St Paul was a pivotal and controversial figure in the fledgling Jesus movement of the first century. The New Cambridge Companion to St Paul provides an invaluable entryway into the study of Paul and his letters. Composed of sixteen essays by an international team of scholars, it explores some of the key issues in the current study of his dynamic and demanding theological discourse. The volume first examines Paul's life and the first-century context in which he and his communities lived. Contributors then analyze particular writings by comparing and contrasting at least two selected letters, while thematic essays examine topics of particular importance, including how Paul read scripture, his relation to Judaism and monotheism, why his message may have been attractive to first-century audiences, how his message was elaborated in various ways in the first four centuries, and how his theological discourse might relate to contemporary theological discourse and ideological analysis today.

The range of scholarly work in progress on the New Testament continues to grow, and this is undoubtedly due in great measure to the stimulus and encouragement provided by leading editors and scholars such as Matthew Black, in whose honour this volume is published. The contributors have come together from many countries and Christian churches to provide a series of original essays in new Testament textual criticism and exegesis. In aiming to produce a cohesive volume the editors, unfortunately, had to omit representation of various fields of study in which Matthew Black has made a distinctive contribution to scholarship. The volume includes a bibliography of Matthew Black's most recent published writings.

The monograph is devoted to a crucial point of Christian theology: its development from the short formulae of the 'gospel' (euangelion) - as the first reflected expressions of Christian faith - to the theology of literary Gospels as texts that evoked the idea of Christian canon as a counterpart of the "Law and Prophets". In the formulae of the oral gospel the apocalyptic expectations are adapted into a "doubled" or "split" eschatology: The Messiah has appeared, but the messianic reign is still the object of expectation. The experience with Jesus' post Easter impact has been named as "resurrection" of which God was the subject. Since the apocalyptic "resurrection" applied for many or all people, the resurrection of Jesus became a guarantee of hope. The last chapters analyze the role of the oral gospel in shaping the earliest literary Gospel (Mark). This book analyses Gospels as texts that (re-)introduced Jesus traditions into the Christian liturgy and literature. Concluding paragraphs are devoted to the titles of the individual Gospels and to the origins of the idea of Christian canon.

The goals of Management and the Gospel: Luke's Radical Message for the First and Twenty-First Centuries may appear to be simple: it describes what management theory and practice looked like in the first century, uses this as a lens to examine what the Gospel of Luke says about management, and draws out implications for today. However, the book is quite profound in finding that management is a dominant theme in the Gospel, that its message is consistently counter-cultural, and that Luke contains a four-phase 'how to' process model to help readers to implement change. Readers will acquire a new way to understand the Gospel as well as the moral foundations of modern management.

Peter is a fascinating character in all four canonical gospels, not only as a literary figure in each of the gospels respectively, but also when looked at from an intertextual perspective. This book examines how Peter is rewritten for each of the gospels, positing that the different portrayals of this crucial figure reflect not only the theological priorities of each gospel author, but also their attitude towards their predecessors. Rewriting Peter as an Intertextual Character in the Canonical Gospels is the first critical study of the canonical gospels which is based on Markan priority, Luke's use of Mark and Matthew, and John's use of all three synoptic gospels. Through a selection of close readings, Damgaard both provides a new critical portrait of Peter and proposes a new theory of source and redaction in the gospels. In the last thirty years there has been an increasing appreciation of the gospels' literary design and of the gospel writers as authors and innovators rather than merely compilers and transmitters. However, literary critics have tended to read each gospel individually as if they were written for isolated communities. This book reconsiders the relationship between the gospels, arguing that the works were composed for a general audience and that the writers were bold and creative interpreters of the tradition they inherited from earlier gospel sources. Damgaard's view that the gospel authors were familiar with the work of their predecessors, and that the divergences between their narratives were deliberate, sheds new light on their intentions and has a tremendous impact on our understanding of the gospels.

In this six-session video Bible study (DVD/digital video sold separately), Kristy Cambron invites you on a journey through the Gospel of Luke using a technique that revolutionized her time with God–Verse Mapping.

If you have a deep desire to unpack the meaning of the Scriptures you’re reading but you want to do it in a simple way–then verse mapping is for you. Verse mapping includes Hebrew/Greek word studies, finding connections in Scripture, comparing Bible translations, and learning as much as you can from your time with the Holy Spirit. And it’s even better when you do it with others as a group.

Simply put, verse mapping is getting real about studying Scripture. More than just reading a verse or passage, it’s about researching everything you can about what you’ve read to learn more about who God is and how He speaks into your life through His Word.

What if there were no barriers to your faith journey?

Take a verse mapping journey through the book of Acts and experience your own story road through Scripture!

Parables and Conflict in the Hebrew Bible examines the intimate relationship between parables and conflict in the Hebrew Bible. Challenging the scholarly consensus, Jeremy Schipper argues that parables do not function as appeals to change their audience s behavior. Nor do they serve to diffuse tensions in regards to the various conflicts in which their audiences are involved. Rather, the parables function to help create, intensify, and justify judgments and hostile actions against their audiences. In order to examine how the parables accomplish these functions, this book pays particular attention to issues of genre and recent developments in genre theory, shifting the central issues in the interpretation of Hebrew Bible parables.

Tyconius Afer, a Donatist of the latter half of the fourth century, was an influential figure in the struggle between the Donatist and Catholic Churches in Africa and writer of at least two important exegetical works: the Book of Rules, published in 1894 in the third volume Texts and Studies by F. C. Burkitt and the Commentary on the Apocalypse here restored in a critical text by the late Francesco Lo Bue. Tyconius' Commentary is generally thought to survive only in the work of other writers but it is Dr Lo Bue, using critical techniques, who can be said to have restored something like the original text and, what is more, to have proved the ascription to Tyconius beyond reasonable doubt.

These essays presented to Dr Dodd to honour a great teacher and scholar are on two themes. Part I systematically surveys the present state of research on the background of the New Testament. (Dr Dodd's studies in the Septuagint and Hermetica suggested this theme.) Part II is on the particular problem of eschatology in the new Testament (with which his name is chiefly identified).

This is a collection of studies of suffering and martyrdom concentrating on the link, historically envisaged in different ways, between the sufferings of the faithful and the figure of Christ (or the messianic hope, in relation to one Jewish writer). The distinguished scholars contributing to this cohesive but many-sided book are C. F. D. Moule, J. C. O'Neill, B. E. Beck, B. Lindars, M. D. Hooker, W. F. Flemington, E. Bammel, J. P. M. Sweet, B. McNeil, W. Horbury, N. L. A. Lash and the late G. W. H. Lampe. All have been associated closely with the Cambridge New Testament Seminar and Professor Moule prefaces the volume with an account of the history of the Seminar and of its secretary for many years, G. M. Styler, in whose honour the collection is published. The importance and centrality of the topic will make the book of interest beyond the immediate circle of students of the New Testament, to those interested in patristic and Jewish studies and systematic theology.

By recovering the world for whom the first three gospels were written, Professor Dodd, in this short book, confers upon his readers the ability to make fresh approach and a new understanding to turn a worn-out experience into tone that is vivd and moving. He discusses the events of the Old World into which the gospels entered, their date of writing, their authenticity in the light of modern biblical criticism, the early communities of Christians whose needs the gospels met and the fundamentals of early Christian society. All is tersely dealt with, but one feels the authority of learning behind the summary. The chapters were originally broadcast as part of the Sunday morning services of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Many interpreters of the Fourth Gospel detect allusions to biblical texts about marriage, but none offers a comprehensive analysis of these proposed allusions or a convincing explanation for their presence. Building on the work of Richard Hays, Donald Juel and Craig Koester, in this 2006 book Jocelyn McWhirter argues that John alludes to biblical texts about marriage in order to develop a metaphor for Jesus and how he relates to his followers. According to McWhirter, John chooses these texts because he uses a first-century exegetical convention to interpret them as messianic prophecies in light of an accepted messianic text. Specifically, he uses verbal parallels to link them to Psalm 45, a wedding song for God's anointed king. He then draws on them to portray Jesus as a bridegroom-Messiah and to depict Jesus' relationship with his followers in terms of marriage.

Few twentieth-century scholars have made so broad and deep a contribution to our understanding of the New Testament as the former Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, the Rev. C. F. D. Moule. This selection of his essays, almost all already published in specialist journals and Festschriften, represents in one volume the whole range of Professor Moule's contribution to New Testament studies. Two are studies in linguistic matters, several concern aspects of the theology of the New Testament, some are concerned with matters historical and literary. They deal with such central Christian themes as punishment, forgiveness, sacrifice, death and resurrection. Making more accessible Professor Moule's work, this book will be of value to all serious students of the New Testament, whether they are professional scholars, undergraduates, clergymen or interested and informed laymen.

Brimming with photos and graphics, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary walks you verse by verse through all the books of the New Testament. It's like slipping on a set of glasses that lets you read the Bible through the eyes of a first-century reader! Discoveries await you that will snap the world of the New Testament into gripping immediacy. Things that seem mystifying, puzzling, or obscure will take on tremendous meaning when you view them in their ancient context. You'll deepen your understanding of the teachings of Jesus. You'll discover the close, sometimes startling interplay between God's kingdom and the practical affairs of the church. Best of all, you'll gain a deepened awareness of the Bible's relevance for your life. Written in a clear, engaging style, this beautiful set provides a new and accessible approach that more technical expository and exegetical commentaries don't offer.

Brimming with photos and graphics, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary walks you verse by verse through all the books of the New Testament. It's like slipping on a set of glasses that lets you read the Bible through the eyes of a first-century reader! Discoveries await you that will snap the world of the New Testament into gripping immediacy. Things that seem mystifying, puzzling, or obscure will take on tremendous meaning when you view them in their ancient context. You'll deepen your understanding of the teachings of Jesus. You'll discover the close, sometimes startling interplay between God's kingdom and the practical affairs of the church. Best of all, you'll gain a deepened awareness of the Bible's relevance for your life. Written in a clear, engaging style, this beautiful set provides a new and accessible approach that more technical expository and exegetical commentaries don't offer.

Brimming with photos and graphics, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary walks you verse by verse through all the books of the New Testament. It's like slipping on a set of glasses that lets you read the Bible through the eyes of a first-century reader! Discoveries await you that will snap the world of the New Testament into gripping immediacy. Things that seem mystifying, puzzling, or obscure will take on tremendous meaning when you view them in their ancient context. You'll deepen your understanding of the teachings of Jesus. You'll discover the close, sometimes startling interplay between God's kingdom and the practical affairs of the church. Best of all, you'll gain a deepened awareness of the Bible's relevance for your life. Written in a clear, engaging style, this beautiful set provides a new and accessible approach that more technical expository and exegetical commentaries don't offer.

Brimming with photos and graphics, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary walks you verse by verse through all the books of the New Testament. It's like slipping on a set of glasses that lets you read the Bible through the eyes of a first-century reader! Discoveries await you that will snap the world of the New Testament into gripping immediacy. Things that seem mystifying, puzzling, or obscure will take on tremendous meaning when you view them in their ancient context. You'll deepen your understanding of the teachings of Jesus. You'll discover the close, sometimes startling interplay between God's kingdom and the practical affairs of the church. Best of all, you'll gain a deepened awareness of the Bible's relevance for your life. Written in a clear, engaging style, this beautiful set provides a new and accessible approach that more technical expository and exegetical commentaries don't offer.

Brimming with photos and graphics, the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary walks you verse by verse through all the books of the New Testament. It's like slipping on a set of glasses that lets you read the Bible through the eyes of a first-century reader! Discoveries await you that will snap the world of the New Testament into gripping immediacy. Things that seem mystifying, puzzling, or obscure will take on tremendous meaning when you view them in their ancient context. You'll deepen your understanding of the teachings of Jesus. You'll discover the close, sometimes startling interplay between God's kingdom and the practical affairs of the church. Best of all, you'll gain a deepened awareness of the Bible's relevance for your life. Written in a clear, engaging style, this beautiful set provides a new and accessible approach that more technical expository and exegetical commentaries don't offer.

F. Gerald Downing explores the teachings of Paul, arguing that the development of Paul's preaching and of the Pauline Church owed a great deal to the views of the vagabond Cynic philosophers, critics of the gods and of the ethos of civic society. F. Gerald Downing examines the New Testament writings of Paul, explaining how he would have been seen, heard, perceived and understood by his culturally and ethnically diverse converts and disciples. He engages in a lucid Pauline commentary and offers some startling and ground-breaking views of Paul and his Word. Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches is a unique and controversial book, particularly in its endorsement of the simple and ascetic life proffered in Paul's teachings in comparison with the greedy, consumerist and self-promoting nature of today's society.

For half a century Leander Keck thought, taught, and wrote about the New Testament. He first served as a Professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Emory University's Candler School of Theology before becoming Dean and Professor of Biblical Theology at Yale Divinity School. Keck's lifelong work on Jesus and Paul was a catalyst for the emerging discussions of New Testament Christology and Pauline theology in the Society of Biblical Literature and the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Keck wrote a staggering number of now industry-standard articles on the New Testament. Here, they are all collected for the first time. In Christ's First Theologian and Why Christ Matters , readers will discover how Keck gave new answers to old questions even as he carefully reframed old answers into new questions. Keck's work is a treasure trove of historical, exegetical, and theological interpretation.

The fourth volume in Peterson's best-selling "conversations" in spiritual theology Just as God used words both to create the world and to give us commandments, we too use words for many different purposes. In fact, we use the same language to talk to each other and to talk to God. Can our everyday speech, then, be just as important as the words and prayers we hear from the pulpit? Eugene Peterson unequivocally says "Yes!" Peterson's Tell It Slant explores how Jesus used language, particularly in his parables and prayers. His was not a direct language of information or instruction but an indirect, oblique language requiring a participating imagination -- "slant" language. Tell It Slant beautifully points to Jesus' engaging, relational way of speaking as a model for us today.

After a survey of recent approaches to the study of Paul's use of Scripture, the four main chapters explore the use of Isa. 54:1 in Gal. 4:27, the catena of scriptural texts in 2 Cor. 6:16-18, Hos. 1:10 and 2:23 in Rom. 9:25-26 and Isa. 57:19 in Eph. 2:17. In each case, the ancienwriter seeks to place the letter in its historical context and rhetorical situation, identify the significance of any conflations or modifications that have taken place in the citation process, analyse the citation's function within its immediate context, compare its use by Paul with the various ways in which the text is interpreted and appropriated by other Second Temple writers, and evaluate the main proposals offered as explanations for the riddle posed by the citation. That done, he offers his own account of the hermeneutic at work, based on an analysis of the explicit and implicit hermeneutical pointers through which the letter guides its readers in their appropriation of Scripture. This book compares the hermeneutical approaches of the four letters and draws conclusionsconcerning the interplay of continuity and discontinuity between Scripture and gospel in Paul's letters and the relationship between grace and Gentile inclusion in his theology.