It is nice to see this in-depth, critical and welcoming review that my fine colleague Professor Judith Lieu has recently published in SBL. The view ends with the following paragraph:
"So, what are those anticipated nonspecialists to make of all this? Hints during the course of the work become explicit in his concluding suggestion that “many of [the] demarcations” of the modern world, between religions, cultures, institutions, “were historically conditioned, perhaps even once useful and helpful in some respects but must be reexamined again and again in terms of their necessity and usefulness” (354). This may surprise few, even if its application to the New Testament is less welcome. Nonetheless, as Markus Vinzent doggedly builds up his body of work into the uncertainties of any rediscovery of the earliest Christian period and writings, scholars in the field cannot avoid taking seriously his analysis, conclusions, and extensive command of patristic literature. The time is long past when his own (and others’) radical rereadings could be dismissed as maverick while “mainstream” scholarship carries on undisturbed."
