Preface
Preface
This work is designed to give a continuous presentation of material which has been delivered in lectures or published piecemeal in written articles over many years.
When I entered on my present appointment in the University of Manchester in 1959, one of the lecture-courses already prescribed in the syllabus for the Honours School of Biblical Studies was entitled “The Missionary Career of Paul in its Historical Setting”. My lectures for this specially congenial course have provided the nucleus of the following chapters. I had not previously been a stranger to Paul’s life and thought, but in the past eighteen years I have devoted more time and attention to this field of study than to any other. I have not attempted to expound Paul’s teaching systematically but rather to treat its main themes in their historical context, as Paul himself had occasion to develop them in his letters.
Year by year since I came to Manchester I have given a public lecture in the John Rylands Library (since 1972 the John Rylands University Library of Manchester). Most of these have dealt with some aspect of Pauline studies. They have subsequently been published in the Library’s Bulletin. The substance of eight of them is reproduced in the following pages: “St. Paul in Rome, 1”, BJRL, March 1964 (Chapters 4, 31 and 32), “St. Paul in Rome, 2”, Autumn 1965 (Chapter 34), “St. Paul in Rome, 3”, Spring 1966 (Chapter 35), “St. Paul in Rome, 4”, Spring 1967 (Chapter 36), “St. Paul in Rome, 5”, Spring 1968 (Chapter 37), “Paul and the Historical Jesus”, Spring 1974 (Chapter 11), “Paul and the Law of Moses”, Spring 1975 (Chapter 18), “Christ and Spirit in Paul”, Spring 1977 (Chapter 12). For permission to reproduce these in revised or adapted form I am indebted to Dr. F. W. Ratcliffe (University Librarian and Director) and Dr. Frank Taylor (Principal Keeper and Editor of the Bulletin).
Acknowledgment is also made to the Editor of The Expository Times for permission to reproduce in Chapter 22 an expanded version of my paper “Paul and the Athenians” which appeared in that journal for October 1976.
A specially grateful expression of indebtedness must be made to my secretary, Miss Margaret Hogg, who with her customary diligence and cheerfulness has typed the whole work and given valuable help with proof-reading and with the compilation of the index. Her beautiful and accurate typescript has made the printer’s task incomparably easier than it would have been if he had been faced with the problem of deciphering my manuscript—a problem which she has tackled with confidence and success.
1977
F.F.B