To follow Jesus we have to learn to think inside out, in looking-glass fashion: what the world counts as great is foolishness, and what the world counts as folly is the true wisdom. Cling on to your life and you'll lose it; give everything you've got to following Jesus, including life itself, and you'll win it. In every generation there are, it seems, a few people who are prepared to take Jesus seriously, at his word. What would it be like if you were one of them?

Have you ever wondered why Paul leaves the resurrection discussion in 1 Corinthians 15 for the end of the letter? Have you pondered how 1 Corinthians 15 functions as the climax to 1 Corinthians? This book answers those questions by exploring insinuatio, the Greco-Roman rhetorical convention used to address prejudiced or controversial topics-like resurrection-at the end of a discourse. This is the most thorough treatment of insinuatio in Biblical and Classical studies to date. It examines the Greco-Roman rhetorical handbooks and speeches on insinuatio, compares them to what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 15, and finds that this was precisely Paul's rhetorical strategy in 1 Corinthians.

The book explores the antisemitic potential of Matthew's Gospel in the Christian New Testament. It begins with a detailed discussion of the occasion of the text, before discussing key questions (Matthew's fulfilment theology, and the use of polemic in the text). Three crucial texts are examined in detail. The book discusses the reverberations of the "blood cry," arguing the deicide-focused interpretation of Matthew 27:25 is foundational to subsequent blood libels, which are also discussed. The final chapters explore how to preach from Matthew's Gospel with Jewish people in mind, including offering sample sermons to stimulate the reader's thinking about how they might teach from a controversial Matthean text in a way that denies the possibility of perpetuating Christian antisemitism. It will be of interest to students and scholars in religion and faith, Christianity, and interfaith studies.

Euro-American biblical scholarship has traditionally conceived of the Bible in a way that removes privileged readers from personal responsibility in the subjugation of marginalized communities. Peter McLellan terms this practice gentrified biblical scholarship: readers removed from difference, because of the gentrification of space in the West, who are left without the conceptual resources to understand their relationship with the Bible as simultaneous relationship with minoritized communities. McLellan deploys the theoretical fields of hauntology and critical space theory to argue that the Gospel of Mark is a haunted place. A project written largely in New Jersey's wealthy northern suburbs, each chapter converses with vignettes from Newark, New Jersey's Ironbound neighborhood-a low income, largely Latinx and immigrant community-to explore relations between these two otherwise isolated locales. The result is a discussion of gentrifications harmful effects on vibrant communities, made invisible to suburban Christian readers, and an effort to explore how marginalized people make persistent demands upon those who hold Mark's Gospel sacred.

The subject of the Bible's last book is often met with fear, awe, and fascination. In fact, the true meaning of Revelation is so often interpreted or speculated on by authors, ministers, or academics, that very few individuals actually study the book themselves. The literal meaning of Revelation, in Greek, is 'an unveiling.' Allow yourself to be engaged in God's vision of hope and promise for the faithful, obedient Christian and discover what truths Revelation will unveil in your own life. Part 1 contains the first 11 chapters of the book. Part 2 contains the last 11. Paper.

Margaret Froelich examines the Gospel of Mark using political and empire-critical methodologies, following postcolonial thinkers in perceiving a far more ambivalent message than previous pacifistic interpretations of the text. She argues that Mark does not represent an entirely new way of thinking about empire or cosmic structures, but rather exhibits concepts and structures with which the author and his audience are already familiar in order to promote the Kingdom of God as a better version of the encroaching Roman Empire. Froelich consequently understands Mark as a response to the physical, ideological, and cultural displacement of the first Roman/Judean War. By looking to Greek, Roman, and Jewish texts to determine how first-century authors thought of conquest and expansion, Froelich situates the Gospel directly in a historical and socio-political context, rather than treating that context as a mere backdrop; concluding that the Gospel portrays the Kingdom of God as a conquering empire with Jesus as its victorious general and client king.

Are the Thomas references in the Gospel of John, the Thomas compositions, and the early Thomas traditions in northwestern and southern India purely legendary as biblical scholars have assumed or do they preserve unexamined historical traditions intermittently as the Thomas Christians in India have believed? Didymus Judas Thomas is one of the most misunderstood characters from the beginning of the New Testament history and interpretation. In this study, Thomaskutty addresses the following questions: whether Thomas was merely a 'doubting Thomas' or a 'genuine Thomas'? Can we understand Thomas comprehensively by bringing the New Testament, apocrypha, and historical traditions together? How was Thomas connected to eastern Christianity and how does the Thomas literature support/not support this connectivity? Can we understand the Thomas traditions related to Judea, Syria, and India with the help of canonical, extra canonical, and traditio-historical documents? Thomaskutty investigates the development of the Thomas literature right from the beginning, examining and questioning the approaches and methodologies that have been employed in interpreting these documents, and analyzes the Thomas literature closely in order to understand the character, his mission involvements, and the possible implications this may have for understanding early Christianity in the east.

Katherine Joy Kihlstrom Timpte addresses a gap in scholarship by answering the question: "how is a child supposed to be the model recipient of the kingdom of God?" While most scholarship on Mark 10:13-16 agrees that children are metaphorically employed because of their qualities of dependence, Timpte argues that it is more specifically an image of the disciple's radical transformation, which both mirrors and reverses the traditional rites of passage by which a child became an adult. Timpte suggests that Jesus, by insisting that one must enter the Kingdom of God as a child, invokes two interlacing images. First, to enter the Kingdom of God, one must be fundamentally transformed and changed. Second, this transformation reverses the rite by which a child would have become an adult, removing the adult's superior status. Beginning with a summary of the scholarship surrounding children in the Bible, Timpte explores the perception of children in the ancient world, their rites of passage and entrance into adulthood, and contrasting this with the processing of entering the kingdom of God, while also highlighting childish characters in Mark. Timpte concludes that to enter into the kingdom as a child means that one must strip off those things one gained by leaving childhood behind: wealth, respect, family, much like Jesus, who throughout Mark's Gospel moves from powerful to powerless, respected to despised, and accepted by all to rejected even (seemingly) by God. Jesus models transformation to childhood in an emphasis on what the Kingdom of God is like.