Reviews of Paul's Covert Use of Scripture
"This stimulating book offers fresh insights into why Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians and makes a significant contribution to current debates on Paul's use of Scripture. Highly recommended."
- STEVE MOYISE, Visiting Professor, Newman University, Birmingham
"Enquiry into Paul's use of Scripture is a well-plowed furrow. In this volume, McAuley makes a fresh contribution to this debate by drawing attention to a neglected passage in a neglected epistle. As a consequence, Philippians can now make a contribution, in its own right, to this very important aspect of Pauline hermeneutics."
- ANDREW D. CLARKE, University of Aberdeen
"This is a first-class offering of modern scholarship with no shortcuts. McAuley digs deep into a narrow passage of Scripture and finds unity in Paul's thought and coherence with shafts of prophetic insight found in the Old Testament."
- TONY SARGENT, International Chairman, Elam Ministries Asia; Professor Practical Theology, Olivet University, San Francisco
Blog Reviews
"McAuley has made a valuable contribution to intertextual, or inner-biblical, studies. Among other things, he demonstrates that the apparent cluster of tacit references to the OT in Phil 2:10-16, far from being vague, random, or coincidental, is intentional (246) and "functions as a group of literary allusions that are integral or foundational to Paul's epistolary argument" (243)... McAuley's discussion and analysis of the rhetorical situation of Philippians moves beyond common, and relatively surface, issues such as unity. The result is a deeper understanding of the epistle and Paul's use of OT intertextual quotations and allusions... By proposing the rhetorical situation of Philippians as he has, McAuley is providing an accessible and necessary corrective on suffering for we who are the modern western church... Professors, teachers, and advanced students, as well as those with a developed interest in Philippians and intertextual studies, will find this work lucid, thorough, and valuable."
- DR. JOHN B. MACDONALD, Outreach Canada
Journal Reviews
"McAuley's monograph presents a study of Philippians that is refreshing in that it engages seriously with Paul's Jewish influences in relation to the letter. This is striking due to the recognizable trend in Philippians scholarship playing up the Hellenistic background of the letter. Despite the lack of formal citations in the letter, McAuley calls attention to the presence of numerous scriptural allusions, many of which contribute to the overall argument of the letter... He leans heavily on the influential work of Ziva Ben-Porat, whose 1976 article laid the groundwork for systematically detecting and understanding how allusions are marked by an author and then activated in the process of reading. This section provides a genuine contribution to the study of Paul's use of Scripture, especially as the focus is on developing constraints for discerning scriptural allusion, as opposed to the more often treated study of Paul's scriptural citations. McAuley's unique insight in this section is that the New Testament letter's rhetorical situation (a la Loyd Bitzer) is the matrix that determines how maximally one should draw in content from any proposed allusion (67)... Overall, McAuley's monograph is a much-needed contribution to Philippians scholarship laying a solid groundwork for those wishing to handle appropriately the scriptural allusions in this and other of Paul's letters."
- Review of Biblical Literature/Society of Biblical Literature
"This monograph examines five intertextual allusions in Phil. 2.10-16, making the case that these references form an OT framework behind Paul's thought, developing his argument in the epistle. In order to demonstrate this, McAuley pays particular attention to methodological questions governing how scholars interpret OT quotations or allusions in the NT. Chapters 1 and 2 offer an extensive review of theorists on the use of the OT in the NT, and when discussing what guides how much of the context of the OT text is activated in the echo, he argues that the 'social (rhetorical-contingent) situation' as revealed in the NT text is "the means of constraining intertextual interpretation' (p. 33)...The discussion of Philippians is generally helpful, and the examination of the intertexts is thorough, but it is the methodological discussion that stands out as especially helpful, and McAuley makes a valuable case for the interrelationship between situational rhetoric and intertextuality. The rhetoric of the entire epistle is important for the scholar reconstructing the Philippian situation, but it is the language immediately adjacent to the intertexts that give the rhetorical signals which direct attention to OT contexts, and more attention needed to be given to these. But despite this, it is an important contribution to the discussion of Paul's use of scripture, and it is warmly recommended."
- Journal for the Study of the New Testament
