The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction-covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography-a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation-the author's own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes-the author's notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting-a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment-verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation-brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography-occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.

Bart Ehrman-the New York Times bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus and a recognized authority on the early Christian Church-and Zlatko Plese here offer a groundbreaking edition of the Apocryphal Gospels, one that breathes new life into the non-canonical texts that were once nearly lost to history. In The Other Gospels, Ehrman and Plese present a rare compilation of over 40 ancient gospel texts and textual fragments that do not appear in the New Testament. This essential collection contains Gospels describing Jesus's infancy, ministry, Passion, and resurrection, as well as the most controversial manuscript discoveries of modern times, including the most significant Gospel discovered in the 20th century-the Gospel of Thomas-and the most recently discovered Gospel, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. Each translation begins with a thoughtful examination of key historical, literary, and textual issues that places each Gospel in its proper context. The end result is a resource that enables anyone interested in Christianity or the early Church to understand-better than ever before-the deeper meanings of these apocryphal Gospels. The Other Gospels is much more than an annotated guide to the Gospels. Through its authoritative use of engaging, accurate translations, it provides an unprecedented look at early Christianity and the New Testament. This is an indispensable volume for any reader interested in church history, antiquity, or the Christian faith.

In this accessible and erudite commentary, the respected New Testament scholar Linda Belleville shows how Pauls letter to the Philippians provides a unique opportunity to see the similarities between the culture of his day and ours and to understand not only what is needed to cope in a hostile society but also to be bold in sharing the sole hope for our global world: knowing Christ and eternal citizenship in heaven. Philippians was written while Paul was imprisoned in the imperial barracks, awaiting the outcome of a life-or-death trial. His most beloved church was facing strong opponents without and selfish division within. Pauls strategy is to remind the church of the reasons to rejoice and forgo selfish opinion differences. There is much cause to rejoice because, despite imprisonment, the gospel had reached the entire imperial guard and emboldened Christians everywhere to boldly proclaim Christ; even if he dies, Pauls ministry of preaching Christ will continue. Yet the Philippians best exemplar is Christ himself, who, while enjoying his heavenly riches, willingly took on the human condition with its pain, suffering, and death so that they might gain their own heavenly riches.

The Handbook for Literary Analysis: How to Evaluate Prose Fiction, Drama, and Poetry reclaims the metaphor, rhetoric, and literary analysis. It has a high view of the reader, the critic, and the student. All three are invited to think critically and to discuss thoroughly the great literary works of all civilizations. Systematically, this Handbook defines, explains, and illustrates a wide range of significant literary terms in fiction, drama, and poetry. Along the way, readers explore copious, inspired examples, including biblical examples. Finally, readers read real literary analytical essays by American high school students. If readers learn how to do literary analysis well, they will be better able to create and to share vital truths with future generations. "Dr. Stobaugh's Handbook of Literary Criticism is an outstanding resource for educators and the students. Over the past several decades, the influence of literature produced by Christians has significantly declined. From my perspective as a Christian culture influencer, I believe we must reverse that trend. We need more effective authors who are producing world class literature framed in the Christian worldview. I see Dr. Stobaugh's handbook to be essential to reverse that trend. I highly recommend it." -Ray Traylor, Homeschool Dad, Author True Riches & Besetting Sin "This book is appropriate for junior high students through adults. You can work through the book sequentially or selectively, depending upon your need. The book reads like a literature text with plentiful use of literary excerpts, including many from Scripture, as examples. It also should help familiarize readers with some great literary works. There are no questions or assignments as you would find in a course. Instead, it is expected that the reader will be using it for self-directed education. Parents might assign particular sections for the student lacking self-direction, then follow up with a discussion regarding what they have read." -Cathy Duffy, homeschool review guru

This book views the strange imagery of Revelation not as prophecies of historical events, but as an expression of the entire destiny of humankind on earth.

Experience joy in any situation. The believers in Philippi were experiencing both concern for Paul while he was in prison and spiritual discouragement because of these circumstances. Paul wrote this loving letter to encourage them in their faith and to remind them that there was a greater future in store for him and for them outside this world. Paul even admits the tension he feels between living to continue sharing the gospel and dying so he can be with Christ. This mindset allowed Paul to remain joyful in the midst of suffering and he knew the same would be true of the Philippians believers as well. The Jeremiah Bible Study Series captures Dr. David Jeremiah's forty-plus years of commitment to teaching the Word of God. In each study, he will help you understand what the Bible says, what it meant to the people at the time it was written, and what it means to you today. Along the way, you will gain insights into the text, identify key stories and themes, and be challenged to apply truth you find to your life.

In this addition to the award-winning BECNT series, leading New Testament scholar and bestselling author G. K. Beale offers a substantive evangelical commentary on Colossians and Philemon. With extensive research and thoughtful chapter-by-chapter exegesis, Beale leads readers through all aspects of Colossians and Philemon--sociological, historical, and theological--to help them better understand the meaning and relevance of these biblical books. As with all BECNT volumes, this commentary features the author's detailed interaction with the Greek text and an acclaimed, user-friendly design. It admirably achieves the dual aims of the series--academic sophistication with pastoral sensitivity and accessibility--making it a useful tool for pastors, church leaders, students, and teachers.

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 Passion Translation is a modern, easy-to-read Bible translation that unlocks the passion of God's heart and expresses his fiery love-merging emotion and life-changing truth. This translation will evoke an overwhelming response in every reader, unfolding the deep mysteries of the Scriptures. If you are hungry for God, The Passion Translation will help you encounter his heart and know him more intimately. Fall in love with God all over again.

A sequel to Word of Mouth by Janet Lees The purpose of the gospel is to change things and the change it offers is from death to life. Many people will be familiar with the gospel in written form but not everyone uses written versions of the gospel all of the time. Alongside the written Bible, ordinary people often use oral or remembered versions. This book is about the why, how, when, where and what of remembering the gospel. Altogether it presents a companion to remembering the One - Jesus, the Life Giver - whose gospel it is. Tell Me the Stories of Jesus is based on work done with many groups of different sizes and ages and cultures. The examples are set out here to encourage other groups to 'just go for it': remember and by remembering share life and build community. This companion to the remembered gospel aims to encourage and support those who want to work with this process with ordinary people in any place. Janet Lees, a speech therapist and an ordained minister of the United Reformed Church, has been developing the remembered Bible method for over 15 years, with ordinary people of all ages and abilities in Yorkshire and around the UK.

The "New York Times" bestselling author uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable.
"Newsweek" called "New York Times" bestselling author Timothy Keller a "C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century" in a feature on his first book, "The Reason for God." In that book, he offered a rational explanation for why we should believe in God. Now, in "The Prodigal God," Keller takes his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity and uses the parable of the Prodigal Son to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation.
Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a whole new way.

As a commemorative gift for the 65th birthday celebration of the Salzburgian Old Testament scholar Friedrich V. Reiterer, whose research on Biblical wisdom literature has been devoted primarily to the book of Ben Sira, his colleagues and students presented him with this bouquet of studies related to Professor Reiterer s areas of interest. In addition to Ben Sira, these studies examine the part played by Wisdom in subsequent Late-Biblical texts, and in intertestamental and New Testament texts."

In der Reihe Arbeiten zur Neutestamentlichen Textforschung (ANTF) publiziert das Institut fur Neutestamentliche Textforschung (Munster) seit 1963 grundlegende Untersuchungen und Studien zur Textkritik und Textgeschichte des griechischen Neuen Testaments. Die Reihe versteht sich als Forschungs- und Diskussionsforum und stellt Editionen und Instrumente zur Erforschung und Auswertung der neutestamentlichen Primaruberlieferung und der fruhen UEbersetzungen bereit.

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 Oxford Bible Commentary is a Bible study and reference work for 21st century students and readers that can be read with any modern translation of the Bible. It offers verse-by-verse explanation of every book of the Bible by the world's leading biblical scholars. From its inception, OBC has been designed as a completely non-denominational commentary, carefully written and edited to provide the best scholarship in a readable style for readers from all different faith backgrounds. It uses the traditional historical-critical method to search for the original meaning of the texts, but also brings in new perspectives and insights - literary, sociological, and cultural - to bring out the expanding meanings of these ancient writings and stimulate new discussion and further enquiry.
Newly issued in a series of part volumes, the OBC is now available in an affordable and portable format for the commentaries to the Pauline Epistles. Includes a general introduction to using the Commentary, in addition to an introduction to study of the New Testament, and to the Pauline Corpus in particular.

In recent decades Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek have shown the centrality of Paul to western political and philosophical thought and made the Apostle a central figure in left-wing discourses far removed from traditional theological circles. Yet the recovery of Paul beyond Christian theology owes a great deal to the writings of the Jewish rabbi and philosopher Jacob Taubes (1923-1987). Pauline Ugliness shows how Paul became an effective tool for Taubes to position himself within European philosophical debates of the twentieth century. Drawing on Nietzsche's polemical readings of the ancient apostle as well as Freud's psychoanalysis, Taubes developed an imaginative and distinct account of political theology in confrontations with Carl Schmitt, Theodor Adorno, Hans Blumenberg, and others. In a powerful reconsideration of the apostle, Taubes contested the conventional understanding of Paul as the first Christian who broke definitively with Judaism and drained Christianity of its political potential. As a Jewish rabbi steeped in a philosophical tradition marked by European Christianity, Taubes was, on the contrary, able to emphasize Paul's Jewishness as well as the political explosiveness of his revolutionary doctrine of the cross. This book establishes Taubes's account of Paul as a turning point in the development of political theology. Loland shows how Taubes identified the Pauline movement as the birth of a politics of ugliness, the invention of a revolutionary criticism of the 'beautiful' culture of the powerful that sides instead with the oppressed.

Thomas Schreiner's substantial New Testament Theology examined the unifying themes that emerge from a detailed reading of the New Testament canon. Magnifying God in Christ provides a student-level digest of Schreiner's massive work, exploring the key themes and teachings of the New Testament in a more accessible and concise way. In addition to summarizing the findings of Schreiner's larger work, this survey provides answers to the 'so what?' question of New Testament theology.

Archaeology and the Letters of Paul illuminates the social, political, economic, and religious lives of those to whom the apostle Paul wrote. Roman Ephesos provides evidence of slave traders and the regulation of slaves; it is a likely setting for household of Philemon, to whom a letter about the slave Onesimus is addressed. In Galatia, an inscription seeks to restrain the demands of travelling Roman officials, illuminating how the apostolic travels of Paul, Cephas, and others disrupted communities. At Philippi, a list of donations from the cult of Silvanus demonstrates the benefactions of a community that, like those in Christ, sought to share abundance in the midst of economic limitations. In Corinth, a landscape of grief extends from monuments to the bones of the dead, and provides a context in which to understand Corinthian practices of baptism on behalf of the dead and the provocative idea that one could live"as if not" mourning or rejoicing. Rome and the Letter to the Romans are the grounds for an investigation of ideas of time and race not only in the first century, when we find an Egyptian obelisk inserted as a timepiece into the mausoleum complex of Augustus, but also of a new Rome under Mussolini that claimed the continuity of Roman racial identity from antiquity to his time and sought to excise Jews. Thessalonike and the early Christian literature associated with the city demonstrates what is done out of love for Paul-invention of letters, legends, and cult in his name. The book articulates a method for bringing together biblical texts with archaeological remains. This method reconstructs the lives of the many adelphoi-brothers and sisters-whom Paul and his co-writers address. Its project is informed by feminist historiography and gains inspiration from thinkers such as Claudia Rankine, Judith Butler, Giorgio Agamben, Wendy Brown, and Katie Lofton.

In this commentary, Michael Bird and Nijay Gupta situate Paul's letter to the Philippians within the context of his imprisonment as well as the Philippians' situation of suffering and persecution. Paul draws the Philippians' attention to the power and progress of the gospel in spite of difficult circumstances. He also warns them about the dangers of rival Christian groups who preach out of poor motives or have a truncated gospel. Bird and Gupta unpack the rich wisdom and theology of the Christ Hymn (2:6-11). Throughout the commentary, they apply a broad range of exegetical tools to interpret this letter including historical, sociological, rhetorical, and literary analysis, and they give attention to the reception of this important Pauline text throughout history. Bird and Gupta also includes short reflections on the meaning of Philippians for today.

In der Reihe Arbeiten zur Neutestamentlichen Textforschung (ANTF) publiziert das Institut fur Neutestamentliche Textforschung (Munster) seit 1963 grundlegende Untersuchungen und Studien zur Textkritik und Textgeschichte des griechischen Neuen Testaments. Die Reihe versteht sich als Forschungs- und Diskussionsforum und stellt Editionen und Instrumente zur Erforschung und Auswertung der neutestamentlichen Primaruberlieferung und der fruhen UEbersetzungen bereit.

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship. Overview of Commentary Organization Introduction-covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology. Each section of the commentary includes: Pericope Bibliography-a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope. Translation-the author's own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English. Notes-the author's notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation. Form/Structure/Setting-a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here. Comment-verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research. Explanation-brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues. General Bibliography-occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.