This collection of 22 essays is a substantially reworked version of a volume originally published in 1991 under the title New Testament Criticism and Interpretation. According to the editors, it includes ‘many of the previous essays (updated and in some instances completely rewritten) as well as a few new contributions’ (ix).

The purpose of the book is to provide orientation to the major disciplines and issues in contemporary academic interpretation of the NT. The chapters are relatively short, written in an accessible style (sometimes bordering on ‘chatty’) and most chapters include a worked example, illustrating the discussion from a particular biblical text.

This collection is perhaps a little more self-consciously conservative and rather more introductory than similar volumes previously published, such as I. H. Marshall (ed.) New Testament Interpretation (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1977) and J. B. Green (ed.) Hearing the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), but will complement the contributions of these earlier volumes. Contributors include well established scholars such as J. Polhill (on ‘Interpreting the Book of Acts’), G. Osborne (on ‘Redaction Criticism’), Darrell Bock (on ‘Form Criticism’), and Thomas Schreiner (on ‘Interpreting the Pauline Epistles’) as well as younger scholars such as T. Wilder (on ‘Pseudonymity and the New Testament’).

The bibliographies at the end of each chapter are representative of the range of modern scholarship and are generally well chosen. Substantial endnotes, also located at the end of each chapter, provide further bibliographical details and interaction with scholarship, though with all the standard disadvantages (in my view) of the endnote format.

This is a very useful collection of essays which engages important issues in contemporary NT studies from a believing scholarly perspective. It can be recommended highly, particularly to students.

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