This book extends scholarly debate beyond the analysis of pure historical debates and concerns to focus on the associations between Acts and the diverse contemporaneous texts, writers, and broader cultural phenomena in the second-century world of Christians, Romans, Greeks, and Jews.

Indirect evidence, in the form of early translations ('versions') and biblical quotations in ancient writers ('patristic citations'), offers important testimony to the history and transmission of the New Testament. In addition to their value as early evidence for the Greek New Testament, versions have a textual tradition of their own which is often of considerable historical, theological and ecclesial significance. This volume brings together a series of original contributions on this topic, which was the focus of the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. The research described here illustrates not just the ongoing importance and variety of this material, but also the way in which it may shape the theory and practice of text-critical scholarship and lead to new insights about this vast and rich tradition.

The author of Hebrews calls God 'Father' only twice in his sermon. This fact could account for scholarship's lack of attention to the familial dynamics that run throughout the letter. Peeler argues, however, that by having God articulate his identity as Father through speaking Israel's Scriptures at the very beginning and near the end of his sermon, the author sets a familial framework around his entire exhortation. The author enriches the picture of God's family by continually portraying Jesus as God's Son, the audience as God's many sons, the blessings God bestows as inheritance, and the trials God allows as pedagogy. The recurrence of the theme coalesces into a powerful ontological reality for the audience: because God is the Father of Jesus Christ, they too are the sons of God. But even more than the model of sonship, Jesus' relationship with his Father ensures that the children of God will endure the race of faith to a successful finish because they are an integral part of comprehensive inheritance promised by his Father and secured by his obedience. Because of the familial relationship between God and Jesus, the audience of Hebrews - God's children - can remain in the house of God forever.

Scholars of New Testament and early Christian traditions have given new attention to the relationships between gender and imperial power in the Roman world. Celene Lillie examines core passages from three Gnostic texts from Nag Hammadi, On the Origin of the World, The Reality of the Rulers, and the Secret Revelation of John, in which Eve is portrayed as having been humiliated by the cosmic powers, compares that pattern with Gnostic savior motifs concerning Jesus and Seth, then sets it in the broader context of Roman imperial ideology.

Stefanos Mihalios examines the uses of the hour in the writings of John and demonstrates the contribution of Danielic eschatology to Johns understanding of this concept. Mihalios begins by tracing the notion of an eschatological time in the Old Testament within expressions such as in that time and time of distress, which also appear in the book of Daniel and relate to the eschatological hour found in Daniel. Mihalios finds that even within the Jewish tradition there exists an anticipation of the fulfillment of the Danielic eschatological time, since the eschatological hour appears in the Jewish literature within contexts that allude to the Danielic end-time events. Mihalios moves on to examines the Johannine eschatological expressions and themes that have their source in Daniel, finding evidence of clear allusions whenever the word hour arises. Through this examination, he concludes that for the Johannine Jesus use of the term hour indicates that the final hour of tribulation and resurrection, as it is depicted in Daniel, has arrived.

For many Jewish Christians of the first century, living in the light of the gospel was challenging. Having accepted Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, they were regarded by still-skeptical family, friends and neighbors as dangerous, misguided and even disloyal to all that God had said earlier on. The letter to the Hebrews was written to show that you can't go back to an earlier stage of God's purposes but must press on eagerly to the one that is yet to come. In these studies we find encouragement and assurance that pressing on, even in the face of such close and constant pressure to fall back, is its own reward. The guides in this series by Tom Wright can be used on their own or alongside his New Testament for Everyone commentaries. They are designed to help you understand the Bible in fresh ways under the guidance of one of the world's leading New Testament scholars.

There is an increasing hunger among Catholics to study the Bible in depth and in a way that integrates Scripture with Catholic doctrine, worship, and daily life. "Second Corinthians" is the fourth of seventeen volumes in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (CCSS), a new series that will cover the entire New Testament and interprets Scripture from within the living tradition of the Church. This volume, like each in the series, is supplemented by features designed to help readers understand the Bible more deeply and use it more effectively.

Things don't always go the way we intend. It's easy to feel discouraged when we cannot achieve what we hope for or when other people seem to make life difficult. Paul, writing to the Philippians from prison, certainly knew what it was like to have his plans thwarted. Yet, as this most joyful of letters conveys, he maintained a robust confidence in God's power and love. Paul's circumstances make this letter especially poignant, revealing as it does a man enduring huge difficulties and hardships. These eight studies on Philippians encourage us to face our problems with a Pauline fortitude, trust and hope.

The Gospel of John has long been recognized as being distinct from the Synoptic Gospels. John among the Apocalypses explains John's distinctive narrative of Jesus's life by comparing it to Jewish apocalypses and highlighting the central place of revelation in the Gospel. While some scholars have noted a connection between the Gospel of John and Jewish apocalypses, Reynolds makes the first extensive comparison of the Gospel with the standard definition of the apocalypse genre. Engaging with modern genre theory, this comparison indicates surprising similarities of form, content, and function between John's Gospel and Jewish apocalypses. Even though the Gospel of John reflects similarities with the genre of apocalypse, John is not an apocalypse, but in genre theory terms, John may be described as a gospel in kind and an apocalypse in mode. John's narrative of Jesus's life has been qualified and shaped by the genre of apocalypse, such that it may be called an 'apocalyptic' gospel. In the final two chapters, Reynolds explores the implications of this conclusion for Johannine Studies and New Testament scholarship more broadly. John among the Apocalypses considers how viewing the Fourth Gospel as apocalyptic Gospel aids in the interpretation of John's appeal to Israel's Scriptures and Mosaic authority, and examines the Gospel's relationship with the book of Revelation and the history of reception concerning their writing. An examination of Byzantine iconographic traditions highlights how reception history may offer a possible explanation for reading John as apocalyptic Gospel.

New Testament Theology in a Secular World is an important and original new work in Christian apologetics. It is the first book to apply constructivist theory to biblical studies.
Biblical Studies scholar Peter Lampe tackles head on such questions as: What do we understand by "reality?" How does this relate to what theology calls the "reality of God" or the "reality of resurrection?" How can we account for the concept of "revelation"? Lampe argues that in talking about "reality" theologians must make an effort to engage with the concept of "reality" as it is discussed in the fields of philosophical epistemology and sociology of knowledge. However, as Lampe shows, Theology has so far hardly or only reluctantly participated in this dialogue.

In this study, Sarah Harding examines Paul's anthropology from the perspective of eschatology, concluding that the apostle's view of humans is a function of his belief that the cosmos evolves through distinct aeons in progress toward its telos. Although scholars have frequently assumed that Paul's anthropological utterances are arbitrary, inconsistent, or dependent upon parallel views extant in the first-century world, Harding shows that these assumptions only arise when Paul's anthropology is considered apart from its eschatological context. That context includes the temporal distinction of the old aeon, the new aeon, and the significant overlap of aeons in which those "in Christ" dwell, as well as a spatial dimension that comprises the cosmos and the powers that dominate it (especially sin and the Holy Spirit). These eschatological dimensions determine the value Paul attaches to any particular anthropological "aspect." Harding examines the cosmological power dominant in each aeon and the structures through which, in Paul's view, these influence human beings, examining texts in which Paul discusses nous, kardia, and s?ma in each aeon.

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.

This text brings together in one volume two previous books that laid the groundwork for the construction of the entries in Diccionario Griego-Espanol del Nuevo Testamento (Greek-Spanish Dictionary of the New Testament), namely Metodo de Analisis semantico aplicado al griego del Nuevo Testamento (Method of Semantic Analysis applied to the Greek of the New Testament) and Metodologia del Diccionario Griego Espanol del Nuevo Testamento (Methodology of the Greek Spanish Dictionary of the New Testament), by Juan Mateos and Jesus Pelaez. In the introduction and first part of the text, the concepts of dictionary and meaning are defined and a critical analysis of the dictionaries of F. Zorell, W. Bauer (Bauer-Aland) and Louw-Nida is conducted. Their methodologies are examined with the purpose of then presenting a method of semantic analysis and the steps for establishing the semantic formula of the various classes of lexemes, which functions as the basis for determining lexical and contextual meaning. In the second part the necessary steps for composing the dictionary's entries are proposed. The text concludes with an analysis of related lexemes in order to demonstrate the accuracy of the suggested method. For the first time, a carefully developed method of semantic analysis and the corresponding methodology are presented before the construction of the dictionary's entries.

Sortilege-the making of decisions by casting lots-was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.

This book discusses the composition of the synoptic gospels from the perspective of the Farrer hypothesis, a view that posits that Mark was written first, that Matthew used Mark as a source, and that Luke used both Mark and Matthew. All of the articles in the volume are written in support of the Farrer hypothesis, with the exception of the final chapter, which criticizes these articles from the perspective of the reigning Two-Source theory. The contributors engage the synoptic problem with a more refined understanding of the options set before each of the evangelists pointing towards a deepened understanding of how works were compiled in the first and early second centuries CE. The contributors include Andris Abakuks, Stephen Carlson, Eric Eve, Mark Goodacre, Heather Gorman, John S. Kloppenborg, David Landry, Mark Matson, Ken Olson, Michael Pahl, Jeffrey Peterson, and John C. Poirier.