This book, first published in 1997, examines the influence of angelology on the christology of the Apocalypse of John. In the Apocalypse, Jesus appears in glorious form reminiscent of angels in Jewish and Christian literature in the period between 200 BCE and 200 CE. Dr Carrell asks what significance this has for the christology of the Apocalypse. He concludes that by portraying Jesus in such a way that he has the form and function of an angel, and yet is also divine, the Apocalypse both upholds monotheism and at the same time provides a means for Jesus to be presented in visible, glorious form to his Church.

This study refutes the allegation that the author of Luke-Acts showed no systematic thought about the significance of Jesus's death, that is, he has no theologia crucis. Peter Doble focuses sharply on the Gospel's death scene and explores those features which appear in Luke alone, then extends the results into the longer account of Jesus's final days in Jerusalem. In the final section Doble demonstrates how specific words and patterns from Wisdom shape and fill Luke's retelling of the story of Jesus's entrapment, trials and death. Luke wanted his readers to understand that what had happened to Jesus was not a humiliating rejection but in accord with scripture's presentation of God's plan for salvation, and he modelled traditional material about Jesus's road to the crucifixion around an explanatory model which he drew from Wisdom.

Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians poses exegetical problems of well-known difficulty. The structure and unity of the whole Epistle are in doubt, as is the meaning of many particular passages and references - for example, the identity of Paul's opponents. Dr Collange bases his solutions to these problems on a detailed study of 2,14 - 7,4. He argues that the obscurities of the Epistle can be explained by the particular circumstances of its composition; Paul's use of more primitive Christian materials gives us a measure of his own originality and genius. This book should be of interest to all New Testament scholars.

The aim of this book is to illuminate the manner in which Mark understood Jesus' death. That death forms the climax of the Gospel, and is all-important for the evangelist. Since it is central to every form of Christianity, much has already been written on the significance Jesus' death had for Mark. Most previous studies, like the first edition of this book, used redaction criticism to interpret Mark's viewpoint from the alterations he made to the form of the Passion narrative as he had received it from tradition. More recently the Gospels have been examined as continuous stories, and the author adopts this approach in the additional material of his new edition. By examining the general sweep of the narrative, and in particular of its last chapters, Professor Best attempts to show how Mark saw Jesus' death as both an atonement for sin and as creative of the new community of the Church.

This volume, which emerges from an SNTS seminar in 1985 1986, analyses one of the best-known, but also one of the most intriguing, of Jesus' discourses within the Fourth Gospel. Previous studies of the Shepherd Discourse have concentrated either on its historical setting in the life of Jesus (Simonis) or on the prehistory of its text (Bullmann and his school). The present study, consisting of essays written by an international team of specialists, adopts a more contextual approach. The Shepherd Discourse is here situated in the text of the Fourth Gospel, with particular emphasis on the preceding chapter and on the subsequent Passion narrative. The internal coherence of John 10 so becomes clearer, and it is seen that - in spite of its links with Gnostic ideas - the roots of the Discourse in Old Testament and Jewish texts about the shepherds of Israel become apparent.

This book considers the early history of Jewish-Christian relations focussing on traditions about the fallen angels. In the Book of the Watchers, an Enochic apocalypse from the third century BCE, the 'sons of God' of Gen 6:1-4 are accused of corrupting humankind through their teachings of metalworking, cosmetology, magic, and divination. By tracing the transformations of this motif in Second Temple, Rabbinic, and early medieval Judaism and early, late antique, and Byzantine Christianity, this book sheds light on the history of interpretation of Genesis, the changing status of Enochic literature, and the place of parabiblical texts and traditions in the interchange between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In the process, it explores issues such as the role of text-selection in the delineation of community boundaries and the development of early Jewish and Christian ideas about the origins of evil on the earth.

They're two men on a mission, some thirty years apart, and their time is running out. For Jesus, he has just three-and-a-half years to do all that was promised: Traveling. Teaching. Healing. Performing miracles. There's not a moment to waste. For his protege Peter, the sting of betraying his master has marked his life. His second chance is coming, and this time he will not fail. No Going Back includes the New Testament books of Mark, First Peter, and Second Peter. Paired together, you get a fast-paced and passionate account of Jesus' ministry and the effect it had on his most prominent disciple. Eternity Now reveals the history-shaping story of how Jesus Christ changed the world and what that means to you. This reader-friendly series presents the New Testament books across five paperback volumes to make it easy to carry anywhere and read anytime.

Luke's two-volume work begins with a formal preface unlike anything else in the New Testament, and it has long been academic orthodoxy that Luke's choice of style, vocabulary, and content in this short passage reveal a desire to present his work to contemporary readers as 'History' in the great tradition of Thucydides and Polybius. This study challenges that assumption: far from aping the classical historians, Dr Alexander argues, Luke was simply introducing his book in a style that would have been familiar to readers of the scientific and technical manuals which proliferated in the hellenistic world. The book contains a detailed study of these Greek 'scientific' prefaces as well as a word-by-word commentary on the Lucan texts. In her concluding chapters, Alexander seeks to explore the consequences of this alignment both for the literary genre of Luke-Acts (is it meant to be read as 'history'?) and for the social background of the author and the book's first readers.

Spanning a variety of disciplines, this 1995 enquiry focuses on one particular Pauline characteristic: the apostle's habit of making matters of faith the object of logical appraisal. A tracing of the elliptical patterns of argument in Romans 1-8 illustrates this habit and, at the same time, displays how Paul's vigorous persistence in it seems often not to be matched by the solidity, or at any rate the lucidity, of his logic. By viewing Paul against the background of semiology, more especially the semiological theory of Umberto Eco, new light is shed on the genesis of Paul's reasoning. The discussion which ensues is marked by an interesting and productive combination of modern linguistics and classical logic. Moreover, the singular potential of today's techniques of 'fuzzy' logical analysis for measuring the intellectual muscle of Paul's argumentation is brought out dramatically by the uniqueness of his semiological situation. His rationality takes on a new face.

A study of the authenticity and interpretation of the last twelve verses of St Mark's Gospel. These verses are omitted from at least one important manuscript tradition and queried in most modern translations (though not from the NEB). Professor Farmer traces the history of the text tradition for omission back to Egypt, and argues that one important factor contributing to their omission was the dangerous teaching they seemed to contain: they appear to encourage Christians to handle deadly snakes and drink poisons to prove their faith, a practice which has been revived today by some Christian sects who accept the scriptural authority of these verses. The teaching of these verses has, however, never become established in orthodox Christianity and indeed most Christians are unaware of their doctrinal significance. Professor Farmer reviews all the textual and patristic evidence and examines the most plausible solutions that have been canvassed. This is another substantial contribution to a series that has set the highest standards of scholarship in biblical and New Testament studies.

St Mark's Gospel was put together from oral and perhaps written source material, which the redactor-editor edited and linked together by seams' or joining phrases. The evangelist is thus regarded as a translator/editor of sources, and also as a creative artist in his shaping of the material and in his editorial writing which moulds the disparate sources into an integrated narrative. Dr Pryke tests some eighteen syntactically unusual features of 'Markan usage' statistically to see if they are mainly source material (S) or redactional (R). Objective criteria are provided for distinguishing redactional passages, and the linguistic method is used to see if residual S passages might be converted to R. Appendixes analyse the vocabulary for a list of the most frequently used words in R passages, annotate unusual syntax and special vocabulary of R verses, and provide a complete redactional Greek text. Dr Pryke's methods and conclusions will be of great value to those concerned with the analysis of St Mark's Gospel, and of interest to all concerned with linguistic studies of New Testament texts.

It has often been suggested that Luke's two volumes were written as an apology for Christianity, to demonstrate to the Roman authorities that the new faith was not a dangerous and subversive innovation, a threat to the Pax Romana and to Roman rule. This book reviews the development of the 'traditional perspective', then raises some questions, e.g. if Luke was writing an apologia pro ecclesia, why does he include so much material politically damaging to the Christian cause? Is it possible that the approach has been made from the wrong angle, that Luke was writing an apologia not pro ecclesia but pro imperio, to assure his fellow Christians that Church and Empire need not fear or suspect each other? This conclusion is then supported by an investigation of the text of Luke-Acts, particularly the trials of Jesus and Paul. This challenging volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the New Testament and to ecclesiastical and Roman historians.

The author of this lucid and interdisciplinary study of Mark's Gospel believes that - when applied to Gospel texts - sociological analysis and literary criticism may be far closer together in purpose and intent than is often supposed. Professor Camery-Hoggatt therefore begins his work with an exploration of the social functions of narrative in general, and of ironic narrative in particular. He then turns to the literary functions of the internal elements of the narrative, and draws the two discussions together into a single framework that can be used as a lens through which Mark's Gospel can be read. The author's claim is that irony - especially dramatic irony - thoroughly permeates the Gospel, and that this evinces a rhetorical strategy central to Mark's whole narrative. The second half of the book shows that the presence of irony is especially powerful when the deeper level of meaning is somehow hidden from the story's characters.

Among the problems which Hebrews poses for interpretation, its use of sacrificial terminology must cause it to seem remote and obscure. Although the recent work of social anthropologists on the nature of religious systems has been applied by Old Testament scholars to the laws and symbols of the Pentateuch this is the first sustained study of Hebrews to take account of these theories. Building on the work of such writers as Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Claude Levi-Strauss, Hebrews is approached here as a 'structure of symbols', in which the symbol-system of the Old Testament covenant is re-presented and transposed. Motifs explored by the author include sacred time and space; liminality; the sacrificial function of blood, death, oaths, and blessings; and the narrative traditions of election and exclusion. Dr Dunnill assesses Hebrews, not as an argument, but as an act of symbolic communication expressing the possibility of direct communion with God.

The authorship of the Pastoral letters has been a matter of intense scholarly debate for almost two hundred years. The letters clearly purport to be written by Paul, but perceived differences in the literary style, vocabulary and theology of the Pastorals when compared with that of the genuine Pauline letters suggests that this was not so. The arguments have centred primarily on the question of whether Paul or a disciple of Paul - a gifted pseudonymist - composed these letters. It is the 'either/or' nature of the debate that is brought into serious question in this book. Dr Miller argues that the Pastorals reflect a compositional history that was commonplace throughout the ancient Near East. He takes the reader on a wide-ranging tour of biblical and extra-biblical sources, examining their literary histories, and arguing that the Pastorals are composite documents, not unlike many Jewish and early Christian works.

This book was first published in 1996. Matthew uniquely highlights Jesus as 'Emmanuel', but almost wholly overlooked are the deeper implications of this 'presence' motif for Matthean Christology, as well as its centripetal force on his readers. With regard to the rhetorical, historical and theological dimensions of the text, Dr Kupp takes a multi-disciplinary approach. The three verses commonly cited are only the starting point for the weaving of the Emmanuel Messiah into the story-telling, redaction and Christology of the Gospel. Kupp employs the lenses of both narrative and historical criticism to produce the first monograph in English on the subject of divine presence in Matthew. After giving primacy to a whole-story reading, Kupp finds its roots in the familiar social and literary contexts of Sinai, Jerusalem and the Jewish scriptures. Matthew's Gospel is a story that compels, a text with a history and a Christological treatise.

This book is a study of Paul's response to the financial help he received from the church in Philippi whilst he was a prisoner in Rome. Philippians 4.10-20 has always puzzled commentators because of its seemingly strained and tortured mode of thanks. Word studies, psychological studies and literary studies have all failed to provide insight into the text, which is unique in the Pauline corpus. Using contemporary sources Dr Peterman re-examines this difficult passage in the light of Greek and Roman practices and language regarding the exchange of gifts and favours in society. He concludes that 'gift exchange' or 'social reciprocity', with its expectations and obligations, permeated every level of society in Paul's day, and that Paul's seemingly ungracious response was an attempt to create a new, Christian attitude to gifts and to giving.

This programmatic socio-rhetorical investigation approaches the Epistle of James as an instance of written deliberative rhetoric, and it seeks to ascertain the social texture of James 2.5, a rhetorical performance of language that in other contexts is explicitly attributed to Jesus. Utilizing the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric, Dr Wachob successively probes the inner texture, the intertexture, the social and cultural texture, and the ideological implications of the rhetoric in James 2.1-13. He analyses James' activation of antecedent texts in the LXX, common conceptions and topics in the broader culture, and also sayings in the Jesus tradition. He concludes that James emanates from the same milieu as the pre-Matthean Sermon on the Mount and shows James 2.5 to be an artful performance of the principal beatitude in that early epitome of Jesus' teachings.

In this 2002 book, James M. Scott focuses on a particular Old Testament pseudepigraphon - the Book of Jubilees, the revelation of an angel to Moses announcing the expectation of a messiah from Judah. He traces the appropriation of the Book of Jubilees in early Christian sources from the New Testament to Hippolytus and beyond, and more specifically focuses on the reception of Jubilees 8-9, an expansion of the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis 10 (1 Chronicles 1). The book takes an interdisciplinary approach based on detailed analysis of primary sources, much of which is seldom considered by New Testament scholars, and explores the neglected topic of ancient geographical conceptions. By studying geographical aspects of the work, Dr Scott is able to relate Jubilees to both Old and New Testament traditions, bringing important new insights into Christian concepts of annunciation.

For many years Luke-Acts has been studied as a work of history and theology. The Trial of the Gospel sets out to examine Luke's writings as an apologetic work, by focusing on those parts of Luke's story where the apologetic overtones seem most prominent - the trial narratives. By analysing the trials of all major Lukan characters - Jesus, Peter, Stephen, and Paul - Alexandru Neagoe argues that the narratives are best understood when viewed as part of Luke's apologia pro evangelio, a purpose which is in keeping with the author's declared aim to give his readers 'assurance' about the 'matters' in which they had been instructed (Luke 1:4). Neagoe concludes that the specific role of the trial narratives is to provide the framework within which important tenets of the Christian faith are themselves put 'on trial' before the reader, with the intended result of the gospel's confirmation.

This is an interdisciplinary study which constructs a dialogue between biblical interpretation and systematic theology. It examines how far a reading of the Book of Revelation might either support or question the work of leading theologians Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann on the theology of history, exploring the way in which the author of Revelation uses the dimensions of space and time to make theological points about the relationship between God and history. The book argues that Revelation sets the present earthly experience of the reader in the context of God's ultimate purposes, by disclosing hidden dimensions of reality, both spatial - embracing heaven and earth - and temporal - extending into the ultimate future. Dr Gilbertson offers a detailed assessment of the theologies of history developed by Pannenberg and Moltmann, including their views on the nature of the historical process, and the use of apocalyptic ideas in eschatology.

Bringing together as it does papers delivered at the 1986 and 1987 meetings of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas Pseudepigrapha Seminar, this collection takes as its theme the Testament of Job. For much of the modern period the Testament of Job has been one of the lesser-known pseudepigraphic products of early Judaism, and this book attempts to remedy the deficiency of scholarly material in the area with a well-balanced treatment of its central concerns. Approximately the length of the New Testament book of Romans, the Testament celebrates the virtue of patience through a folkloristic elaboration of the Biblical story of Job. Yet the Testament adopts from the Biblical story scarcely more than the framework, much of it highlighting themes unusual in both early Christian and early Jewish writings. From the viewpoint of the history of religions it is of interest for its image of Satan, its ecstaticism and its emphasis on magic; it sheds light on the Jewish background of the early Christian phenomenon of glossolalia; and it is intriguing because of the remarkable role it assigns to women. The contributors to this volume are all distinguished scholars, and they provide an accessible introduction to this relatively neglected ancient document.

From the earliest times, commentators have regarded these few verses from the Epistle to the Philippians as doctrinally very important, and a whole literature has grown up around them. Dr Martin studies the passage partly for its own sake as the quintessence of Pauline thought on the person of Christ, and partly as an example of an early type of Christian literature known as 'cultic' or 'confessional'. He sees it as a carmen Christi, a Christological ode used among early believers. Its importance, as Dr Martin shows, reaches far beyond the devotional. The Church which sang this hymn proclaimed for the first time the three 'epochs' in the existence of Christ: he is hailed and confessed first as pre-existent, then as incarnate and humiliated and finally as triumphant. The hymn is thus the earliest extant statement of the basis of the whole Christology of later times.

A theological and historical study of the Gentiles and the Gentile missions in Luke and Acts. Dr Wilson examines Jesus' attitude to Gentiles and concludes that not only did he fail to anticipate a historical Gentile mission, but that his eschatological expectations logically disallowed it. Luke's views are then set against the tradition on the subject from Jesus up to and including Mark, and his theology is compared in detail with that of Paul. Dr Wilson goes on to consider the historical reliability of Acts and finds that most earlier assessments have been marred by oversimplification; Luke, he concludes, does intend to write good history but for a variety of reasons is not always successful. There has in recent years been a growing interest in the theology of Luke and this is a substantial addition to the literature on the subject. It will be of interest to all theologians and New Testament scholars.