Letters and Homilies for Jewish Christians: Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on Hebrews, James & Jude - Bible Study Guide for Small Groups & Personal Devotion

The Trilogy is a masterpiece for the aggressive God seeker. Individually, the volumes are superb; however only in the set do you get the grit and substance of the range and amplitude of the earliest churches in time and place, and among specifically Jewish temple Christians & `distant' Gentile grafts back in to the vine of God's grace.The "Letters and Homilies" under Witherington's masterful intellect describe the churches of men struggling to comprehend the unified essence of Jesus teachings to accomplish the one Church of Christ. The cultural chasms among the new believers have been underappreciated in our own time. In one generation, individuals of fierce cultural differences are witnessed to become unified under the one ideal of Christianity. There is no modern parallel to look back upon to compare the magnitude of the attraction to Jesus `cult' that lives on to this day.As to the trilogy, a straight through read is simply too daunting I think. I took a year and a half to complete the 3. Reading the entire trilogy is a different experience then the individual books. After thinking through it, the Witherington's approach to consider the specific natures of the audiences that heard these letters is profound. In total, the multi-authored Jesus message is amazingly and consistently coherent as the tiller of Christian ideals. The NT will never be the same to me after this slice from Witherington. I can hear a verse, and I can recall the context, the visuals, and sometimes the smells of the original as it was spoken.As individual books, they are an effective commentary of great depth. A negative is that for some passages, the commentary feels pedantic for lack of a better word. Not every verse is spring loaded for meaning. Witherington is a main stream Protestant church theologian. He leans towards analogy over literal interpretations. The reader will recognize this departures from your own theological understanding and you will decide veracity as you will. There's no `rapture' theology with Witherington. There is high order translation skill given Witherington's application of state of the art increasing knowledge of 1st century Greek in context.