New Boundaries in Old Territory exhibits a reformulation of the boundaries of New Testament Studies to bring literary, rhetorical, and social science strategies into the center of research and interpretation. These essays display the development of Robbins’ groundbreaking Socio-Rhetorical Criticism, which evaluates New Testament texts in their Jewish and Hellenistic-Roman environments. The innovative vision of Socio-Rhetorical Criticism challenges the interpreter to widen the intertextual boundaries to include the Mediterranean world in which early Christians lived, to widen the social and cultural boundaries to include customs, behavior, and attitudes of people in Mediterranean society, and to widen the limiting perspectives of contemporary ideological boundaries. – (back cover)
This collection of essays by Vernon Robbins
will provide an invaluable resource to scholars wishing to assess the contribution
which Socio-Rhetorical Criticism is currently making to the development of
New Testament Studies. It raises important
questions about the ways in which literary texts interact with the cultural
forms and institutions of their world and offers interesting new perspectives
into the Gospels. – John Riches,
Vernon Robbins has been one of the pioneering
voices in Markan studies for the past twenty years. To have most of
his important essays on this gospel available in one collection is a real
advantage. Even more, he has developed the use of Socio-Rhetorical Criticism
as an appropriate method for understanding the gospel in its historical, social,
and rhetorical context. This method has become one of the most important and
promising, competing for attention today. David Gowler’s introduction to Robbins’ work is thorough and
places it in the broader context of New Testament interpretation. – Bernard
Brandon Scott, Phillips Graduate Seminary