Michael Bird, an excellent young professor, gives us something we really need: a readable, up-to-date, avoid-the-fads approach to the apostle Paul. The book is for students, college and seminary and adult classes. Cleverly, Mike Bird calls his book A Bird’s Eye View of Paul. The wit of the title is matched by the wit in the book. It’s fun, it’s readable, and I hope you buy it. And I hope if you teach Paul that you will use this book.
I’ve got a backlog of books and I thought I’d use the month of June to get some of these in. I’ll be reviewing more books than usual, but you take your pick. We’ve got a bumper crop of some good, new books.
Well, what’s in Bird’s Bird’s-eye? Good question.
He has a nice panorama of how we approach Paul: persecutor, missionary, theologian, pastor and martyr. Then he has a nice chp on Paul’s conversion, the various stories that come to play in Paul’s own story and theology, a sketch of Paul’s letters (just the right length, too), a wonderful summary of Paul’s gospel and his eschatology and his christology, and then two nice chps on ethics and spirituality.
This is a book that I will be recommending all the time.