In this volume, Lamar Williamson's commentary provides teachers, preachers, and all serious students of the Bible with an interpretation that takes serious hermeneutical responsibility for the contemporary meaning and significance of Mark's text.

Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

In Family 13 in Saint John's Gospel, Jac Perrin innovatively applies phylogenetic software to shed new light on Family 13 membership. To date, the relocation of the Pericope Adulterae from its traditional location in John 7:53 has been the sole criterion of Family 13 filiality. This book demonstrates the inadequacy of this criterion, and proposes new criteria in its stead. Nineteen potential Family 13 witnesses are analyzed by means of a sampling process developed by David Parker, identifying eight witnesses inappropriately nominated as Family 13 members. This analysis is corroborated by a complete computer assisted collation of all variant readings in all known Family 13 witnesses. Lastly, the volume offers a comprehensive stemma representing the entire Johannine corpus of ten confirmed Family witnesses in constellation.

* Based on his popular Holy Week talks, given in Canterbury Cathedral

The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgement offers a theological meditation on the human being as an accountable animal. Brendan Case introduces the idea of accountability, not merely as a structural feature of human institutions, but as a disposition to submit to rightly-constituted authority, whether divine or human. He relates this conception of accountability to the key themes of "justice, justification, and judgment".

It is difficult to underestimate the significance of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 within the biblical tradition. Although hell occupies a prominent position in popular Christianrhetoric today, it plays a relatively minor role in the Christian canon. The most important biblical texts that explicitly describe the fate of the dead are in the Synoptic Gospels. Yet among these passages, only the Lukan tradition is intent on explicitly describing the abode of the dead; it is the only biblical tour of hell. Hauge examines the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, uniquely the only 'parable' that is set within a supernatural context. The parables characteristically feature concrete realities of first-century Mediterranean life, but the majority of Luke 16:19-31 is narrated from the perspective of the tormented dead. This volume demonstrates that the distinctive features of the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus are the result of a strategic imitation, creative transformation, and Christian transvaluation of the descent of Odysseus into the house of hades in Odyssey Book 11, the literary model par excellence of postmortem revelation in antiquity.

Twenty years on from its original appearance, this ground-breaking first volume in N. T. Wright's magisterial series, 'Christian Origins and the Question of God', still stands as a major point of reference for students of the New Testament and early Christianity. This latest impression has been completely reset to make Wright's elegant and engrossing text more readable. 'The sweep of Wright's project as a whole is breathtaking. It is impossible to give a fair assessment of his achievement without sounding grandiose: no New Testament scholar since Bultmann has even attempted - let alone achieved - such an innovative and comprehensive account of New Testament history and theology.' Richard B. Hays

There are twenty-seven books in the traditional New Testament, but the early-Christian community was far more vibrant than that small number might lead you to think. In fact, many more scriptures were written and were just as important as the New Testament in shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs. Over the past century, many of those texts that were lost have been found and translated, yet they are rarely read in contemporary churches; they are discussed mainly by scholars or within a context only of gnostic gospels. In A New New Testament Hal Taussig seeks to change that.

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's reputation as a recognized expert on the Corinthian correspondence has been built on the original solutions he has offered to perennial problems. Brought together for the first time in one volume, each of the twelve articles anthologised here deals with a complex aspect of interpretation for 2 Corinthians. Whether addressing the interpretation of a particular passage, the question of co-authorship, or the relation of the epistle to other texts, Murphy-O'Connor presents his evidence in a characteristically clear and incisive style.
A newly written 'reception history' has been appended to each article to bring the collection up to date with the latest research on the epistle.
This is a companion volume to Keys to First Corinthians, also available from Oxford University Press.

The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament is a detailed introduction to the New Testament, written by more than 40 scholars from a variety of Christian denominations. Treats the 27 books and letters of the New Testament systematically, beginning with a review of current issues and concluding with an annotated bibliography Considers the historical, social and cultural contexts in which the New Testament was produced, exploring relevant linguistic and textual issues An international contributor list of over 40 scholars represent wide field expertise and a variety of Christian denominations Distinctive features include a unified treatment of Luke through Acts, articles on the canonical Gospels, and a discussion of the apocryphal New Testament

Jenny Read-Heimerdinger examines the language of Luke-Acts, exploring aspects of Luke's use of Greek that traditional approaches have not generally accounted for previously. Drawing on contemporary developments in linguistics - broadly referred to as 'discourse analysis' - Read-Heimerdinger emphasises that paying close attention to the context of language is vital to understanding the reasons behind an author's choices. Read-Heimerdinger applies the tools of discourse analysis to several features of Luke's Greek - such as variation in word order, the use of the article and fine distinctions between synonyms - in order to demonstrate how principles that govern their use subsequently affect exegesis. In addition, she makes suggestions to account for manuscript variation, which in turn have an impact on the editorial choices of Nestle-Aland's Greek New Testament.

At the end of several of his letters the apostle Paul claims to be penning a summary and farewell greeting in his own hand: 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, cf. Colossians, 2 Thessalonians. Paul's claims raise some interesting questions about his letter-writing practices. Did he write any complete letters himself, or did he always dictate to a scribe? How much did his scribes contribute to the composition of his letters? Did Paul make the effort to proofread and correct what he had dictated? What was the purpose of Paul's autographic subscriptions? What was Paul's purpose in calling attention to their autographic nature? Why did Paul write in large letters in the subscription of his letter to the Galatians? Why did he call attention to this peculiarity of his handwriting? A good source of answers to these questions can be found among the primary documents that have survived from around the time of Paul, a large number of which have been discovered over the past two centuries and in fact continue to be discovered to this day. From around the time of Paul there are extant several dozen letters from the caves and refuges in the desert of eastern Judaea (in Hebrew, Aramaic, Nabataean, Greek, and Latin), several hundred from the remains of a Roman military camp in Vindolanda in northern England (in Latin), and several thousand from the sands of Middle and Upper Egypt (in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian Demotic). Reece has examined almost all these documents, many of them unpublished and rarely read, with special attention to their handwriting styles, in order to shed some light on these technical aspects of Paul's letter-writing conventions.

The mysterious presence of Jesus haunts the whole story of Acts. Jesus is announced as King and Lord, not as an increasingly distant memory but as a living and powerful reality, a person who can be known and loved, obeyed and followed, a person who continues to act within the real world. We call the book "The Acts of the Apostles" but we should think of it as "The Acts of Jesus: Part Two" These studies help us to do so, and to see how Jesus' acts through the apostles inform and empower our acts today. 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.

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.

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.

This ground-breaking work is a critical edition of chapter XI (The Resurrection of Lazarus) of Nonnus of Panopolis' Paraphrasis of the Gospel of St John, written in the mid-fifth century in elegant hexameters. Made available for the first time in Anglophone literature, the volume consists of an introduction discussing cultural (theological and philosophical affiliations, dialogue with contemporary art), literary (character-sketching, narrative, interaction with the Dionysiaca), and technical (paraphrastic technique, transmission, metre) aspects and places the work in its immediate and broader context. The Introduction includes an edition of chapter XI from the so-called Athous paraphrase of Nonnus' Paraphrasis. An exhaustive line-by-line commentary covers a wide range of issues arising from Nonnus' spiritualizing rendition. Konstantinos Spanoudakis identifies literary models and intertextual links with earlier traditions: epic (mainly Homer, Apollonius Rhodius, Oppian), mystic (Orphic literature, Chaldean Oracles), and philosophical (Neoplatonists, Gnostics). Dr Spanoudakis illustrates Nonnus' interaction with early Christian poetry and literature, his debt to Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on the Gospel of John, his familiarity with Syriac exegesis (John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia), and the homiletic and apocryphal tradition on Lazarus. The book features a short Appendix discussing a curse against the Jews embedded as an interpolated verse in ms V.

How did authority function before the Bible as we know it emerged? Lee Martin McDonald examines the authorities that existed from the Church's beginning. He explores the texts containing the words of Jesus, and that would become the New Testament, the not yet finalized Hebrew Scriptures (referred to mostly in Greek) and the apostolic leadership of the churches. McDonald traces several sacred core traditions that broadly identified the essence of Christianity before there was a Bible summarized in early creeds, hymns and spiritual songs, baptismal and Eucharistic affirmations, and in lectionaries and catalogues from the fourth century and following. McDonald shows how those traditions were included in the early Christian writings later recognized as the New Testament. He also shows how Christians were never fully agreed on the scope of their Old Testament canon (Hebrew scriptures) and that it took centuries before there was universal acceptance of all of the books now included in the Christian Bible. Furthermore, McDonald shows that whilst writings such as the canonical gospels were read as authoritative texts likely from their beginning, they were not yet called or cited as Scripture. What was cited in an authoritative manner were the words of Jesus in those texts, alongside the multiple affirmations and creeds that were circulated in the early Church and formed Christianity's key authorities and core sacred traditions.

We increasingly recognize that Paul did not write his letter to the Romans primarily out of doctrinal concerns. Paul B. Fowler presses that insight home in this attentive, yet eminently readable, study of the Letter's structure. The principles of Fowler's reading are that rhetorical questions in Romans 3?11 structure the argument, not as responses to criticism but as Paul's careful guiding of the reader, and that these chapters, like the paraenesis in Romans 12?15, address specific circumstances in Rome. Careful attention to the rhetorical structure of the letter points to tensions between Jew and Gentile that aggravate the already precarious situation of the Roman congregation. In the course of his argument, Fowler explodes the common conceptions that Paul employs diatribal technique to answer objections and that he is primarily engaged in a debate with Jews. In short, Fowler demonstrates that the apostle is not writing defensively, but responding with sensitivity to the volatile atmosphere caused by Claudius's expulsion of some Jews from Rome. The book includes an appendix on rhetorical devices and another on epistolary formulas in Paul's letters.