The twin sisters Agnes Lewis (1843 1926) and Margaret Gibson (1843 1920) were pioneering biblical scholars who became experts in a number of ancient languages. Travelling widely in the Middle East, they made several significant discoveries, including one of the earliest manuscripts of the four gospels in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language probably spoken by Jesus himself. Originally published in the Horae Semitica series, this fascicule contains an English translation of the apocryphal acts of the apostles. Originally published in 1904 by Agnes Lewis, the text chronicles the lives, adventures and deaths of important figures like Paul, Thaddeus and James, the brother of Jesus. This fascinating volume features extraordinary tales of peril and persecution - one town's sinful population places a naked prostitute at the town gate to deter the apostles, but the archangel Michael levitates her out of their way - and is of great historical and theological interest.

For centuries, we thought we knew what happened during Jesus last days. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are not only observed by Christians around the world, but are also recognized in calendars and by non-practitioners as commemorating events in the final week of Jesus life. But apparent inconsistencies in the Gospel accounts of this period have continued to puzzle Bible scholars and fuel skeptics. In The Mystery of the Last Supper, Colin Humphreys uses science to reveal the truth about Jesus final days. Reconciling conflicting biblical accounts with scientific evidence, Humphreys proves that the Gospels, correctly interpreted, are in remarkable agreement. He reveals the exact date of the Last Supper in a groundbreaking new timeline of Holy Week.
Colin Humphreys is director of research at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Miracles of Exodus (2003). He was awarded a knighthood in 2010 for services to Science."

In a series of exchanges with the Corinthians in the mid-50s AD, Paul continually sought to define the meaning of his message, his body and his letters, at times insisting upon a literal understanding, at others urging the reader to move beyond the words to a deeper sense within. Proposing a fresh approach to early Christian exegesis, Margaret M. Mitchell shows how in the Corinthian letters Paul was fashioning the very principles that later authors would use to interpret all scripture. Originally delivered as The Speaker's Lectures in Biblical Studies at Oxford University, this volume recreates the dynamism of the Pauline letters in their immediate historical context and beyond it in their later use by patristic exegetes. An engagingly written, insightful demonstration of the hermeneutical impact of Paul's Corinthian correspondence on early Christian exegetes, it also illustrates a new way to think about the history of reception of biblical texts.

The Teach the Text Commentary Series utilizes the best of biblical scholarship to provide the information a pastor needs to communicate the text effectively. The carefully selected preaching units and focused commentary allow pastors to quickly grasp the big idea and key themes of each passage of Scripture. Each unit of the commentary includes the big idea and key themes of the passage and sections dedicated to understanding, teaching, and illustrating the text.

Form of God, Form of a Servant examines the Greek noun morphe and seeks to discover Paul's meaning when he portrayed Christ as existing in the 'form of God' as well as taking on the 'form of a servant' in Philippians 2:6-7. This book adopts a synchronic approach to lexical semantics, and examines a cross section of Greek writers who use morphe from the classical period up through the first century A.D. The book also looks at how morphe has been interpreted throughout the church age, before exegetically examining the passage and interpreting the term in its context.

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 "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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Alfred Heidenreich addresses the puzzling apparent contradictions in the Gospels head on, and argues that these difficulties are necessary to encourage us to make an active spiritual effort to understand.

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.

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.

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.

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).

These helpful guides in the Cover to Cover series are ideal for group and individual study. Experience the reality of Bible events like never before and live through the inspiring lives of key characters in Scripture. Learn how to apply God's Word to your life as you explore seven compelling sessions and gain a new depth in your Bible knowledge.Put on God's strength, protection and power - and be able to face far more than you ever could alone In Ephesians 6, Paul portrays a soldier standing fully protected and strong in his armour. It's a well-known passage, but how do we go further than just 'knowing' the armour - how do we fully apply it to our lives The armour is of little value if it is not put on and worn intentionally. So let these words of Scripture become a reality to you and your daily life. Explore the different pieces of armour and consider how each part protects, strengthens and empowers us as we take hold of them. These seven illuminating sessions remind us how: salvations makes a vast difference in our lives we are loved, valued and forgiven by Godwe can wear the armour both personally and together as the Church Icebreakers, Bible readings, eye openers, discussion starters, personal application make this a rich resource for group or individual study.

Written by notable evangelical scholars, each volume in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series treats the literary context and structure of the passage in the original Greek. The series consistently provides the main point, an exegetical outline, verse-by-verse commentary, and theology in application in each section of every commentary. Critical scholarship informs each step but does not dominate the commentary, allowing readers to concentrate on the biblical author s message as it unfolds. While primarily designed for those with a basic knowledge of biblical Greek, all who strive to understand and teach the New Testament will find these books beneficial. The ZECNT series covers the entire New Testament in twenty volumes; Clinton E. Arnold serves as general editor. In this volume, Grant Osborne offers pastors, students, and teachers a focused resource for reading the Gospel of Matthew. Through the use of graphic representations of translations, succinct summaries of main ideas, exegetical outlines, and other features, Osborne presents the Gospel of Matthew with precision and accuracy. Because of this series focus on the textual structure of the scriptures, readers will better understand the literary elements of Matthew, comprehend the author s revolutionary goals, and ultimately discovering their vital claims upon the church today."

In this fully revised new edition of a pioneering study of John's gospel, John Ashton explores fresh topics and takes account of the latest scholarly debates. Ashton argues first that the thought-world of the gospel is Jewish, not Greek, and secondly that the text is many-layered, not simple, and composed over an extended period as the evangelist responded to the changing situation of the community he was addressing. Ashton seeks to provide new and coherent answers to what Rudolf Bultmann called the two great riddles of the gospel: its position in the development of Christian thought and its central or governing idea. In arguing that the first of these should be concerned rather with Jewish thought Ashton offers a partial answer to the most important and fascinating of all the questions confronted by New Testament scholarship: how did Christianity emerge from Judaism? Bultmann's second riddle is exegetical, and concerns the message of the book. Ashton's answer highlights a generally neglected feature of the gospel's concept of revelation: its debt to Jewish apocalyptic.

Engages with the latest research on the NT book of Acts, especially on authorship and genre