Anabaptistica
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 2 – Spring 2014
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Patrick Gray. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012. 176 pages. Paperback, $19.99.
It is perhaps timely that Patrick Gray’s book, Opening Paul’s Letters, emerges as the modern letter is gradually declining. In a cultural setting where people now prefer email, text messaging and social networking as their primary means of communication, it is quite feasible that scholars, teachers and pastors will need to try even harder to connect Paul’s letters to these present mediums of communication. Gray’s work seeks to do just that by drawing connections between present-day methods of communicating and their first-century counterparts. In this, he guides contemporary readers to a diligent and careful reading of Paul’s letters, enabling them to understand “what letters were and how they functioned in Paul’s first-century setting” (vii).
Gray’s investigation of Paul’s letters takes an epistolary approach that focuses upon its unique literary type (genre), i.e., the ancient letter, and its corresponding conventions, strategies, and patterns for communicating its message. This approach in genre analysis reads the letters of Paul against the backdrop of a much larg- er epistolary landscape. Readers realize with Paul’s letters, that the literary type is somewhat different than the Gospels or Acts, and thereby, requires a different set of principles and strategies for interpretation. Unlike other ancient literary forms, however, the “letter” is the one type (genre) that is most comparable to our present setting, and this can cause present-day readers actually to “read” Paul’s letters without really reading them (1). By this Gray means that readers constantly make interpretive decisions, even if unconsciously, and can easily fail to account for the different structures of this ancient literary type. Consequentially, they fail to comprehend the intentions and message of the author. For this reason, it is necessary to account for the enormous complexity of historical, social and literary framework within which Paul’s letters exist. Opening Paul’s Letters attempts to make this framework accessible to both beginning and advanced readers of Paul’s letters.
There are many books that aim to orient contemporary readers to Paul’s let- ters, many of which approach this topic by focusing on the author-text dimension of the message, i.e., the factors that led to the author creating the letter. However, Gray’s guidebook is genre-specific, focusing instead on the literary type itself, the structure and conventions used to shape its message and how the letter appears to its readers (their circumstances and expectations of receiving such a letter). This text- reader dimension of the message focuses upon the form, structure and conventions in a letter and investigates how it communicates meaning to the readers, both the intended readers of the first century and those readers who have received it as part of the Scriptures.
In guiding readers seriously to consider Paul’s letters, Gray asserts that they must first come to Paul’s letters and read them as real letters, not as part of a collec- tion of other literary types within a single volume. To do so, contemporary readers need to “know something about the wider world in which . . . [Paul] lived and wrote” (22). The world of Paul’s letters includes historical contexts, such as the influences of both Judaism and Hellenism, the historical conditions of Roman rule, Greco- Roman philosophy and the social construct of first-century life. Also, included here are the literary subtleties of the “letter” genre as well as the expansive use of letters in Greco-Roman society. To refuse to read Paul’s letters against these contextual backdrops is to misread Paul at its core, but additionally, this background illuminates the context from which Paul’s letters should be interpreted (62-3).
A further, necessary context for interpreting Paul’s letters resides in our un- derstanding of Paul’s audiences. Often, letters themselves do not reveal everything necessary to reconstruct the recipients or their particular circumstances. The most difficult part of understanding Paul’s letters is dealing with the reality that moderns are actually “eavesdropping” or listening to a “one-sided conversation” (9-13). For this reason, it is necessary for modern readers diligently to learn as much as possible about the communication setting to read accurately Paul’s message in its intended manner and then to apply it correctly to modern contexts.
Gray also discusses several other issues typically discussed in interpreting Paul’s letters, such as authorship (139-52), smaller literary types (sub-genres or registers; 45-52) and use of the Old Testament (119-38). Gray writes that Pauline authorship does matter in investigating literary genre, particularly in terms of audience expectation and assessment of a letter’s meaning and function within its com- munication setting (140). He surveys the arguments against Pauline authorship of the disputed letters (Ephesians, Colosians, 2 Thessalonians and the Pastorals), the arguments of an inconsistent itinerary between the letters and Acts, arguments of style, and inconsistent theme or theology reflected in the letters, and then surveys the issue of pseudonymous authorship for these letters.
Opening Paul’s Letters is appropriately entitled as a guide to the major issues in the diligent reading of Paul’s letters. It is obvious that Gray writes as teacher who seeks to steer readers to important issues, which are articulately yet concisely stated, so that he or she may come to their own conclusions. Gray targets “new readers” of Paul’s letters, those who are so immersed in the technologies of the twenty-first century, and successfully finds parallels between how these letters were read at inception and how they are now read within the twenty-first century. Furthermore, Gray keenly summarizes general principles of interpreting and then applies them to relevant Pauline texts. In this way, Opening Paul’s Letters is less theoretical and technical; instead, it aims at equipping beginning readers of Paul’s letters to see how these principles are applied to the letters themselves. This book is valuable to any student or reader seeking to situate Paul’s letters within their historical and literary landscape while at the same time connecting with how modern readers may interpret Paul within their own setting.
