The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation

Sure to be a standard resource for scholars in the field, this book, with its accessible style and wealth of information, can be profitably read by a wide range of students as well as by interested general readers. Arguing that all Pauline interpretation depends significantly upon the ways in which readers formulate their own images of the apostle, the author posits that John Chrysostom, the most prolific interpreter of the Pauline epistles in the early church, exemplifies this phenomenon. She brings together Chrysostom's copious portraits of Paul-of his body, his soul, and his life circumstances-and for the first time analyzes them as complex rhetorical compositions built upon well-known conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Two appendices offer a fresh translation of Chrysostom's seven homilies de laudibus sancti Pauli and a catalogue of color plates of artistic representations that graphically represent the author/exegete dynamic this study explores. The author is Associate Professor of New Testament at The Divinity School and Acting Chair of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature in the Division of the Humanities, The University of Chicago.

Amazing!