One of the reasons why we routinely miss the point of Peter’s explanation of what happened on the day of Pentecost is, I think, that the canonical arrangement of books encourages us to read Acts as the beginning of something new rather than as a direct continuation of what went before. The New Testament opens with four Gospels telling the story of the life of Jesus up to his death and resurrection.

Jamie Davies makes J.

In the second chapter of The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect, Jamie Davies introduces what is effectively a “school” of modern interpreters who have built on J. Louis Martyn’s account of Paul’s apocalyptic thought: Martinus de Boer, Leander Keck, Alexandra Brown, Beverly Gaventa, Douglas Campbell, Susan Eastman, and Lisa Bowens. I will take a similar approach to the previous post, summarising and passing judgment on the work of these scholars as Davies presents it.

Jamie Davies’ book The Apocalyptic Paul: Retrospect and Prospect comes in two parts: a look back down the long road that has led to attempts to assimilate the “apocalyptic Paul” into systematic theologies, and a look forward to see where that road might take us next. I’m not sure how far I’ll get but I will try at least to assess the retrospective journey as Davies describes it in his first three chapters. It strikes me as a fair account, and if anyone is looking for a reliable introduction to the subject, this would be a good place to start.

I asked in the previous post about blaming Bathsheba, “If it was a rape, why isn’t it presented as a rape?” James McGrath asks to the contrary, if we call Amnon’s assault of Tamar “rape,” why do we not apply the same category to David’s sexual encounter with Bathsheba? “Where in the story is Bathsheba complicit? Where is she willing? Where does she give consent?”

James McGrath made this comment in response to my treatment of Bathsheba’s bathing in my previous two posts (see the links below):

I found myself unable to keep reading after you blamed Bathsheba for washing herself after the end of her menstruation as the Law mandates, in a place that should have been private, because according to you she knew the king did not march out with his fighting men, had a vantage point to leer inappropriately, and she knew he would do so and… what?

In response to the last post asking whether David raped Bathsheba a couple of online commentaries defending the rape interpretation were flagged up on Facebook: David’s Rape of Bathsheba and Murder of Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12) by the Theology of Work Project, and