A translation of the valuable commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians by eminent 16th-century theologian Phlipp Melanchthon.

From Bible teacher John MacArthur, a revelatory exploration of what the apostle Paul actually taught about the Good News of Jesus. The apostle Paul penned a number of very concise, focused passages in his letters to the early church that summarize the gospel message in just a few well-chosen words. Each of these key texts has a unique emphasis highlighting some essential aspect of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The chapters in this revelatory new book closely examine those vital gospel texts, one verse at a time. John MacArthur, host of the popular media ministry Grace to You, tackles such questions as: What is the gospel? What are the essential elements of the message? How can we be certain we have it right? And how should Christians be proclaiming the Good News to the world? As always, the answers John MacArthur gives are clear, compelling, well-reasoned, easy to grasp, and above all, thoroughly biblical. The Gospel According to Paul is written in a style that is easily accessible to lay people, including those who know very little about the Bible, while being of great value to seasoned pastors and experienced ministers. The Gospel According to Paul is the third in a series of books on the gospel by John MacArthur including - The Gospel According to Jesus and The Gospel According to the Apostles. The Gospel According to Paul is also available in Spanish, Evangelio seg n Pablo.

In this title, Kuecker uses social identity theory to examine the interface between the Holy Spirit and ethnicity in "Luke-Acts". Kuecker uses an artillery of social identity theory to demonstrate that in "Luke"'s narrative the Spirit is the central figure in the formation of a new social identity. In his argumenation, Kuecker provides extended exegetical treatments of "Luke" 1-4 and "Acts" 1-15. He shows that "Luke" 1-4 establishes a foundation for "Luke"'s understanding of the relationship between human identity, the Spirit, and the 'other' - especially as it relates to the distribution of in-group benefits beyond group boundaries. With regard to "Acts" 1-15, Kuecker shows that the Spirit acts whenever human identity is in question in order to transform communities and individuals via the formation of a new social identity. Kuecker argues that "Luke" depicts this Spirit-formed social identity as a different way of being human in community, relative to the normative identity processes of other groups in his narrative. This transformed identity produces profound expressions of interethnic reconciliation in "Luke-Acts" expressed through reformed economic practice, impressive intergroup hospitality, and a reoriented use of ethnic language. Formerly the "Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement", this is a book series that explores the many aspects of New Testament study including historical perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and theological, cultural and contextual approaches. "The Early Christianity in Context" series, a part of "JSNTS", examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the third century CE. The series places Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context. European Seminar on Christian Origins and "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Supplement" are also part of "JSNTS".

Justin Marc Smith argues that the gospels were intended to be addressed to a wide and varied audience. He does this by considering them to be works of ancient biography, comparative to the Greco-Roman biography. Smith argues that the earliest Christian interpreters of the Gospels did not understand their works to be sectarian documents. Rather, the wider context of Jesus literature in the second and third centuries points toward the broader Christian practice of writing and disseminating literary presentations of Jesus and Jesus traditions as widely as possible. Smith addresses the difficulty in reconstructing the various gospel communities that might lie behind the gospel texts and suggests that the 'all nations' motif present in all four of the canonical gospels suggests an ideal secondary audience beyond those who could be identified as Christian.

Revised after the fourth German edition, by A. C. Kendrick ... To which is prefixed Olshausen's Proof of the genuineness of the writings of the New Testament, translated by David Fosdick, jr. ... Vol. 6.

In A Discourse Analysis of Galatians and the New Perspective on Paul, David I. Yoon outlines discourse analysis from the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics for analyzing Paul's letter to the Galatians. From this analysis, he determines whether the context of situation better reflects the New Perspective on Paul, covenantal nomism, or a more traditional perspective, legalism. The first half of the book introduces the New Perspective on Paul and discourse analysis, followed by a detailed model of SFL discourse analysis with respect to register and context of situation. The second half is a discourse analysis of Galatians. This is the first monograph-length study to address the New Perspective on Paul from a linguistic approach, and will as such be of great interest to scholars of Pauline Studies, linguistics, and theology.

Sechrest describes Pauline Christianity as a nascent ancient racial group, drawing on a Jewish understanding of race in Second Temple Judaism. With analysis of nearly five thousand Jewish and non-Jewish passages about identity from around the turn of the era, the models presented describe ancient Greek and Jewish ethnic and racial identity. Further, these models become resources for examining the racial character of Paul's self-identity and the continuities and discontinuities between the three races in his social world: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians/ Using historical and literary methods of exegesis for passages in the Pauline corpus, Sechrest describes Paul as someone who was born a Jew, but who later saw himself as a member of a different race. Analyzing Christian identity in Galatians in terms of membership criteria, membership indicia, and inter-group dynamics, a final section of the book con-trasts the portrait of Paul that emerges from this study with those in Daniel Boyarin's "A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity" and Brad Braxton's "No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience". This section engages all three of these descriptions of community and identity, and illuminates the problems and opportunities contained in a modern appropriation of a racial construction of Christian identity. Formerly the "Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement", a book series that explores the many aspects of New Testament study including historical perspectives, social-scientific and literary theory, and theological, cultural and contextual approaches. "The Early Christianity in Context" series, a part of "JSNTS", examines the birth and development of early Christianity up to the end of the third century CE. The series places Christianity in its social, cultural, political and economic context. European Seminar on Christian Origins and "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus Supplement" are also part of "JSNTS".

Even when he was a prototype of European identity, Paul transgressed the limits of Europe. It is not clear whether he was conformist or rebellious, orthodox or liberal, sexist, or egalitarian. Instead of pushing the Apostle into the arbitrary categories of modern European identity, Fatima Tofighi takes into account the challenge that Paul brings to normative conceptions of political theology (Rom 13), 'religion' (Gal 2.12-14), and women's veiling (1 Cor 11. 5-16). Alternative interpretations of these passages, with the help of postmodern theory, both solve the major problems of biblical exegesis and offer a critique of the allegedly well-defined European categories.

A more nuanced view of the Fourth Gospel's media nature suggests a new and promising paradigm for assessing expansive and embedded uses of scripture in this work. The majority of studies exploring the Fourth Evangelist's use of scripture to date have approached the Fourth Gospel as the product of a highly gifted writer, who carefully interweaves various elements and figures from scripture into the canvas of his completed document. The present study attempts to calibrate a literary approach to the Fourth Gospel's use of scripture with an appreciation for oral poetic influences, whereby an orally-situated composer's use of traditional references and compositional strategy could be of one and the same piece. Most importantly, pre-formed story-patterns-thick with referential meaning-were used in the construction of new works. The present study makes the case that the Fourth Evangelist has patterned his story of Jesus after a retelling of the story of Adam & Israel in two interrelated ways: first in the prologue, and then in the body of the Gospel as a whole.

This volume is a collection of fresh essays in honor of Professor John T. Townsend. It focuses on the interpretation of the common Jewish and Christian Scripture (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) and on its two off-shoots (Rabbinic Judaism and the New Testament), as well as on Jewish-Christian relations. The contributors, who are prominent scholars in their fields, include James L. Crenshaw, Goeran Eidevall, Anne E. Gardner, Lawrence M. Wills, Cecilia Wassen, Robert L. Brawley, Joseph B. Tyson, Eldon J. Epp, Yaakov Elman, Rivka Ulmer, Andreas Lehnardt, Reuven Kimelman, Bruce Chilton, and Michael W. Duggan. "an engaging and impressive scholarly work." - Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 81.3 (2019)

The methodology of New Testament textual criticism, the critical evaluation of readings, and the history and texts of early Christianity is the focus of the influential work of J. K. Elliott. Texts and Traditions offers eighteen essays in his honour. The essays, by colleagues and students from his long career, reflect Elliott's wide interest and impact. From questions of the purpose and practice of textual criticism, to detailed assessment of New Testament literature and the readings of its manuscripts, to provocative studies of the reception of Jesus and the New Testament in the second century, this volume will be of value to those studying the New Testament and Early Christianity.

This volume collects the best articles on the Synoptic gospels from the first fifty issues of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. The range of the volume reflects the breadth of the journal itself. Here the reader will find ground-breaking studies that introduce new critical questions and move into fresh areas of enquiry, surveys of the state of play in this particular topic of New Testament studies, and articles that engage with each other in specific debates. For undergraduates this book offers an invaluable critical introduction to Synoptic Gospel studies. More advanced students and scholars can use it to find background material or to gain an overview of the research in this area of scholarship. This builds on the reputation of JSNT as a conduit for first-class research and a major influence within the scholarly community.

What is an 'echo' of Scripture? How can we detect echoes of the Old Testament in Paul, and how does their detection facilitate interpretation of the Pauline text? These are questions addressed by this collection of essays from the SBL programme unit Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity. The first part of the book reports its vigorous 1990 discussion of Richard Hays's 'Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul', including contributions by Craig Evans, James Sanders, William Scott Green and Christiaan Beker, as well as a response by R.B. Hays. The second part of the book studies specific passages where reference is made to the Old Testament explicitly or allusively. The contributors here are James Sanders, Linda Belleville, Carol Stockhausen, James Scott, Nancy Calvert and Stephen Brown.

This detailed exegetical study of Gal 3.28c in the light of 3.14-29 and 4.21-31 shows not only how integral this verse is to chapters 3 and 4 of the letter, but also that it is the key to understanding Paul's theological argument of promise in Galatians. Paul's use of the story of Abraham in 3.14-29 and of Sarah in 4.21-31 in light of God's promise to the patriarch and the matriarch in Genesis 17 have implications displays the joint role of Abraham and Sarah in bringing about the promise, and underscores the unity of the believers in Christ. In light of this, Uzukwu examines important aspects of the history of the interpretation of Gal 3.28c. Uzukwu sheds light on the link between Gal 3:28 and the three expressions of gratitude found in Greek writings. Links are also revealed to the three blessings of gratitude that appear at the beginning of the Jewish cycle of morning prayers, Gen 1.27c (in the Septuagint), and the alleged pre-Pauline baptismal formula. She goes further to demonstrate how 3.28c is related to the unity of Galatians 3-4, focusing on the theme of the promise as the text discusses the effect of the Christ event in bringing about the fulfillment of that promise.

Did Jesus exist? In recent years there has been a massive upsurge in public discussion of the view that Jesus did not exist. This view first found a voice in the 19th century, when Christian views were no longer taken for granted. Some way into the 20th century, this school of thought was largely thought to have been utterly refuted by the results of respectable critical scholarship (from both secular and religious scholars). Now, many unprofessional scholars and bloggers ('mythicists'), are gaining an increasingly large following for a view many think to be unsupportable. It is starting to influence the academy, more than that it is starting to influence the views of the public about a crucial historical figure. Maurice Casey, one of the most important Historical Jesus scholars of his generation takes the 'mythicists' to task in this landmark publication. Casey argues neither from a religious respective, nor from that of a committed atheist. Rather he seeks to provide a clear view of what can be said about Jesus, and of what can't.