Two Big books in one Week. 2 Beginning from Jerusalem, J D G Dunn

The first book I read by J D G Dunn was his Unity and Diversity in the New Testament. Then his commentary on Romans in the word series. Those who want a readable and theologically rich reading of Romans (from the "new perspective") won't find much better than the Explanation sections of Dunn's two volume commentary - except Tom Wright's Romans in the New Interpreter's Bible. Then there was his The Parting of the Ways, followed by The Theology of Paul the Apostle, his two books on Galatians and the first volume of his magnum opus on Christianity in the Making, Remembering Jesus - which I am now well through but with a few hundred pages to go! And now this huge weight training resource has landed with a satisfying if intimidating thump on my desk. So finishing the two Dunn volumes over the summer has become an ambition that has every chance of being frustrated - but not if I can help it!

Over the years I've slowly worked through a number of big books on biblical studies - some of them shifting my perspectives, opening up new ways of coming at the biblical revelation, and time and again challenging me to think myself towards a much more reflective and much less predictable take on that wonderful complexity of faithful understanding, critical integrity, prayerful patience and immediate human communication, that, at its best, we call preaching. Brueggemann's Old Testament Theology; W D Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount; N T Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God; Beasley Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God; F F Bruce, Paul. Apostle of the Heart Set Free; Gordon Fee, God's Empowering Presence; Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament - and so many more.(The volume by Bruce is hardly cutting edge now - but it is still one of my favourite books, a tribute to the kind of scholarship that makes a difference to what and how you preach - or so it did for me.)

I'm not qualified to review Dunn's life work, carved and shaped as it is from an enormous accumulation of knowledge - in this volume 1330 pages! I'm just happy to sit at the feet of this Scottish Gamaliel, exiled to Durham, and admire and ponder the work of a virtuoso scholar whose grasp of the field of NT studies is sure and whose treatment is respectful. Today I jumped to a late chapter on Ephesians - which he doesn't think Paul wrote (I'm not so sure) - but there are sentences, footnotes, paragraphs and references that coax you back to the text, to think again - because Dunn is a master at critical appreciation and theological appropriation of text. What more would you want from a NT teacher than that persuasive invitation to go look again.