Witnesses of the Messiah

Rating:
Summary: A Critical Contribution to Biblical Criticism
Review: A tenet common to both genuinely Christian exegesis and redaction criticism - critique of biblical texts as compositional works - is that understanding the human author's perspective and intent is central to reliably interpreting his writings. Stephen Pimentel skillfully exemplifies this tenet in his exposition of Acts. In particular, Mr. Pimentel's diligent yet concise exegesis persuasively presents extensive and textually well-grounded evidence that Luke's perspective excluded any dichotomy of biblical theology and historicity, contrary to the presumption widespread in modern biblical criticism. Mr. Pimentel's work is especially pertinent to the corollary of this presumption, which is that New Testament authors typically compromised historicity for the sake of advancing their theological "agenda." As Mr. Pimentel shows, the text of the New Testament, and in particular Acts, strongly indicates that such a compromise would have been unthinkable to the authors of the New Testament. As Mr. Pimentel shows, these men viewed the New Covenant as culminating a theologically significant and historically real development of God's covenantal relationship with Israel.

Mr. Pimentel's exposition is thorough enough to gratify the formally trained student of Scripture, while remaining highly readable to non-scholars. This exposition principally consists of surfacing the literal "saturation" of Acts in Old Testament subtexts underlying the direct citations and quotations of Old Testament Scripture. As Mr. Pimentel convincingly shows, these pervasive subtexts clearly indicate Luke's insight into the significance of the New Covenant Church: as the covenant community established and advanced by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, the Church is the definitive fulfillment of God's covenantal promises to Israel from Abraham to David. This insight has tremendous religious significance, which Mr. Pimentel ably assists the believing or searching reader to grasp through helpful reflections at the end of each concise chapter. Yet Mr. Pimentel's work has a distinct critical value as well, for the New Testament's message cannot be properly understood apart from an intellectually honest accounting for the authors' perspective of that message.