Spring 2020 · Vol. 49 No. 1 · pp. 88–90
Book Review
Philippians
Gordon Zerbe. Believers Church Bible Commentary. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2016. 352 pages.
Gordon Zerbe’s latest book on Paul’s epistle to Philippians is a well-rounded and easily accessible commentary that accomplishes the task as set out in the series foreword: a “new tool for basic Bible study,” intended for “all who seek more fully to understand the original message of Scripture and its meaning for today—Sunday school teachers, members of Bible study groups, students, pastors, and others” (17). The commentary belongs to the Believers Church Bible Commentary series, so it will surprise few that it presents an interpretation of Paul’s message largely consistent with an Anabaptist theological tradition.
To prepare the reader for a theme Zerbe will repeatedly turn to in succeeding pages, he prefaces the book with a personal anecdote from his time spent as visiting professor at Silliman University Divinity School in Dumaguete, Philippines. During one of Zerbe’s classes, a student interjected mid-lecture, “The problem with Paul is that he never renounces his Roman citizenship.” It was then that Zerbe understood the complicated relationship between Paul and the Filipino church. In times past, ruling European colonial elites of the Philippines used Paul’s statements on governance and citizenry to promote acquiescence to political structures that were inherently unjust or oppressive to the local population.
This experience and others prompted Zerbe to focus his commentary on elucidating the political message within Paul’s Philippian epistle, a topic previously visited by Zerbe in his Citizenship: Paul on Peace and Politics (2012). For postcolonial Filipinos, a political statement such as renouncing citizenship in a colonizing empire would have underscored Paul’s solidarity with Philippi. It was a gesture they would have understood and appreciated as the correct response to an oppressive political system. But while these sentiments are not wrong, Zerbe cautions the reader to refrain from such readings of Paul and, instead, come alongside Paul and the Christians of Philippi (with Zerbe’s help), entering into their Roman world, and letting this ancient world speak rather than speaking to it.
The structure of the book is organized to encourage maximum engagement with Paul’s epistle, while still visiting important background topics vital to understanding Paul’s message. The introduction to the commentary is short; the reader does not wade through dense or complicated discussions often found in biblical studies about dating, redaction history, or background. Instead, Zerbe has opted to combine much of the relevant background information with the commentary itself. Zerbe strikes a nice balance of focus on Paul’s text, on the one hand, and, on the other, providing the background information necessary for understanding the epistle. {89}
For the reader who wishes to delve deeper without necessarily visiting the bibliography, Zerbe has appended thirteen short essays on topics important to an understanding of Philippians. Some essays highlight the background and Roman context of the epistle (e.g., “Circumstances of the Messianic Assembly [Church] in Philippi”; “Citizenship, Ancient and Modern”; “Opponents in Philippians”; “Roman Imperial Cult”), while others focus on reading the text itself, sometimes unpacking difficult Greek words (e.g., “Critical Questions regarding Philippians 2:6–11”; “Harpagmos”; “Syzygos”). These three sections—the introduction, commentary, and essays—are cross-referenced, allowing the reader to easily jump between them.
Zerbe locates four themes within Philippians, all of which are important for Paul’s political message: citizenship, partnership, high-low inversion, and joy-gladness. Zerbe argues that Paul relies on the language and imagery of Greek political theory to impress upon his audience that they are members of an alternative political body. As Christians, they are members of a heavenly order that will be fully realized in the eschatological future. The three other mentioned themes all orbit around and within this idea, and Zerbe further explains how these themes operated within Greco-Roman Philippi by discussing the idea of koinonia à la Plato and Aristotle, high-low inversion (i.e., the overturning of status and place in society) in terms of a Roman preoccupation with reputation and social rank, and situates the language of joy-gladness within Greek civil discourse on happiness.
Properly situating Philippians within the literature and ideas of the Greek and Roman milieu raises new questions and opens up new exploratory paths into the letter. It also provides a way to discuss an epistle long known for its paucity of biblical references and allusions (34), a starkness more pronounced when compared to Romans, for example. It is interesting, however, that Zerbe does leave an opening for a more Judean perspective on the epistle by suggesting that the addressees of Philippians were Judean by birth (210). Images and language of high-low inversion and joy-gladness, for example, were developed in Greek and Roman literature, but they also abound in Second Temple period literature and would have been familiar to Paul and the congregation at Philippi. (See many of the lament psalms.) In the Second Temple period high-low inversion also developed into an important motif for describing the principal activity of the kingdom of heaven and the meting out of divine justice in the eschatological age. It can be found in the book of Daniel and, even more pronounced, in Mary’s Magnificat in Luke, where high-low inversion is developed into an essential gospel theme.
Images of joy-gladness, too, are often promoted in eschatological discourse as the proper liturgical response to the work of the messiah {90} and/or divine re-creation. And human responses of joy are often found in Second Temple period literature in contexts describing the rising of the sun and the redemption of God’s creation (e.g., Hymn to the Creator; Jubilees 2; 4Q503; 4Q408). Since Paul’s political discourse sits squarely within his overarching eschatological vision of the future—a vision that is thoroughly informed by Scripture—highlighting the biblical sources that informed this eschatology would have provided another theological vein for Zerbe to mine.
At the end of the day, however, one must make choices, and Zerbe has produced a fine work with much to teach us. Laypersons and pastors alike would do well to add it to their theological libraries.
