THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF PETER
By Larry R. Helyer
Apollos (IVP). 329 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978 1 844 746 002
Written out of the IVP Academic stable, you expect this to be a scholarly work and it does not disappoint.
The author has brought together the wide range of biblical material where Peter, fisherman, disciple of Jesus and apostle, has left his weighty signature. Probably, after Paul and John, Peter has contributed most to the New Testament corpus. Mark’s Gospel, if actually Peter’s voice, his letters and the Acts content, is summarised and delivered in both an easy-to-read narrative style, but also with a rigorous engagement with primary and secondary sources, textual questions and contemporary scholarship.
Discussions
Those who want to chew it over are helped by discussions at the end of each chapter as well as further reading. So it might do service as a primer for a church Bible study group — although I would be mightily impressed if any church took it on for that purpose! Such is the density of material covered and the sophisticated theological reflections, that it may be better suited for serious undergraduate level group discussion.
Back to the text
I actually enjoyed this comprehensive, one-stop-shop treatment. A case could be made for reading it before more extensive engagement with specific, biblical Petrine material. It shows the reader what questions to be asking by providing that overview. It also had the happy knack, in my experience, of raising eyebrows on first reading and prompting me to pick up the biblical text itself and check it out. Like a famous painting which you think you know well, this is a book which forces you to go back to the original picture and see for yourself. It’s not easy to make an overtly academic treatment flow well on the page. Our author pulls it off in a masterly way. But you must be the judge of that.
Peter Baker,
minister, Highfields Church, Cardiff;
from June, minister, Lansdowne Baptist Church, Bournemouth
