Ivor H. Jones

Book Reviews : New Testament Introduction

Gospel traditions, but in these shorter presentations he merely summarises these conclusions and gives us the New Testament texts which refer to Paul ’passing on’ what he ’received’, and Pauline passages which refer to Jesus traditions without citing them. His conclusion is that Paul taught his disciples these Jesus traditions orally, by rote; and that the Gospels are edited versions of traditions which date back to

Book Reviews : Bach's Theology

The title is Augustine’s: ’He who sings, prays twice’. Brian Wren makes this inclusive (’Whoever ...’) and might prefer it plural. He believes that ’congregational song is an indispensable part of Christian public worship’; ’indispensable’ stopping short of ’essential’ (remembering Quakers and harassed believers) but far outstripping ’optional’. This major work, Praying Twice: The Music and Words of Congregational Song (Westminster John Knox Press, £12.99, pp. viii + 422, ISBN 0-664-25670-8), amply justifies his credo, and itself becomes indispensable for the increasing numbers studying hymns, those with responsibility for choosing or leading them, and all who fear for their future. Chapter one takes us time-travelling from London 1970, backwards to ’Israel: 1200 BCE’, sharing nineteen crucial moments in the story of God’s singing people. ’This daring, fascinating tour suggests two keys to the book’s effectiveness. First, the author starts where people

Book Reviews : Music Rids Theology of Bad Habits

The title is Augustine’s: ’He who sings, prays twice’. Brian Wren makes this inclusive (’Whoever ...’) and might prefer it plural. He believes that ’congregational song is an indispensable part of Christian public worship’; ’indispensable’ stopping short of ’essential’ (remembering Quakers and harassed believers) but far outstripping ’optional’. This major work, Praying Twice: The Music and Words of Congregational Song (Westminster John Knox Press, £12.99, pp. viii + 422, ISBN 0-664-25670-8), amply justifies his credo, and itself becomes indispensable for the increasing numbers studying hymns, those with responsibility for choosing or leading them, and all who fear for their future. Chapter one takes us time-travelling from London 1970, backwards to ’Israel: 1200 BCE’, sharing nineteen crucial moments in the story of God’s singing people. ’This daring, fascinating tour suggests two keys to the book’s effectiveness. First, the author starts where people

Disputed Questions in Biblical Studies 4. Exile and Eschatology

My main purpose is to review the major contribution made by N. T. Wright to the discussion of New Testament eschatology via his thesis that, according to Second Temple belief, the real return from exile had not yet occurred.’ B The thesis runs as follows: Jewish eschatology in the Second Temple period focused on the hope that what had happened in the Babylonian exile would at last be undone, that in accordance with the many-layered expectation of that period (for which ’an end to the exile’ serves as a shorthand) Israel’s God would once again act within her history. On the basis of that thesis, that God’s restoration of Israel would at last occur and occur within the ambit of our space-time world, it can be argued, following the lead of Caird and Glasson, that the cosmic elements in Jewish eschatological language should not be interpreted as a reference to literal cosmic events but as a form of announcement for spacetime events, for the space-time events by which Israel’s God and Israel’s Messiah would act for Israel’s

Book Reviews : Inconsistencies in Matthew

grounded by reason? Can persons outside of Christianity have an ’implicit’ faith which is nevertheless a saving faith? What is the relation of faith and good works? These questions are only a selection from a wide-ranging and perceptive discussion. When one has worked through the book, it is hard to disagree with the author’s claim that ’the word &dquo;faith&dquo; might be described as the Christian word’.

Book Reviews : Rhetorical Criticism

roughly contemporary with Paul; almost but not quite, for 4 Ezra constituted an exception. There and very similarly in 2 Baruch, he did find what Christian writers have called legalism, a merit-centred approach to God. In Eschatology and the Covenant. A Comparison of 4 Ezra and Romans 1-11 (JSOT Press [1991], £35/

Book Reviews : Teaching Greek

60, subscr. £26/

A Book for the Choirmaster

45, pp. 318, ISBN 1-85075-305-9) Bruce W. Longenecker compares the desertion of ’Ezra’ from what he prefers to call ethnocentric covenantalism with that of Paul. Both faced a crisis: for Ezra, the Temple’s destruction put in question God’s commitment to Israel, while Paul’s acceptance of the centrality of Christ and of the mission to the Gentiles put in question the place of ethnic Israel and the Law within the covenant. Their responses had common points, a stress on human sin and the invoking of eschatology, future for Ezra, partly realized for Paul. The differences, however, were marked: Ezra expected only a few to be saved by their perfect works (though a wider hope is suggested), while Paul sees faith in Christ as the potentially universal condition of the covenant as

Glimpses of Truth

career was philosophy personified. And that belief was the source both of Karl Marx’s greatest joys and deepest sorrows. A great advantage of this book is that the author always goes back to the original German texts and explains specifically important usages of German philosophical terms (see the enlightening observations on the word Kritik). A great disadvantage of the book is that none of the quotations is footnoted-although this is probably not the author’s but the publisher’s fault. It is lamentable that a book with the declared purpose of being an exegesis of the texts of Karl Marx does not indicate the

Book Review: Why Postmodernism Cannot Make Sense of Music, the Sacred in Music

consider schools as places of upbringing in community for community, with the individual, not the institution, as central. Religion is a serious element in the process, not because of its statutory position but in virtue of its role in public and private life. In so far as our culture is in any degree positive this is due to Christian influence and practice, and it would be culturally impoverishing if our children were denied acquaintance with the richest element in our cultural