In this third installment of my ongoing series of reviews and recaps of Dunn’s newest volume Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity I will examine the beginning of chapter thirty-nine. This chapter focuses on the first century sources within the NT itself. This post will cover §39.1-2a.
Dunn begins this chapter by citing Helmut Koester‘s remark that in order to reconstruct the historical developments of early Christianity, the student “must learn from the outset to understand the writings of the earliest period within their proper historical context.” This task requires the reader to do his/her homework with a critical and objective perspective. In regard to the number of sources available to a historian of early Christianity, there are many and most of these can be dated to the first century CE. Dunn notes that there are a variety of approaches when it comes to drawing upon these sources…
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