I’m grateful that Dr. Ben Witherington has taken the time to not only read my book, The Unseen Realm, but also to blog about it. Here is the first installment of his review, which took the form of an interview/exchange with me.
Ben is a well-known New Testament scholar who has made many contributions to biblical studies. In addition to his many books, Ben has been a regular blogger for years — one of those scholars that try to serve the non-specialist, a ministry that, as you all know, is close to my heart.1 Ben and I would of course have our interpretive differences, but he does exactly what I hoped scholars (especially in fields outside Hebrew Bible) would do — read the book through in a thoughtful way. To have a scholar of Ben’s stature enjoy the book and share it with his audience is gratifying.
- In addition to his current blogging site, Ben’s old blog site has a great deal of material interacting with things like Jesus conspiracies, Jesus studies, and general biblical studies. ↩
Nothing but respect for Ben Witherington III! We used his socio-rhetorical commentary heavily in our study of Romans. Glad to see NT scholars of his prestige take an interest in UR. My only problem with UR is that it came out in 2015! There are some really nice commentaries out there that are missing important divine council connections. Hopefully, over the next 20-30 years scholars will incorporate UR into New Perspectives on Gospels, Paul, and Eschatology. That’ll be a really cool time period. Having people like Ben Witherington endorse UR will go a long way in making UR mainstream.