Description: Postcards from Rome explores Paul's life as seen through his own eyes and proposes an engaging theory about his apparently aborted trip to Spain, mentioned in Rom 15:24. Drawing from Paul's canonical letters--authentic and forged--as well as Luke's Acts of the Apostles, and the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Thecla, two noncanonical writings dating from the end of the first century CE, this book imagines a new scenario for a hypothetical twenty-first-century audience, not a real first-century one, attempting to describe the trip to Spain that never was.
Brief description: Osvaldo D. Vena is emeritus professor of New Testament Interpretation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.
Review Quotes: "Postcards from Rome is an imaginative look at the extraordinary life of Paul the apostle, one that fills in the gaps of his story and allows readers to get to know him as an actual historical person rather than as a character in the biblical text. Until now, readers of the biblical text have had to put together many pieces to understand Paul, but this novella offers a more cohesive picture, showing us how and why Paul's ministry and writings were so critical to the development of the Christian tradition."
--Melanie Baffes, editor of Text and Context: Vernacular Approaches to the Bible in Global Christianity