(Part 1)

JBTM Book Reviews
133
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A great advance in the book comes in the nature of the practice and written work in each
chapter. Traditional grammars emphasize translation from Hebrew to English in the written
work. Some will include sections of English to Hebrew translation. Cook and Holmstedt
move yet a step further by asking the student to create Hebrew phrases and sentences on
their own. In addition a good number of assignments ask the students to converse with
one another in Biblical Hebrew. Some may find this kind of productive, compositional work
problematic. The authors have included this kind of work here, however, because of the great
benefit in such work for the acquisition of language as shown by even a cursory familiarity
with the work in second language acquisition (SLA) theory.
Beginning Biblical Hebrew enters exciting and largely untapped areas of Hebrew pedagogy.
Many teachers of Biblical Hebrew will be uncomfortable and perhaps even opposed to the
pedagogy contained in the book. On the other hand, many will feel that the authors did not
go far enough in creating a textbook that takes full advantage of the work being done in
other communication learning approaches such as Total Physical Response, for example.
This textbook advances pedagogy, and likely the discussion concerning language pedagogy to
such a degree, however, that we can forgive any particular shortcomings.
- Todd Borger, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina
The Chosen People: Election, Paul and Second Temple Judaism. By A. Chadwick Thornhill.
Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015. 288 pages. Paperback, $35.00.
A. Chadwick Thornhill (PhD, Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary) is chair of theological
studies and assistant professor of apologetics and biblical studies for Liberty University
School of Divinity in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Chad Thornhill in The Chosen People seeks to discover “how Jewish authors spoke of
election and how this background knowledge relates to Paul” (16). First, he examines the
Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls for references to election. Next,
he compares those texts with selected Pauline texts to determine whether they influences
the apostle’s view of election. Did Paul see election as divinely determined or did Paul
base election on human responsibility? Thornhill concludes that Judaism understood that
God elected Israel, but also that the true people of God were those Jews who individually
chose to obey the Torah and the stipulations of the covenant. This literature shaped Paul’s
understanding of election. Thornhill contends that Paul’s view of election was a both/and
perspective of divine initiative and human responsibility (211ff).