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Does anyone know of a critical review of or response to these books. I have only found one rather negative one, by Price, but everyone else seems to be full of praise. He is apparently a very respected scholar. How much can he be trusted?

Sea

Have you read it? If so, what did you think?

Asking for reviews of reviews is a tad disconnected from the original subject.

squiz

No I haven't read it. I am looking for pointers to scholarly reviews and not "reviews of reviews".

Toto

The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) (or via: amazon.co.uk)

I don't think that NT Wright is so much a respected scholar as a respected religious leader. You don't find academics getting critical with religious leaders - there's no percentage.

You can read Wright for yourself. Lots of soaring rhetoric, much of which tends to fall apart if you try to figure out what it means.

DCHindley

You could try the Review of Biblical Literature (RBL) website. I found reviews of the following books by N T Wright:

Evil and the Justice of God
Wright, N. T.
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006
Reviews: 1 Review by D. A. Carson, published 4/23/2007

Paul: In Fresh Perspective
Wright, N. T.
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005
Reviews: 2 Reviews by
Seyoon Kim, published 6/17/2006
Valerie Nicolet Anderson, published 6/17/2006

The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
Wright, N. T.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999
Reviews: 1 Review by Susan Lochrie Graham, published 3/12/2001

The Resurrection of the Son of God
Wright, N. T.
Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003
Reviews: 2 Reviews by
Pieter G R De Villiers, published 12/11/2004
Michael R. Licona, published 6/19/2004

What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?
Wright, N. T.
Grand Rapids; Cincinnati: Eerdmans; Forward Movement, 1997
Reviews: 1 Review by Mary C. Orr

RBL reviews are usually very good, and offered by folks who are bona-fide biblical critics. I think only one of these is in the "trilogy" you speak of, but it might give you a feel for how N T Wright is received in scholarly circles.

DCH

God Fearing Atheist

There are a couple critical reviews of TRotSoG in The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus (one by James Crossley, IIRC). PM me if you'd like the PDFs.

Steven Carr

WRIGHT
'The way in which Luke has told central story of this chapter (Luke 24) invites us to compare and contrast it with Genesis 3....Following Jesus’ astonishing exposition of scripture, they come into the house; Jesus takes the bread blesses it, and breaks it, “and their eyes were opened, and they recognized him” (the Greek is very close to the Septuagint of Genesis 3:7).'

'In framing his gospel narrative m this way, Luke has given us a historical version of Psalms 42 and 43.'

Wright on the resurrection

WRIGHT
'First, we note the strange silence of the Bible in the stories. Up to this point, all four evangelists have drawn heavily upon biblical quotation, allusion and echo. But the resurrection narratives are almost entirely innocent of them. '

CARR
Well, there you are.

If it suits Wright, he has no problem finding Biblical quotations, allusions and echoes in the resurrection narratives.


But if he wants to say the opposite, for apologetic purposes, those narratives then become almost entirely innocent of Biblical quotations, allusions and echoes.

It all depends what he thinks will persuade his audience, a thought process that leads Wright to evntually writing things like this 'When Mark says that the women ‘said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid,’ he does not mean they never said anything to anyone.'

Wright also uses some very strange metaphors.

On page 368 of 'The Resurrection of the Son of God', the Bishop of Durham, NT Wright claims Paul used a metaphor of putting one house on top of another to describe how the earthly body would be transformed into the resurrected body.


And that the new 'house' came from Heaven, but was made of the material in the old 'house', but transformed in some manner.

Presumably in the way you transform your old clothes by having 'a new and larger suit of clothes to be put on over the existing ones'.

I am not joking. This is what one of the world's top Christian scholars says , in all seriousness.

Who transforms their house by putting a new house on top of the old one, somehow using the material of the old one to make the new one?

Who wears two jackets, and claims he has changed his old jacket by putting 'a new and larger' jacket over the top of his old jacket?

Let us assume that Paul's metaphors were designed not to be nonsense.

You take off old clothes. You put on new clothes.

You leave one house. You move to another house.

Clearly Paul is teaching that Jesus left his old body behind and moved to a new body.

This is so obvious that Wright has to claim that Paul said we put one house on top of another house , and when we get new clothes, we just put them on top of the old ones.

The only time you put one house on top of another is when you are building a house of cards, and that is what Wright does when he interprets the Bible.

squiz

In this link he claims to be using his own historical method.
Does anyone know anything about this method of his? Is it something accepted by secular (ie. non-NT) historians?

Steven Carr

His method is to use clairvoyance to read the minds of anonymous people 2000 years ago.


Matthew 28:17 says ’some doubted’, even after allegedly seeing the resurrected Jesus, and allegedly seeing all the proofs the resurrected Jesus supposedly gave.


Wright writes ‘Equally, Matthew, like the others, describes a Jesus who comes and goes, appears and disappears, and is doubted at the very end by some of his close and obedient associates….’ (page 646, of the Resurrection of the Son of God)

What was there to doubt, when the risen Jesus had gone out of his way to prove his resurrection?


Wright assures us that Matthew did not mean to imply that there were any splits or disunity. How Wright knows that is beyond me, but if you want to fill a 700-page book , you need an awful lot of speculation to fill up the pages.

Wright announces ‘We can be sure however that this strange comment would not have occured to anyone telling this story as pure fiction….’ (page 643)

Suffice it to say that Wright gives no sources, or methodology, or any way of testing his claim that we can be ’sure’ that it is not ‘pure’ fiction. (If not pure fiction, is it not at least partly fiction?)

How can we be sure?

Wright never gives any arguments for his certainty, or any proofs of his ability to think himself into the mind of an anonymous person of 2,000 years ago and know for sure what would have occurred to that anonymous person and what would not have occurred to him.

I guess we will have to take the announcements of a Bishop of Durham as 'sure' while being certain that the people closest to Jesus would have doubted, as described in Matthew 28:17, despite being shown proofs by the Son of God Himself.

If people can doubt even proofs given by Jesus, then why do we have no choice but to take whatever a Bishop of Durham says as 'sure'?

DCHindley

"Historical method" differs widely even between secular historians. Just look at the points of view of "reconstructionist" (old school historians, who believe we can objectively reconstruct the actual events of the past), "constructionist" (progressives/liberal critics who use social theory as models for the reconstructions), and "deconstructionist" historians (who are interested in how the source's own POV has influenced their interpretation of historical evidence), in Alun Munslow's book Deconstructing History (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Routledge, 1997).

IMHO, biblical critics have always applied, and have generally been granted, "special case" applications of secular historical method. That is, they give themselves wiggle room that appears to me to inject an awful lot of subjectivity into the interpretive process. This is a sin of both traditionalists (generally, faithful and well-meaning Christians who are prepared to accept supernatural causes in their interpretations in order to accommodate their faith positions) and the more "liberal" critics (like Crossan and Mack, who apply a healthy dose of relatively speculative social theory into their interpretations and end up with modern looking and thinking historical figures).

A good while ago there was a "Historical Jesus Materials & Methodology" seminar on Yahoogroups in which John Dominic Crossan discussed his methodology in Birth of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk). When I read up on his method, I was really surprised how subjective it was, and kind of ripped into him in the ensuing discussion.

DCH