Review - "The Jewish World around the New Testament"

Richard Bauckham's book "The Jewish World around the New Testament" is a large (500 pages) collection of 23 essays from 30 years of research. The introduction begins like this:

Most New Testament scholars would now agree that the New Testament writings belong wholly within the Jewish world of their time... Their God is unequivocally the God of Israel and of the Jewish Scriptures that they treat as self-evidently their own. Jesus for them is the Messiah of Israel and the Messiah also for the nations only because he is the Messiah of Israel.

There is so much in this book that is helpful in shedding light on our understanding of the New Testament through better understanding Jewish though of the time; I'll mention some of the highlights from my perspective:

Chapter 4 on the Rise of Apocalyptic was facinating and really helpful; the idea is presented that Prophetic gave way to Apocalyptic in particular because it became apparent that the return from exile had not really come about, and there needed to be another way to convey God's involvement in the world. Bauckham is very clear on this in a number of his essays - the expected signs of return from exile (aka New Exodus) most certainly hadn't come about in the second temple period. This essay probes both the historical question of the rise of Hasidic apocalyptic as well as its theological legitimacy.

Chapter 12 is an essay called "The Parting of the Ways: What Happened and Why" - obviously regarding the reasons for the eventual separation between Judaism and Christianity. Bauckham is not content with the popular models regarding this, and he also thinks that there were different reasons for this happening inside Palestine than outside. In Palestine, he sees the Bar Kochba revolt (in the 130's AD) as a primary factor; namely that the Christians could not participate in their fellow Jews' attempts to rebuild the Temple. There's so much useful thinking contained in this essay regarding the Christian understanding of the Temple - it also helped me think some more about how Christians might approach Ezra/Nehemiah.

Chapter 17, "What if Paul had Travelled East rather than West?" is a clever piece of speculation that manages to throw enormous light on the Jewishness of Paul's missionary journeys, and his reasons (mainly regarding concentrations of Diaspora Jews) for going to certain cities. Given the amount of talk there has been about strategic church planting based on the evidence in Acts, I think it would be helpful if the "missional" crowd could have a read of this essay.

There is some specific interaction with N.T. Wright - the controversy around Wright's "still in exile" views is presented as part of the introduction to Chapter 19, "The Restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts". This is an amazing essay; it most definitely casts the book of Acts in an uncommon light, and Bauckham must surely be correct that this is a dominant theme in Acts. I think this essay alone would have been worth the book price for me.

There are many other essays that I found useful, particularly "Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism" and "The Relevance of Extra-Canonical Jewish Texts to New Testament Study", which takes James 4:13-5:6 as an example. I hadn't really seen the prophetic/apocalyptic aspect to James before.

The thinking contained within this book is radically different from that which seems pervasive in the church at a popular level - the church needs to hear what some of these scholars are presenting! There are some challenges in seeing that happen. I thoroughly recommend this book, provided you're OK with reading academic-style papers, and as long as you have some basic understanding of extra-biblical writings.