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.

Writing in an accessible and anecdotal style, Tom Wright helps us to approach the rich and many-sided story of the book of Acts. Wright shows how the book builds on Luke's gospel, laying out the continuing work and teaching of the now risen and ascended Jesus in the power of the Spirit. His writing captures the vivid way in which Luke's work draws us all into the story, while leaving the ending open and challenging, inviting Christians today to pick up and carry on the story as we in turn live our lives in the service of Jesus.

Where does evil come from? And how did it become so powerful? We can have a sense that when we try to do right by one another, we aren't merely striving against ourselves. The feeling is that we are struggling against something-someone-else. As if there's a force-a person-that wishes us ill. In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul describes just such a person: Sin, a cosmic tyrant who constrains our moral freedom, confuses our moral judgment, and condemns us to slavery and to death. Commentators have long argued about whether Paul literally means to say Sin is a person or is simply indulging in literary personification, but regardless of Paul's intentions, for modern readers it would seem clear enough: there is no such thing as a cosmic tyrant. Surely it is more reasonable to suppose "Sin" is merely a colorful way of describing individual misdeeds or, at most, a way of evoking the intractability of our social ills. In The Emergence of Sin, Matthew Croasmun suggests we take another look. The vision of Sin he offers is at once scientific and theological, social and individual, corporeal and mythological. He argues both that the cosmic power Sin is nothing more than an emergent feature of a vast human network of transgression and that this power is nevertheless real, personal, and one whom we had better be ready to resist. Ultimately, what is on offer here is an account of the world re-mythologized at the hands of chemists, evolutionary biologists, sociologists, and entomologists. In this world, Paul's text is not a relic of a forgotten mythical past, but a field manual for modern living.

Despite being recognized as the most 'Jewish Gospel, many argue that Matthew was penned by someone who sought to distance himself from Judaism. Scholars have used diverse approaches for determining the relationship between Matthew and the variegated Judaism of the first century, but few recognize the important piece that the Evangelists Christology - in particular the shepherd motif - brings to the puzzle of his socio-religious orientation. Wayne Baxter contends that there are distinctive tendencies in the shepherd metaphors appropriation by non-Christ-believing Jewish and Graeco-Roman authors as well as Christ-believing authors approximately contemporary with Matthew, which reflect distinct patterns of thought. By comparing these uses of the shepherd metaphor Baxter unearths clues about the Evangelists socio-religious orientation. Baxter is able to use this to determines the metaphors contribution to the overall theological framework of the Gospel, specifically, its Christology, soteriology, and the Evangelists view of mission. Moreover, he is able to ascertain Matthews socio-religious orientation, and thus, and its implications for the debate surrounding the 'parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity.

We all long for a full, rich satisfying life. But how do we fill up the empty places in our soul? How can we quench our thirst for something deeper, more lasting, more meaningful? John urges us to take a fresh look at Jesus and he invites us to renew our faith in the One who promises to be the way to true life. 26 studies in 2 parts for individuals or groups. This revised title features questions for starting group discussions and for meeting God in personal reflection, as well as a "now or later" section in each study.

This book examines the concept of 'zeal' in three Pauline texts (Rom 10:2; Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6) as a way-in to discussion of the 'New Perspective' on Paul. The concept of zeal has been discussed in a sustained way by James D. G. Dunn, who argues that Paul was drawing on a long and venerable tradition of Jewish zeal for the nation of Israel, that is, a concern to maintain Israel's distinction from the surrounding nations by defending and reinforcing its boundaries. Ortlund interacts with Dunn, agreeing that this concern for distinctiveness was a crucial, and neglected, concern of Paul's before his conversion. Nevertheless, Ortlund contends that Dunn has presented an overly narrow understanding of Pauline zeal that does not sufficiently locate zeal in the broader picture of general obedience to Torah in Jewish tradition. As such, Ortlund shows in this work that zeal refers most immediately to general obedience to Torah - including, but not to be centrally circumscribed as, ethnic distinction.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' arrest, trial and execution ends with the Roman centurion who oversees the death process proclaiming Jesus as God's son. Gamel explores two key questions in relation to this moment: what does the centurion mean when he says that Jesus is God's son, and why does he say it? The confession is not made on the basis of any signs nor from any indication that he perceives Jesus' death as honourable or exemplary. This apparent lack of motivation itself highlights a key Markan theme: that this insight is revealed by an apocalyptic act of God, signalled by the tearing of the temple veil. Thus the confession, which we can understand to be made sincerely and knowledgeably, is the result of an act of God's revelation alone. Gamel explores the theory of Mark depicting a story in which all human characters exhibit varying levels of blindness to the spiritual realities that govern their lives. By making a thorough examination of Mark's Gospel - while placing primary focus on the centurion, the study is unlimited and presents a serious examination of the whole Gospel - Gamel concludes his argument with the point that, at the foot of the cross, this blindness is decisively confronted by God's apocalyptic act. The offer of sight to the centurion demonstrates the reconciliation of God and humanity which are otherwise in Mark's Gospel repeatedly presented as antagonistic spheres. Finally, the fact that revelation is offered to a Gentile highlights the inclusion of the nations into the promises of Israel.

This Festschrift draws on the research interests of Christopher Rowland. The collection of essays comes from former doctoral students and other friends, many of whom shed light on the angelic contribution to the thought-world of developing Christianity. The significance of the Jewish contribution to developing Christian ideology is critically assessed, including the impact of the original Jewish sources on the earliest Christian belief. The distinguished contributors to this volume include April DeConick, Paul Foster, John Rogerson, Tobias Nicklas and Andrei Orlov.

The letters of James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude are among the most neglected letters of the NT. Thus, methodological advances in NT study tend to arise among the Gospels or Pauline letters. But these letters are beginning to receive increased attention in the scholarly community. Reading Second Peter With New Eyes is the third of four volumes that incorporate research in this area. The essays collected here examine the impact of recent methodological developments in New Testament studies to Second Peter, including, for example, rhetorical, social-scientific, socio-rhetorical, ideological and hermeneutical methods, as they contribute to understanding this letter and its social context.

"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them." Dennis R. MacDonald offers a provocative explanation of those scandalous words of Christ from the Fourth Gospel-an explanation that he argues would hardly have surprised some of the Gospel's early readers. John sounds themes that would have instantly been recognized as proper to the Greek god Dionysos (the Roman Bacchus), not least as he was depicted in Euripides's play The Bacchae. A divine figure, the offspring of a divine father and human mother, takes on flesh to live among mortals, but is rejected by his own. He miraculously provides wine and offers it as a sacred gift to his devotees, women prominent among them, dies a violent death-and returns to life. Yet John takes his drama in a dramatically different direction: while Euripides's Dionysos exacts vengeance on the Theban throne, the Johannine Christ offers life to his followers. MacDonald employs mimesis criticism to argue that the earliest Evangelist not only imitated Euripides but expected his readers to recognize Jesus as greater than Dionysos.

New Testament commentaries and exegetes have not paid sufficient attention to the context in which Paul's Epistel to the Romans was crafted. This book written from an African perspective offers a fresh interpretation on a contextualizing reading of Romans and its theology. The argument of the book is that Paul's construcntion of Abraham as a Spiritual ancestor of "all" faith people was based on his encounter with the Roman Ideology based on Aeneas as the founder of Rome. A juxtaposition of these two canonical ancestors needs to be considered in our 21st multi - ethnic Christian world. Paul's epitsle is not about how God saves the individual human being; rather the debate between Paul and the Jewish - Christian interlocutor is about how families of people and nations establish a kinship with God and one another. The concern with ancestors is apaque to Western Biblical readers and Christians. This is book helps both Westerners and Africans to value ethnic diversity.

As Mark's Gospel moves toward its climax, four stories of women challenge Jesus in his mission to establish the empire of God against the backdrop of the Roman Empire: those of the poor widow (12.41-44), the anointing woman (14.1-11), the women at the cross and the burial (15.40-41, 47), and the women at the empty tomb (16.1-8). They are stories that would seem to demand both a feminist and a postcolonial perspective on the part of their readers-yet Kim's is the first reading of the Gospel that has taken an explicitly postcolonial feminist stance. In addition to the feminist and the postcolonial themes, the third strand in Seong Hee Kim's approach arises from her Korean context, which provides her with the concept of Salim interpretation, that is, 'making things alive'. Starting from the reader's context, she develops a Salim hermeneutics for each of the four stories by engaging in a dialogue between the biblical story and the reader's use of her or his own imagination. The goal of her interpretation is such a making things alive, a mending of broken things, and an opening up of meaning-in contrast to the tendency of historical criticism, which has striven to identify a single, correct meaning in the biblical text.

The Dubious Disciples provides a literary examination of the four scenes of the disciples doubting the appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the canonical Gospels. Each Gospel offers a unique account of this episode, and the differences between them dramatically affect how readers evaluate the disciples' actions and perceive the role of doubt in the Christian experience.

In Greek New Testament Manuscripts from Albania Didier Lafleur and Luc Brogly explore the riches of a unique collection of twenty-one Byzantine artefacts, among which the world-famous Beratinus 1 and Beratinus 2, both included by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Register. First described at the end of the 19th century by Anthimos Alexoudis, then revealed to Western scholarship by Pierre Batiffol, yet this collection has remained unknown to textual critics and no major analysis of it has been performed in over a century. Based on a fresh autopsy of the documents, the book describes the artefacts physically and analyses textual features and variant readings of each. This monograph will be of vital interest to any scholar or advanced student in the fields of Greek New Testament textual criticism and codicology.

Suffering in Ancient Worldview investigates representative Christian, Roman Stoic and Jewish perspectives on the nature, problem and purpose of suffering. Tabb presents a close reading of Acts, Seneca's essays and letters and 4 Maccabees, highlighting how each author understands suffering vis-a-vis God, humanity, the world's problem and its solution, and the future. Tabb's study offers a pivotal definition for suffering in the 1st century and concludes by creatively situating these ancient authors in dialogue with each other. Tabb shows that, despite their different religious and cultural positions, these ancient authors each expect and accept suffering as a present reality that is governed by divine providence, however defined. Luke, Seneca and the author of 4 Maccabees each affirm that suffering is not humanity's fundamental problem. Rather, suffering functions as a cipher for other things to be displayed. For Seneca, suffering provides an opportunity for one to learn and show virtue. The author of 4 Maccabees presents the nation's suffering as retribution for sin, while the martyrs' virtuous suffering leads to Israel's salvation. For Luke, the Lord Jesus suffers to accomplish salvation and restoration for the world marred by sin and suffering, and the suffering of his followers is instrumental for Christian mission.

"Commemorative Identities "represents a significantly new approach to the issue of replacement/abrogation vs. continuation of Jewish thought patterns and practices among Jewish Christ-followers as they are addressed by the Johannine author. Previous studies have been unable to elucidate a comprehensible argument to support continuation of commemoration in the face of explicit Temple replacement terminology in the Gospel.
This study provides that argument based upon known sociological observations and models, and direct comparative analysis with Jewish practices pre- and post-70. Mary Spaulding's study will further invigorate scholarly debate concerning identity issues in the Fourth Gospel, a topic of significant interest among Johannine scholars today. More generally, the origins of Christianity as portrayed in the Gospel of John are understood as a gradual unfolding of and differentiation among various Jewish groups post-Second Temple rather than as an abrupt break from an established, normative Judaism.

An extension of Turner's conclusions in Volume III of Moulton's Grammar of New Testament Greek. A positive contribution to the permanent meaning of controversial passages in the New Testament.