Robert Jewett – författare

Dating Paul's letters is of vital importance for understanding the development of his thought, and dating Paul's letters means dating the main events of his life. This is a very difficult task, provoking much argument among scholars; studies of the last decades are no closer to agreement than those of more than a generation ago. Dr Jewett's book represents a real advance in solving the problem, above all because of the method which it adopts. Written almost like a detective story, assembling all possible evidence rather than jumping to premature conclusions, and using clear-headed arguments and explanations, it will be a basic point of reference in the future for anyone seriously interested in Paul. Dr Jewett begins by considering the relative merit of the evidence in Acts and Paul's letters. Then he looks closely at the information which can be correlated with dateable events in other literature. After this he considers the intrinsic probability of chronological information; journeys, intervals between events, etc., in Acts and Paul. Setting existing chronologies against the data base thus constructed, he demonstrates the conflicts between them and identifies their weak points. Finally, like a Sherlock Holmes, he produces what seems to him to be the only viable solution. Inevitably there will be those who disagree with the controversial result, but even they cannot fail to learn from the method by which it has been reached.

Star Wars, Amadeus, A Separate Place, Tender Mercies, Grand Canyon, Tootsie, Ordinary People, Empire of the Sun, Pale Rider, Red Dawn, and Dead Poets Society--all these movies show concern for deep human issues also treated in the Bible. The films provide evidence that many of the apostle Paul's themes in his New Testament letters are relevant for today. Contemporary movies, according to Robert Jewett, influence many Americans more than their formal education or religious training. And, since Paul interpreted the gospel on other people's turf, Jewett believes that today his forum would involve the movies, a primary source of discovering and debating important moral, cultural, and religious issues. Jewett treats film and biblical passages with equal respect. He brings their ideas and metaphors into relationship so that new insights emerge about both the ancient texts and the American cultural situation.

Using a nontechnical presentation of recent research and a sometimes-whimsical treatment of contemporary artifacts, Robert Jewett shows how Paul engages and challenges American society in unexpected ways. He offers preliminary explorations of the relevance of Paul's letters to the American scene and exploits the resources of scientific biblical research that allow Paul's message to be clarified. Important trends in American culture, including popular entertainment and books, are brought into interaction with freshly discovered aspects of Pauline thought.

In The Corinthian Correspondence, Frank W. Hughes and Robert Jewett argue that there were eight original letters by the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. In the first part of the book, they use literary and redaction criticism to show the reasons for the partition theory of 1 and 2 Corinthians. Analyzing each of the eight letters and letter-fragments using rhetorical criticism, they show how the original Corinthian letters were edited and reshaped into 1 and 2 Corinthians in the New Testament. After reflections on the rhetoric of these letters and the historical meaning of the reshaping of the images of Paul, a final chapter traces the consequences of the reshaping of the Corinthian correspondence and the adoption of the bound book (codex) instead of the original papyrus scrolls. Several figures help the reader understand the redactional process, and a new translation of the eight reconstructed Corinthian letters is provided.