Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis

by Hans-Josef Klauck

This volume places the New Testament letters squarely in the middle of all the important letter corpora of antiquity. Chapters cover the basic letter formula, papyrus and postal delivery, non-literary and diplomatic correspondence, Greek and Latin literary letters, epistolary theory, letters in early Judaism, and all the letters of the New Testament. Part I of each chapter surveys each corpus, followed by detailed exegetical examples in Part II. Comprehensive bibliographies and 54 exercises with answers suit this guide to student and scholar alike.

Genres: Biblical Studies

539 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Hans-Josef Klauck was a German-born theologian, religious historian, and Franciscan priest. He was Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Reviews

[Anthony Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough and helpful

I’ll mention some strengths and weaknesses. This intro wonderfully introduces the student to the eider world of Greco Roman epistolography. It offers important bibliographies, including source text collections. On the downside, I found some sections a bit laborious and potentially unnecessary. But this is for the reader to decide. For an introduction to NT Epistles that thinks more broadly than the NT itself, this can’t be beat.

The kindle edition is not fantastic, but it is workable. There is no sidebar table of contents in the kindle version and Greek text is sometimes a bit odd, but I could make sense of it.