Into God's Presence: Prayer in the New Testament

Into God's Presence: Prayer in the New Testament. Edited by Richard N. Longenecker. McMaster New Testament Studies. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001. xiii and 292 pages. Paper. $28.00.

The twelve essays offered here present an in-depth overview of prayer in the New Testament and its religious world. Four essays briefly describe "The Setting": prayer in the Old Testament (Christopher R. Seitz), the Greco-Roman World (David E. Aune), in first-century Judaism (Asher Finkel), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eileen M. Schuller). The next four discuss prayer in "Jesus and the Gospels": Luke's Canticles {Stephen Farris), Jesus as example and teacher of prayer (I. Howard Marshall), the Lord's Prayer as model for prayer (N. Thomas Wright), and the names of God and Jesus in Johannine prayers (Andrew Lincoln). The last four essays review the non-Gospel literature: Acts (Joel B. Green), Paul (Richard N. Longenecker), Hebrews to Jude (J. Ramsey Michaels), and Revelation (Richard Bauckham).

I found especially helpful the essays on Greco-Roman prayer, Jesus as model and teacher, and Paul. All of the essays are fitted out with basic English-language bibliographies. A summary article drawing conclusions from the specific discussions would have been helpful. But this is a useful book, clearly written in largely nontechnical language and so open to a wide readership.

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