Although consistently overlooked or dismissed, John 8.6, 8 in the Pericope Adulterae is the only place in canonical or non-canonical Jesus tradition that portrays Jesus as writing. After establishing that John 8.6, 8 is indeed a claim that Jesus could write, this book offers a new interpretation and transmission history of the Pericope Adulterae. Not only did the pericope's interpolator place the story in John's Gospel in order to highlight the claim that Jesus could write, but he did so at John 7.53-8.11 as a result of carefully reading the Johannine narrative. The final chapter of the book proposes a plausible socio-historical context for the insertion of the story.

In this collection of thematically arranged essays on the Gospel according to Mark, the first part highlights its reception in early Christianity, its text form as an episodic narrative and its relation to contemporary genres. It recognizes Mark's dependence on traditions from and about Jesus of Nazareth and the presupposed knowledge about the narrated locations in Galilee. The second part focuses on the discourse itself, presenting studies on style, use of metaphor, intertextuality, and strategies of persuasion. The third part treats the Christology, ethics and eschatology and the way in which the narrator gives meaning to Jesus's death. The fourth part returns to the burning issue of what lies behind Mark and how we can study it, ending with a proposal to discuss the composition of the narrative within the framework of performance theory.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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 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 Pauline Language and the Pastoral Epistles Jermo van Nes questions the common assumption in New Testament scholarship that language variation is necessarily due to author variation. By using the so-called Pastoral Epistles (PE) as a test-case, Van Nes demonstrates by means of statistical linguistics that only one out of five of their major lexical and syntactic peculiarities differs significantly from other Pauline writings. Most of the PE's linguistic peculiarities are shown to differ considerably in the Corpus Paulinum, but modern studies in classics and linguistics suggest that factors other than author variation account equally if not better for this variation. Since all of these explanatory factors are compatible with current authorship hypotheses of the PE, Van Nes suggests to no longer use language as a criterion in debates about their authenticity.

"Jude" is one of the most neglected letters of the New Testament. This collection of essays brings together fresh research in this area and develops a new understanding of the letter.The letters of "James", "1 and 2 Peter", and "Jude" are among the most neglected letters of the New Testament. Thus, methodological advances in New Testament study tend to arise among the Gospels or Pauline letters. But these letters are beginning to receive increased attention in the scholarly community."Reading Jude With New Eyes" is the fourth 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 "Jude", including, for example, rhetorical, social-scientific, socio-rhetorical, ideological and hermeneutical methods, as they contribute to understanding this letter and its social context. Each essay will have a similar three-fold structure: a description of the methodological approach; the application of the methodological approach to the particular letter under consideration (the bulk of the essay); and a conclusion identifying how the methodological approach contributes to a fresh understanding the letter.It was formerly published as 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.

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.