we can identify critical “echoes” of the Roman Empire in Paul’s letters needs to be modified if it is to be maintained. In particular, the hypothesis of Paul’s concern that any overt criticism would be dangerous and lead to subsequent persecution of himself or his congregations is dubious and does not sufficiently justify this interpretative approach. Nevertheless, Heilig concludes that the search for a counter-imperial subtext in Paul could turn out to be heuristically fruitful, so long as the limitations of the approach are heeded. Hence, a reevaluation of Pauline passages in light of Paul’s engagement with ideas from his Roman environment is encouraged.

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