The author provides extensive exegesis of two of St. Paul’s epistles that offer a cosmic Christology. Dr. Crockett argues that while many have interpreted this view of Jesus as one derived from Hellenistic influences, it may be explained more directly by concepts found in the core of Hebrew scriptures.  He focuses on the Adamic and Davidic royal ideologies. These each contain a thoroughly Jewish cosmic vision of promises made by God before St. Paul used them in his writings, Crockett maintains. Summing up his thesis (p. 174-5), he writes “The use of Jewish royal ideology does not mean that Jewish Wisdom or Greco-Roman categories are completely absent from the cosmic Christology of Colossians and Ephesians, but it does suggest that these categories may not provide the same explanatory power as Jewish royal ideology.”

The reader should be warned that this is very much like the published version of a doctoral thesis. Each chapter has a lucid point by point enumeration of the arguments to be offered and an equally compact summary at chapter’s end to review what has been proven.  There are multiple footnotes on virtually every page and the footnotes average 5 lines each, when not also longer. The author answers questions an average reader would not have asked. There is an embarrassingly strong strain of polemic argument against Geurt van Kooten’s work because the Dutch scholar had promoted a Hellenist author rather than St. Paul for these two epistles. Refutation of Kooten is overly burdened with argumentative suppositions. In sum, this reflects the rite of passage many of us in academia have suffered. Although necessary, it makes for difficult reading.

The Baptist confessional trust in Scripture permeates this book but is cogently presented. There can be no doubt that the author respects the Bible as the Word of God and is reluctant to cede its composition to mundane motivations or non-biblical influences. He manifests his command over verse and the biblical languages with impressive familiarity. However, I think he was ill served by his editors who allowed him to reproduce Hebrew and Greek passages in the original languages without either transliteration or translation. Consider this sentence (p. 161), “In that case, the genitive τη̑ς γη̑ς functions epexegetically to κατώτερα.” This sort of formulation for proof of a point problematizes his conclusions for any but highly specialized readers.

All in all, this slender volume contributes a great deal of erudition to the never-ending debate over the sources for Pauline Christology. The issues are clearly defined, and the bibliography is extensive. As is proper to a scholarly effort, even those who differ from the author will see his conclusions have considered the alternatives. Dr. Crockett has earned his place among scholars today.