The Origin of I Corinthians
New Testament students will welcome the renewed availability of this excellent text, now revised and reissued in an attractive and durable format.
In a major work of New Testament scholarship Dr. Hurd’s aim has been to throw light on the meaning of 1 Corinthians by examining in detail the theological debate out of which it arose. This leads him to an investigation of the whole range of St. Paul’s relations with the Corinthian Christians, and he deduces their attitude to the gospel Paul preached to them by reconstructing the dialogue which led up to the epistle as we now have it. Questions of the relationships between the Pauline epistles and the chronology of acts are naturally important here, and receive detailed treatment.
Dr. Hurd challenges traditional conceptions of the state of affairs in the Corinthian church which prompted the writing of the epistle, and he has new light to throw on Paul’s preaching as it developed with the maturing of his own thought and as a result of his experience of the way his preaching affected the communities he evangelized.
This is a book which no student or teacher of the New Testament will be able to ignore. Though based on accepted methods of exegesis and taking fully into account the findings of all important workers in the field, it opens up new ideas on Pauline studies, and indeed on New Testament studies as a whole.
Dr. Hurd is Professor of New Testament, Trinity College, Toronto.