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Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: an Inquiry Into the Character of Earliest Christianity

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Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: an Inquiry Into the Character of Earliest Christianity 692 REVIEWS threatened: some have 'departed', yet their failure lay not in a docetic or gnostic Christology or morality but in their rejection of the Johannine tradition of revelation and sacramental initiation; it is to this latter that both i John 4: 2 f. and 5: 6-8, the traditional foundation-stones of the 'Christological heresy' theory, point once set against the Johannine background of their language rather than against supposed 'heretical' parallels. At least when we come to Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/42/2/692/1703964 by guest on 01 October 2021 the minor epistles, the threat is rather more of a surrender of the distinctive Johannine tradition through dispersal into the wider Christian movement. The major theological themes of 1 John, discussed in excursuses to avoid disrupting the commentary flow, are also fitted within this framework, reducing to a minimum references to other parallels or suggestions as to the roots of their thought. 'History of religions' parallels, some from Hellenistic Judaism but rather more from Gnostic sources, serve instead to differentiate 1 John (or its supposed opponents) from the latter or to show the direction in which its thought could eventually move. Perhaps reflecting the tradition of this series, rather more attention is paid to linguistic and philological parallels although these are less easily integrated into the overall argument. Inevitably the exegesis will not win complete assent at every point and one could wish many a statement argued or explained more fully; yet that would make the commentary other than it is. What it is is concise, coherent and clear, while also making a distinctive contribution to the understanding of the epistles, and as such it is to be warmly welcomed. JUDITH LIEU Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity. (2nd edn.) By JAMES D. G. DUNN. Pp. xlii + 482. London: SCM Press/Phila- delphia: TPI, 1990. N.p. JAMES DUNN decided to revise his popular textbook (which escaped review in this Journal when it was first published in 1977) before it was translated into German. The changes to the main text are slight because the old pagination had to be retained. But Dunn subjected the book to the rigorous criticism of his Post- graduate Seminar at Durham and has made alterations where style or 'inadvertent sexist language' demanded, or where the argument needed tightening up or expanding and elucidating. The footnotes have been extended and the bibliographies updated. References REVIEWS 693 to the author's own recent work which help to substantiate argu- ments outlined in the text are included. In his new foreword, Dunn justifies the restricted scale of the revision on the grounds that 'There is solidly packed and packaged data which I hope still provides one of the most useful brief introductions ..." (p. xviii). He acknowledges that New Testa- ment studies have altered radically in the years since the first Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jts/article/42/2/692/1703964 by guest on 01 October 2021 edition was published, due largely to the work of such scholars as E. P. Sanders, sociologists such as G. Theissen, and literary critics of the Bible. This last group he dismisses as irrelevant to his task in this book, while acknowledging their validity in other contexts. The work of Sanders and Theissen, while being more germane, because unmistakably historical, could only be discussed and its importance indicated in the new chapter introductions in the foreword, and in the notes and bibliographies. Dunn claims that his concerns in the book are 'thoroughly historical' (p. xvii), yet his motive is also religious, 'I have come to see . that without sufficient diversity, Christian unity will be (heretically) narrow, squeezing out what is also the life of the Spirit and what also expresses the grace of God in Christ' ... (p. xix). It is this motiva- tion which gives the book its driving force—the determination to find the historical Jesus who is the risen and exalted Christ as the unity which finds expression in so many diverse forms—but which is also its main drawback. With Sanders and Theissen (and even the literary critics), New Testament scholarship has moved on into a world of broader-based scholarship. This book is for Chris- tian students of the New Testament, pursuing a Christian quest. As such it continues to be a valuable introduction. CLARE DRURY The New Testament in Early Christianity. La reception des ecrits neotestamentaires dans le christianisme primitif. Edited by JEAN-MARIE SEVRIN. Pp. xv + 406. (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, 86.) Leuven University Press/Peeters, 1989. FB2.500. THIS book contains the papers given at the Colloquium Biblicum Lovaniense in 1986. It is a distinguished collection, containing much careful and detailed research, clustered for the most part around the title theme, though often in practice addressing a diffuse range of classic problems in the study of the New Testa- ment and early Christianity according to the now traditional crit-.
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