Reviews for What Are They Saying about the Formation of Pauline Churches?

The average rating for What Are They Saying about the Formation of Pauline Churches? based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-11 00:00:00 Mary Gregor It's pretty tricky to write 2,000 years of history in 241 pages, I admit. But the historiography is pretty shoddy here, and the "story of the Low Countries" is usually just the stories of a few famous dudes. The prose is also pretty dry and outside of a few interesting characters, everything bled together a bit too much. As difficult as it is to sum up everything so quickly, it's even more difficult to do so without having a sort of full-surrounding story to tell about the Netherlands except that it's had some interesting inhabitants from time to time. Arblaster never really tells us why something or someone is important, just that it happened. Which is too bad, because the Low Countries are very interesting and do have stories to tell. The presentation here just made it very difficult to understand what that story could possible be. It's overall just a weak presentation of history. One that emphasizes names and dates over stories. It's the sort of thing that infuriates young people wanting to know history and is just kind of a bummer of a presentation for a source that could use a lot more, even in only 241 pages.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-29 00:00:00 William Kennon This book was obviously written by a non-native speaker of English. While the author's use of language is not technically incorrect, his syntax is consistently non-idiomatic and I find it extremely difficult to read. Lots of passive constructions and relative clauses. Abandoned. Update: I switched to "History of the Low Countries" by J. C. H Blom and E. Lamberts and am finding it far more readable - I would certainly recommend it as an alternative. Update: I now wonder if the author is employing what the Germans would call Nominalstil. It is often preferred in German for academic or scientific texts, but directly contradicts every basic principle of good style in English.