No portion of Scripture deals more clearly with the vitality of faith than Hebrews 11. "This chapter is to faith what the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is to love, " writes Richard Phillips. "Hebrews 11 is the work of a master teacher and loving pastor who is convinced that the fate of his readers hinges on their faith." Like the first audience of the Book of Hebrews the church today faces mounting opposition--even persecution--and the danger of falling away from the truth. Faith Victorious opens the fascinating world of Old Testament men and women whose vision of a sure hope beyond their struggles led them to acts of great courage. It likewise calls us to persevere in faith and to spur each other on to love and good deeds. "Rick Phillips combines in one person an extraordinary range of gifts and experiences: disciplined military training and teaching, deep personal commitment to Christ, a well-groomed understanding of Scripture, and a powerful enthusiasm for the spread of the gospel. Together these qualities leave a distinctive mark on his work."--Sinclair B. Ferguson

Based on recent studies in intercultural communication Kathy Ehrensperger applies the paradigm of multilingualism, which includes the recognition of cultural distinctiveness, to the study of Paul. Paul's role as apostle to the nations is seen as the role of a go-between - as that of cultural translator. This role requires that he is fully embedded in his own tradition but must also be able to appreciate and understand aspects of gentile culture. Paul is viewed as involved in a process in which the meaning of the Christ event is being negotiated 'in the space between' cultures, with their diverse cultural coding systems and cultural encyclopaedias. It is argued that this is not a process of imposing Jewish culture on gentiles at the expense of gentile identity, nor is it a process of eradication of Jewish identity. Rather, Paul's theologizing in the space between implies the task of negotiating the meaning of the Christ event in relation to, and in appreciation of both, Jewish and gentile identity.

In History of the Pauline Corpus in Texts, Transmissions, and Trajectories , Chris S. Stevens examines the Greek manuscripts of the Pauline texts from P46 to Claromontanus. Previous research is often hindered by the lack of a systematic analysis and an indelicate linguistic methodology. This book offers an entirely new analysis of the early life of the Pauline corpus. Departing from traditional approaches, this text-critical work is the first to use Systemic Functional Linguistics, which enables both the comparison and ranking of textual differences across multiple manuscripts. Furthermore, the analysis is synchronically oriented, so it is non-evaluative. The results indicate a highly uniform textual transmission during the early centuries. The systematic analysis challenges previous research regarding text types, Christological scribal alterations, and textual trajectories.

This reception history of the Gospel of Matthew utilizes theoretical frameworks and literary sources from two typically distinct disciplines, patristic studies and Valentinian (a.k.a. "Gnostic") studies. The author shows how in the second and third centuries, the Valentinians were important contributors to a shared culture of early Christian exegesis. By examining the use of the same Matthean pericopes by both Valentinian and patristic exegetes, the author demonstrates that certain Valentinian exegetical innovations were influential upon, and ultimately adopted by, patristic authors. Chief among Valentinian contributions include the allegorical interpretation of texts that would become part of the New Testament, a sophisticated theory of the historical and theological relationship between Christians and Jews, and indeed the very conceptualization of the Gospel of Matthew as sacred scripture. This study demonstrates that what would eventually emerge from this period as the ecclesiological and theological center cannot be adequately understood without attending to some groups and individuals that have often been depicted, both by subsequent ecclesiastical leaders and modern scholars, as marginal and heretical.

This collection examines the allusions to the Elijah- Elisha narrative in the gospel of Luke. The volume presents the case for a "maximalist" view, which holds that the Elijah-Elisha narrative had a dominant role in the composition of Luke 7 and 9, put forward by Thomas L. Brodie and John Shelton, with critical responses to this thesis by Robert Derrenbacker, Alex Damm, F. Gerald Downing, David Peabody, Dennis MacDonald and Joseph Verheyden. Taken together the contributions to this volume provide fascinating insights into the composition of the gospel of Luke, and the editorial processes involved in its creation. Contributions cover different approaches to the text, including issues of intertextuality and rhetorical-critical examinations. The distinguished contributors and fast-paced debate make this book an indispensable addition to any theological library.

Scholars have long puzzled over the distinctive themes and sequence of John's narrative in contrast to the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. Brian Neil Peterson now offers a remarkable explanation for some of the most unusual features of the Fourth Gospel, including the exalted language of the Johannine prologue; the focus upon Jesus as Word; the imagery of light and darkness, of glory and "tabernacling"; the role-and rejection-of prophecy; the early placement of Jesus' "cleansing" of the temple and his relation to it; the emphasis on "signs" confirming Jesus' identity; and the prominence ofJesus' "I Am" sayings. Peterson finds important connections with motifs, themes, and even the macrostructure of the book of Ezekiel at just the points of John's divergence from the synoptic narrative. His examination of events and sequence in the Fourth Gospel produces a novel understanding of John as steeped in the theology of Ezekiel-and of the Johannine Christ as the fulfillment of the vision of Ezekiel.

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.

Whether the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians is a single document or a compilation of two or more, and the question of Paul's relations with the Corinthian church between the despatch of the First and the composition of the Second letter (or letters), have been matters of debate since the eighteenth century.Margaret Thrall's commentary engages with these and all the other issues associated with 2 Corinthians. There follows a detailed verse-by-verse exegesis of chapters 1-7, which attempts to understand the viewpoint of the original readers of the text as well as Paul's own.This volume covers many of Paul's writings which have evoked considerable scholarly interest in recent years. This is an exemplary addition to the ICC series.>

In Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1-4 Dan Nasselqvist investigates the oral delivery of New Testament writings in early Christian communities of the first two centuries C.E. He examines the role of lectors and public reading in the Greek and Roman world as well as in early Christianity. Nasselqvist introduces a method of sound analysis, which utilizes the correspondence between composition and delivery in ancient literary writings to retrieve information about oral delivery from the sound structures of the text being read aloud. Finally he applies the method of sound analysis to John 1-4 and presents the implications for our understanding of public reading and the Gospel of John.

Scholars are divided in their views about the teachings on riches in 1 Timothy. Evidence that has been largely overlooked in NT scholarship appears in Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus and suggests that the topic be revisited. Recently dated to the mid-first century C.E., Ephesiaca brings to life what is known from ancient sources about the social setting and cultural rules of the wealthy in Ephesus and provides details that enhance our knowledge of life and society in that place and time. In this volume, Hoag introduces Ephesiaca and employs a socio-rhetorical methodology to explore it alongside other ancient evidence and five passages in 1 Timothy (2:9-15; 3:1-13; 6:1-2a; 6:2b-10; and 6:17-19). His findings augment our modern conception of the Sitz im Leben of the wealthy in Ephesus. Additionally, because Ephesiaca contains some rare terms and themes that are found in 1 Timothy, this groundbreaking research offers fresh insight for biblical reading and interpretation.

Barsoum's wrote many historical essays which he published in now hard-to-find journals, mainly al-Hikmah and al-Majalla al-Batriyarkiyya al-Suryaniyya (Jerusalem). This collection of articles, published in the original Arabic with an English translation by Matti Moosa, forms the core of Barsoum's historical writings.

This volume brings together an international group of scholars on Mark and Paul, respectively, who reopen the question whether Paul was a direct influence on Mark. On the basis of the latest methods in New Testament scholarship, the battle over Yes and No to this question of literary and theological influence is waged within these pages. In the end, no agreement is reached, but the basic issues stand out with much greater clarity than before. How may one relate two rather different literary genres, the apostolic letter and the narrative gospel? How may the theologies of two such different types of writing be compared? Are there sufficient indications that Paul lies directly behind Mark for us to conclude that through Paul himself and Mark the New Testament as a whole reflects specifically Pauline ideas? What would the literary and theological consequences of either assuming or denying a direct influence be for our reconstruction of 1st century Christianity? And what would the consequences be for either understanding Mark or Paul as literary authors and theologians? How far should we give Paul an exalted a position in the literary creativity of the first Christians? Addressing these questions are scholars who have already written seminally on the issue or have marked positions on it, like Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, Gerd Theissen and Oda Wischmeyer, together with a group of up-coming and senior Danish scholars from Aarhus and Copenhagen Universities who have collaborated on the issue for some years. The present volume leads the discussion further that has been taken up in: "Paul and Mark" (ed. by O. Wischmeyer, D. Sim, and I. Elmer), BZNW 191, 2013.

What distinguishes the "new perspective on Paul" - and what lies beyond it? What are scholars saying about Paul and the Roman Empire or about the intersection between feminist and postcolonial interpretation of Paul? Magnus Zetterholm provides a clear and reliable guide to these and other lively issues in the contemporary study of Paul, surveying the history of the principal perspectives on Paul's relation to Judaism and the Jewish law and showing the relationships between answers given to those questions and the assumptions scholars bring to other issues as well. This is an indispensable handbook for the beginning student of the apostle and his thought.

In this volume, Paul Robertson re-describes the form of the apostle Paul's letters in a manner that facilitates transparent, empirical comparison with texts not typically treated by biblical scholars. Paul's letters are best described by a set of literary characteristics shared by certain Greco-Roman texts, particularly those of Epictetus and Philodemus. Paul Robertson theorizes a new taxonomy of Greco-Roman literature that groups Paul's letters together with certain Greco-Roman, ethical-philosophical texts written at a roughly contemporary time in the ancient Mediterranean. This particular grouping, termed a socio-literary sphere, is defined by the shared form, content, and social purpose of its constituent texts, as well as certain general similarities between their texts' authors.

Mark's Gospel tells the complete story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Accurate and readable, the NIV (New International Version) is the world's most popular modern English Bible translation.