Book Description

The present commentary seeks to be a kind of halfway house between highly technical and popular treatments of Galatians. Its purpose is to make the exposition as user-friendly as possible with only as many technicalities as necessary to accomplish that end. The emphasis of the work is decidedly theological, with attention focused on the salvation historical argument of Paul's letter. Its main target audience includes pastors, students, and Pauline scholars. The exposition assumes a modified form of the "New Perspective" on Paul and Second Temple Judaism as its framework of interpretation, and for this reason a premium has been placed on the letter's historical context as attested by the literature of Second Temple Judaism as well as the Greco-Roman environment. However, far from being inimical to the foundational concerns of the Reformation, this reading of the Galatian letter is fully supportive of the great mottoes of the Reformers themselves: Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, and especially Solus Christus, and all the more as the present work endeavors to honor an oft-neglected slogan of the Reformation, Ad Fontes (to the sources). The previous subtitle, A New Perspective/Reformational Reading, has now been changed to A Reading from the New Perspective in order to underscore the author's appreciation of what has been learned from such scholars as J. D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright, and numerous others.