Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians and Romans: Essays and Dissertations

Benjamin Jowett lived two lives: one as a churchman, and the other as a philosopher. As Oxford’s regius professor of Greek, he gave lectures on both Paul’s letters and Plato’s dialogues. During visits to Continental Europe, Jowett met and studied the works of prominent German philosophers. He brought Hegelianism back to England with him, becoming one of Great Britain’s most influential liberal theologians. The Epistles of St. Paul is regarded as one of the seminal works of liberal theology and biblical hermeneutics. In spite of his natural inclinations as someone proficient in Greek, Jowett argued that the meanings of Paul’s letters should not be limited by language and syntax, but by context and history. More conservative theologians objected to Jowett’s extra- textual hermeneutic, but Jowett’s work nevertheless allowed biblical scholars to gain new insights from reading Paul in new ways.

Kathleen O’Bannon
CCEL Staff