Although relatively brief, Philippians is one of the most interesting and beloved of Paul's undisputed epistles. In Philippians and Philemon, Bonnie Thurston makes a convincing case that canonical Philippians is as Paul wrote it, one letter. Although there is not enough specific evidence to "name names," she suggests a number of possible audiences. A translation conforming as closely as possible to the original Greek is provided, along with a careful analysis of the language of the letter that yields insights into the context and theological underpinning of this epistle.

The...

First and Second Timothy and Titus have for many years borne the collective title "The Pastoral Epistles." Both their style and their content make it difficult to locate them within the corpus of Pauline letters, and recent scholarship most often considers them pseudonymous, works that imitate Paul's letters but apply the apostle's teaching to the concerns of a later time, two or more decades after Paul's death.

The Pastorals differ from Paul's own letters in being addressed to single individuals, coworkers of Paul who have been placed in charge of particular churches--Timothy...

Scarcely any book of the New Testament (with the possible exception of Revelation) is so perplexing as the Letter to the Hebrews." Not really a letter, but a sermon with some features of a letter added to it, not really by its putative author, Paul, but by an anonymous Christian who wrote some of the most elegant Greek in the Bible, not really addressed to the "Hebrews," but to Christians, probably in Rome 'this is the work that Alan Mitchell explains in this commentary.

Many scholars have written fine commentaries on Hebrews, and Mitchell stands on their shoulders, noting where he...