Gary Will's 'What Paul Meant'

This book will not inform you that the Mayan word for 'day' was 'kin' or explain Hubble's Law, what it will do is bring the reader to a vista of a worldview occluded for many today, and of a man who met the resurrected Christ -a view across the greatly interesting expanse of the life of the Apostle of Jesus Christ. This perspective is one we may lack even with decades of reading the New Testament casually, and even with faith.

Gary Wills published this book in 2006. Paul's confirmed letters-seven of the thirteen in the New Testament, were sent to the ekklesia (churches) within 20 years of the crucifixion of The Lord Jesus Christ. They are the first published works of the New Testament preceding even the books of the gospel by decades. Gary Will's book illuminates ideas about the circumstances in which the letters were written, and necessarily of the life of Paul. That is an excellent investment of time and thought for the faithful and even for those cultured despisers of belief.

If the New Testament was written by men, and if the books are what remain of fragments of more works, of historical captures of the oral history nature of the culture, Biblical scholarship investigating the order, manner and composition of that writing-not simply considerations and comparisons of books selected for inclusion in the new Testament and those left out, we may find the knowledge increases our faith in the grace of God allowing mortal man to experience some of the light of the revelation of God as Jesus Christ-the Messiah and convey it to future generations through the experience and writing of mortal man.

Paul encountered Jesus Christ personally-perhaps several times, in his resurrected, glorified body. His own descriptions differ from those recorded in the Book of the Acts. The Book of Acts was written perhaps quite a bit after Paul's letters and may be a historical capture of knowledge of events 'as told by' for posterity.

This book of discovery of 'What Paul Meant' brings the reader to experience the live context of what Paul meant in writing letters to several groups of believers that met in home churches as equals without rank more or less as part of working life mission as an Apostle of Jesus Christ.