Story of My Books # 20 - Philippians

Book # 20 was a commentary on Philippians co-authored with my brilliant and bodacious brother Nijay Gupta in the New Cambridge Bible Commentary series.

I wrote chapters 1 and 3, while Nijay wrote chapters 2 and 4.

I think it’s a great book, Nijay and I are a great team, and it is a short, yet surprisingly thorough intermediate commentary on Philippians.

We argue for an Ephesian provenance for Philippians, not Rome! In fact, I think the tide is turning on this one and Ephesus is becoming more popular!!!

Here is something I wrote on Philippians 3:7-9:

Paul was forced by his encounter with Christ to engage in a comprehensive rearranging of the cerebral furniture in his mind and a radical reevaluation of his accomplishments and aspirations. As a result, Paul realized that the Messiah’s faithfulness, his achievement in his death for Israel, was the only grounds for his righteousness and the only thing worth gaining. Paul has only lost what can be considered loss because he has gained something that has surpassing value, namely, knowing the Messiah and his benefits. Everything else is redundant and refuse. Or, we might say, in knowing Jesus as Lord everything else in comparison is about as important as knowing the reproductive habits of plankton.    

That said, there are still some awesome Philippian commentaries out there, see esp. Markus Bockmuehl, Lynn Cohick, Gordon Fee, and Mark Keown.