Pauline Parallels

Book excerpt: The Pauline Parallels has been redesigned and revised in order to provide an improved practical tool for students seeking to understand the Pauline corpus of letters. In his letters, Paul echoes the structure of the common letter, he employs rhetorical devices, and he often repeats themes and images. The Pauline Parallels provides a ready, efficient, comprehensive way to study the letters structurally, formally, and thematically by gathering relevant passages from all the letters onto the page or folio for immediate comparison. The Pauline Parallels is the analog for the Pauline letters of a gospel parallels.The Pauline Parallels is a sequential presentation of each of the ten chief letters attributed to Paul: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon. Each letter is divided into sense units or paragraphs of discourse; these paragraphs, as they are designated, are numbered consecutively from the salutation of Romans to the closing remarks of Philemon. Paragraph numbers are then used as the basis of the presentation of the materials in the Pauline Parallels and function effectively in a system of cross-referencing.