On Books

I just received a pile of reviews of my book Introducing Paul from IVP-USA. It is always fun to read reviews of your own work and to see what people remember, like, and dislike about it. Generally the reviews are rather good, but sometimes highly amusing. My favourite review is there one where I'm called a "Scottish lecturer in New Testament". Sadly, I shall have to work on my Scottish accent a bit more, perhaps a Shrek marathon will help with Mike Myers as my voice coach. One review, that was quite positive and written from a conservative Reformed perspective had these two detractions: "Bird appears to give preference to a biblical-theological approach to the Scriptures at the expense of systematic theology" and "Bird is less than precise in some of his theological formulations. He fails to explicitly affirm a covenant of works that Adam failed to keep and that Jesus fulfilled as the Last Adam". I have to confess to being guilty as charged on those points, though the first criticism probably explains the existence of the second one! Thank you to all those who the took time to read and comment, pro and con, on that little Paul book.