The Faith Of Jesus Christ The Narrative Substructure Of Galatians 31411 Richard B Hays Hays by Richard B. Hays [hays, Richard B.] 9780802849571, 0802849571, B004E0Z4YO instant download after payment.

Although Hays
focuses on a single passage in Paul's Letter to the Galatians (3:1-4:11), he
seeks from the perspective of that analysis to engage one of the most
difficult of all questions concerning Paul the Apostle, whether he had any
coherence to his thought at all, and if he did, where it is to be found. Hays
rejects the available options: that Paul has a single theological principle (like
righteousness by faith) or a specific symbolic framework (like eschatology)
that governs his thought. He offers instead the daring thesis that what
appears explicitly in Paul's arguments is really directed by what seldom
appears explicitly and directly but is always present implicitly, namely the
story of Jesus the Messiah. The book's argument, then, cuts to the very heart of Pauline theology.
Hays's conversation partners, consequently, are not the random set of
scholars who have commented on this passage of Galatians, but those major
figures who have addressed the central themes in Paul's theology that he has
taken on. We find him responding to Bousset, Schweitzer, Bultmann,
Kasemann, Cullmann, Dodd, Beker, Sanders, Via, and Dahl, among New
Testament scholars. More surprising, Hays also joins in conversation with
literary and philosophical figures like Amos Wilder, Steven Crites, William
Beardslee, Northrop Frye, and Paul Ricoeur.

His effort to place his narrative analysis within the framework of
contemporary literary criticism and hermeneutics prepares for the substantial
use he makes of A. J. Greimas's actantial analysis in the heart of his study,
and indicates how Hays's dissertation was distinctive from the beginning
also in the way in which it eschews the customary historical-critical
questions. Although he recognizes the
limited value of such analysis, his own interest is less with the technique of
Paul's discourse than with the deep narrative logic out of which that
discourse emerges and of which it is a fresh expression.