Power of Images in Paul

Raymond F. Collins is a Roman Catholic priest and a New Testament scholar. Most of his academic career was spent at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, the world’s oldest Catholic university, and at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where he taught and served as the dean of the School of Religious Studies. Among his twenty books are major commentaries on Paul’s First and Second Letters to the Corinthians and the Pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

Prof. Collins' study of images in the Pauline epistles runs the gamut from metaphors such as olive trees, athletics and the body to the apostle's biblical allusions and kinship terminology. Single chapters are devoted to a careful analysis of individual letters. In the process Collins recovers many images that have been obscured or mistranslated in modern English versions. Therefore this book is an important reference for anyone engaged in translation or exegesis of the Pauline epistles. Collins also highlights the extraordinary creativity found in Paul's use of imagery as the constellation of metaphors changes from one letter to the next. Paul emerges as a talented rhetorician with senses keenly attuned to the world of the Greco-Roman city and the language of the Scriptures. A major contribution to the new literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament.Pheme Perkins, Department of Theology, Boston College