It is a little difficult to tell why this volume was published. It was one of a series intended to make classic essays in biblical scholarship accessible to modern students, but William Sanday (1843–1920), though a highly regarded figure, was hardly an innovator in biblical studies, nor are many of these essays, written around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly incisive or original. Sanday's usual style is to discuss general principles of interpretation and exegesis rather than detail, and a slightly ad hominem (though not polemical) style sometimes makes for obscure reading, since one is seeing only one side of a discussion. Methodologically, Sanday was a rather conservative scholar, arguing for a fairly traditional interpretation of Paul and his theology, taking the view that the Synoptic Gospels are a substantially accurate record of the life and teaching of Jesus, and also accepting the historical value of the Book of Acts.
Apart from purely methodological and some fairly popular essays, there are specific treatments, as regards the Gospels, of the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (a theological, rather than critical interpretation), the title 'Son of Man', and the Messianic Secret (Wrede's theory being rejected, as one would expect). A concise survey of New Testament eschatology is quite interesting. Two papers discuss the language spoken by Jesus: Sanday believed the everyday vernacular of Palestine to be Aramaic, and that Jesus did not normally speak Greek, though he may have done on occasions. Good use is made in these papers of the evidence of Josephus for the spoken language of Palestine.
Finally, a group of four papers discusses the Apostolic Council of Acts 15. Three of these argue for the equation of this event with Paul's meeting with the Apostles in Jerusalem as described by Paul in Galatians 2, against the influential theory of Sir William Ramsey that Paul refers to an earlier visit he paid to Jerusalem, mentioned in Acts 11 and (probably) 12. There are strong arguments on both sides, as Sanday admits, but neither he nor Ramsey was prepared to consider a solution to the problem which rejected the historical outline supplied by Acts or the Lukan account of the Council, as many more radical and more recent critics have done. The remaining essay on Acts 15 discusses the text of the Apostolic Decree.
Some students and others might benefit from reading these essays, which help to trace some of the debates of modern biblical scholarship to their roots.
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Top reviews from other countries
LondonGraham
Nineteenth-century perspectives on the Gospels and Paul
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2016