New Testament Christological Hymns: Exploring Texts, Contexts, and Significance by Matthew E. Gordley (review)

This book is in many ways an atypical examination of the NT’s christological hymns. It neither considers one hymn in splendid isolation from others nor considers one strand of a hymn’s cultural milieu to the exclusion of others nor collapses form-critical concerns with preexisting materials into the examination of the hymns. Instead, Matthew E. Gordley, informed by his previous studies of early Christian hymnody, aims to interpret the hymns and assess their implications for understanding early Christian worship based on how the hymns uniquely reflect ancient hymnody within their own cultural (both Jewish and Roman), literary, and theological contexts.

Gordley covers several preliminary matters in chap. 1 such as how hymns fit within early Christian worship, the critical approach taken up in his work, and a response to problems that have typically plagued NT scholarship’s study of hymns. G. pushes back against critics such as Ralph Brucker (“‘Songs,’ ‘Hymns,’ and ‘Encomia,’ in the New Testament?,” in Literature or Liturgy? Early Christian Hymns and Prayers in Their Literary and Liturgical Context in Antiquity [ed. Clemens Leonhard and Hermut Löhr; WUNT 2/363; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014] 1–14), Stephen Fowl (Philippians [Two Horizons New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005] 110), and Michael Peppard (“‘Poetry,’ ‘Hymns,’ and ‘Traditional Material’ in New Testament Epistles or How to Do Things with Indentations,” JSNT 30 [2008] 319–42), who question the viability of detecting hymns in the NT, by observing that their criticisms often conflate two separate issues, namely, “the identification of preexisting material and the recognition of hymnic passages” (p. 23). G. chooses instead to examine the hymnic features and structures of the material as they stand in the text with the ultimate purpose of drawing inferences about early Christian worship. The inferences that G. lists in chap 1. and then develops in subsequent parts of the book underscore the real value of his overall approach which is a commitment to analyzing the hymns based on the interplay of several cultural strands including Jewish, Roman, and early Christians ones.

Due to his overarching argument that christological hymns display both continuity and innovation with respect to the wider phenomenon of first-century hymnody, chap. 2 necessarily surveys Greco-Roman hymns associated with various kinds of literature, philosophies, festivals, the imperial cult, rhetorical handbooks, and progymnasmata. G. offers a rich discussion, because he does not merely scour hymnic material to unearth parallel forms and phrases one might find in the NT’s hymns. Instead, he identifies “trajectories” from Greco-Roman hymns that are reflected in the NT. For example, G. observes that Greco-Roman hymns tend to outline poetically the accomplishments of a god with the purpose of authoritatively drawing worshipers into an “experience of the numinous” (p. 59) while at the same time shaping worshipers’ perceptions of the world, even on the political plane. G. suggests that christological hymns follow a similar trajectory, as he attempts to demonstrate in subsequent chapters. G. also surveys psalms and hymns from early Judaism with the hope of providing a “thicker description of the Jewish context” (p. 64) of NT hymns. Wisdom 10 and Psalms of Solomon 17 serve as the main examples. G. describes the latter as Jewish “resistance poetry,” which he suggests is a feature of Jewish psalmody that helped shape communal identity and amounted to a “manifesto of resistance” (p. 75) against Rome. This is a component that G. also detects in the NT hymns that he examines.

Gordley’s analysis of the christological hymns begins in earnest with chap. 3, where he examines Phil 2:5–11. He situates his own analysis within “pioneering works” by Ernst Lohmeyer (Die Briefe an die Philipper, an die Kolosser und an Philemon [KEK 9; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1954]), Ernst Käsemann (“A Critical Analysis of Philippians 2:5–11,” Journal for Theology and the Church 5 [1968] 45–88), and Ralph Martin (A Hymn of Christ: Philippians...