Framing Paul

Theological Studies
"Campbell's breadth, methodological insight, and implications for other issues in Pauline studies make this a valuable book."

Journal for the Study of The New Testament Booklist
"This detailed book analyses and applies the available, and often under-used, evidence in a fresh way. . . . Framing Paul cannot be ignored."

L. Ann Jervis
— Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
"In most generations there are those rare scholars willing to go back to fundamentals, to rethink and reorganize what other scholars have come to take for granted or have not bothered to think through. Our scholarly generation owes Douglas Campbell hearty thanks for this book which, among other things, does the hard work of clarifying the chronology and historical context of Paul's letters. Campbell's transparent and rigorous thought is seen here at its best. All historical-critical interpreters of Paul's letters will need this book; any serious reader of Paul will benefit from it."

Edward Adams
— King's College London
Campbell, the author of one of the most brilliant and controversial books on Paul's soteriology ever written, here brings his immense intellectual rigor and extraordinary capacity for fresh thinking to the subject of Pauline chronology. The result is another tour de force."

David G. Horrell
— University of Exeter
"Having worked on Pauline chronology for many years, Douglas Campbell here provides a major synthesis. Building fundamentally on the work of John Knox, Campbell sets out a chronological framework for the Pauline letters, ten of which are judged authentic, using only the evidence from the letters and deliberately leaving Acts aside. At once brilliant, bold, provocative, maddening, Campbell's work will require careful attention, not least because of his insistence that the chronological framing of the letters matters — and crucially so — for any responsible historical interpretation of Paul."

Michael J. Gorman
— St. Mary's Seminary and University
"Campbell's careful, step-by-step arguments about the chronology, contexts, interconnections, and coherence of Paul's letters — apart from Acts — need to be considered seriously, and their potential implications thought through carefully, by all students of Paul."

John Barclay
— Durham University
"Once again Doug Campbell sets the cat among the pigeons! Through careful argumentation, laced with a mass of radically new suggestions, he builds an original case for a ten-letter corpus of authentic Pauline letters in a historical sequence never before proposed. All Pauline scholars, whether convinced or not, will need to give this book the careful attention it deserves."

Alexandra Brown
— Washington and Lee University
"A sharp, imaginative, painstaking study. . . . Like a puzzle master, Campbell fits together clues large and small to form a compelling whole. . . . To take Campbell's disciplined analysis seriously may mean, for some, to reframe Paul rather dramatically. But to ignore his argument is to miss an opportunity to check accumulated habits and prejudices that may, for a host of intellectual and theological reasons, `frame' unjustly Paul's actual, complicated, exigency-driven correspondence."

Bible Today
"Campbell proposes a fresh and challenging chronological and biographical "framework" for Paul's authentic letters. . . . The erudition and lucid argumentation of this study make it a big plus for anyone attempting to understand in depth Paul's biography and the context of his writings."

Choice
"Carefully argued, attentive to key literature, and valuable for a chronology of Paul's letters. . . . Recommended."

Methodist Recorder
"Future studies of Paul will have to reckon with Campbell's detailed, careful sifting of the evidence."