Christianity stands or falls by what is believed and thought about Jesus. Brunner's thorough and provocative analysis of the Biblical doctrine of the Person and the work of Christ, establishing Jesus Christ as the Mediator between God and man, not only made the central theme of Christianity live again, but established him as one of the great modern theologians. Why should there be an intermediary between God and mankind Brunner's answer is that what matters supremely is not whether man is 'aware' of, or has a 'feeling' for 'something divine', but whether there is only one 'place' at which God challenges man to decision. The God who is real and alive is the God who confronts man in such a way that man knows that he must act. And Jesus Christ, the Mediator, confronts man with the true and living God. The deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, the God-Man, the Incarnation, and the Atonement are re-examined and rescued from misunderstanding. The result is a clear and provocative discussion concluding that only in Jesus Christ can we know ourselves as we really are; and only in Jesus Christ can God be known as he really is.

This volume completes the previous volumes 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4a of an interdisciplinary book project on the reception of Jesus Christ in China, as seen from the perspectives of Sinology, mission history, theology, and art history, among others. It consists of the following parts: A "Supplementary Anthology" that presents excerpts and longer quotations from selected works - such as translations, prayers, poems, and scholarly articles - listed in the bibliography of vol. 4a; two sections of "Notes on Contributors, Vols. 1-3b" and "Notes on Authors of the Anthologies, Vols. 1-3b, 4b" that provide short biographical information on the contributors of articles and authors of all texts in the anthologies; a "List of Reviews of Vols. 1-4a" published on the whole collection as well as on individual volumes; the Tables of Contents of vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b and 4a; a "General Index and Glossary" that gives readers access to all articles and anthologies included in vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4b, a corpus of almost two thousand pages of text; and finally a list of "Errata and Corrigenda."

What might the findings of researchers engaged in the quest for the historical Jesus mean to Christians? In posing this question and others, "The Elusive Messiah" opens a window for looking anew at the age old problem of faith vs. reason.To fully understand the implications of the historical search, Raymond Martin suggests we must first examine the inquiries of the individual scholars. In the book's first section, he provides an insightful overview into the major players who have written on the subject, among them E. P. Sanders, John Meier, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, J. D. Crossan, and Luke Timothy Johnson.In his second section, Martin discusses various Christian responses to the challenges presented by the historians' work. Martin goes on to argue philosophically that faith and reason are able to coexist alongside each other, and then suggests how this may be the key to Christianity's future.Through readily understandable language and examples, Martin poses basic questions, looks for the answers, and explains how these answers correspond to the overall problem. His accessible writing synthesizes complex academic arguments in ways that bring them down to earth, enabling Christians and other readers to understand what is being claimed and to test these claims for meaningfulness.

First published in 1977, this book is intended as a record of sources in Islamic prophetology which focus on the prophet Isa - Jesus in Christian theology. The Islamic Isa differs markedly from the Christian Jesus, most obviously in that, although considered an important prophet, he is overshadowed by Muhammad. The doctrine of tawhid - the indivisible oneness of God - also necessarily means the rejection of Christ's incarnation or dual nature. The primary of role of Jesus in Islam, as with all Islamic prophets, is to reaffirm the primeval religion of man, best expressed by the Shadada and Islam. This book collects, as comprehensively as possible, bibliographic sources in English and French from the time of the earliest available texts (circa 1650) providing annotated commentary and source information - making it an invaluable research tool for anyone who wishes to study the Islamic Jesus in more detail.

A New York Times Bestseller! "Who do you say that I am?" Uttered by Jesus Christ, this profound question has presented an age-old challenge to believers, skeptics, scholars, and rulers. In attempting to answer this question, The True Jesus goes straight to the unimpeachable source: the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Only in the Gospels, says #1 New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh, do we come face-to-face with the Son of God, Whose sublime teachings, miraculous actions, and divine essence leap off every page and into our hearts. In this book, Limbaugh combines the four Gospel stories into a unified account (though not, he humbly admits, a perfect harmony) and guides readers on a faith journey through the Four Evangelists' testimonies of the life of Jesus Christ. Along the way, Limbaugh shares his insights on Jesus' words and deeds as well as His unique nature as fully human and fully divine. In The True Jesus, you will learn: - Why even the apostles failed to completely understand Jesus' true identity and mission until after His crucifixion - The real basis for the rejection of Jesus' message by skeptics in His hometown and elsewhere - The historical events preceding Jesus' birth that providentially paved the way for Christianity - How Jesus' message utterly contradicted modern attempts to portray Him as being non-judgmental Limbaugh's passion for the Gospels infuses the pages of The True Jesus, which is both a primer for new Bible readers and an outstanding guide to the Gospels for long-time believers. Who really is the true Jesus? Open this book and begin your odyssey toward the answer.

William Wrede was among the first to recognise the creative contribution of the Gospel writers. His work thus laid the foundation for the work of the Form Critics, Redaction Critics and Literary Critics whose scholarship dominated New Testament studies during the twentieth century. This highly influential work was throughout this period the departure point for all studies in the Gospel of Mark and in the literary methods of the evangelists. It remains highly relevant for its ground-breaking approach to the classically complicated question of whether Jesus saw himself and represented himself as the Messiah.

Divine Heiress explores the vital role of the Virgin Mary in the cultural and religious life of Constantinople in late antiquity. It shows how she was transformed from a humble Jewish maiden into a divine figure and supernatural protector of Constantinople.
Vasiliki Limberis examines the cult of Mary in the context of the religious culture of the Mediterranean world and the imperial Christianity of the Roman Empire. The author looks at all the evidence for the cult but pays particular attention to the early hymns to the virgin. These hymns preserved the strong indigenous goddess traditions of Demeter/Persephone, Isis, Hecate and Athena. By studying them the author places the cult of Mary in its historical and cultural context.

For almost two thousand years, various images of Jesus accompanied Jewish thought and imagination: a flesh-and-blood Jew, a demon, a spoiled student, an idol, a brother, a (failed) Messiah, a nationalist rebel, a Greek god in Jewish garb, and more. This volume charts for the first time the different ways that Jesus has been represented and understood in Jewish culture and thought. Chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field cover the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - Talmud, Midrash, Rabbinics, Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Messianism, Hagiography, Modern Jewish Literature, Thought, Philosophy, and Art - to address the ways in which representations of Jesus contribute to and change Jewish self-understanding throughout the last two millennia. Beginning with the question of how we know that Jesus was a Jew, the book then moves through meticulous analyses of Jewish and Christian scripture and literature to provide a rounded and comprehensive analysis of Jesus in Jewish Culture. This multidisciplinary study will be of great interest not only to students of Jewish history and philosophy, but also to scholars of religious studies, Christianity, intellectual history, literature and cultural studies.

The Christian confession that Jesus Christ descended into hell has been variously misunderstood or simply neglected by the Church and dogmatic theology. This work is a significant retort to dogmatic forgetfulness and ecclesial misunderstanding. It succeeds in doing so by offering a close reading and critical analysis of Karl Barth's treatment of the descent into hell and its relation to his extraordinary theology of the atonement. The reach of David Lauber's work is extended by placing Barth in conversation with Hans Urs von Balthasar's innovative theology of Holy Saturday. In revealing and unexpected ways, this book casts light upon the ecumenical breadth of Barth's theology. It is a valuable interpretation of significant facets of Barth's doctrine of God, reflection upon the passion of Jesus Christ, and ethics. In addition, Lauber offers a constructive theological proposal for how the descent into hell affects the theological interpretation of Scripture, the trinitarian being and activity of God, and the non-violent and authentic shape of Christian life and witness before our enemies.

Recognizing the characteristics of children with learning disabilities and deciding how to help them is a problem faced by schools all over the world. Although some disorders are fairly easily recognizable (e.g., mental retardation) or very specific to single components of performance and quite rare (e.g., developmental dyscalculia), schools must consider much larger populations of children with learning difficulties who cannot always be readily classified. These children present high-level learning difficulties that affect their performance on a variety of school tasks, but the underlying problem is often their difficulty in understanding written text. In many instances, despite good intellectual abilities and a superficial ability to cope with written texts and to use language appropriately, some children do not seem to grasp the most important elements, or cannot find the pieces of information they are looking for. Sometimes these difficulties are not immediately detected by the teacher in the early school years. They may be hidden because the most obvious early indicators of reading progress in the teacher's eyes do not involve comprehension of written texts or because the first texts a child encounters are quite simple and reflect only the difficulty level of the oral messages (sentences, short stories, etc.) with which the child is already familiar. However, as years go by and texts get more complex, comprehension difficulties will become increasingly apparent and increasingly detrimental to effective school learning. In turn, studying, assimilating new information, and many other situations requiring text comprehension -- from problem solving to reasoning with linguistic contents -- could be affected. Problems with decoding, dyslexia, and language disorders have attracted more interest from researchers than have specific comprehension problems and have occupied more room in specialized journals. Normal reading comprehension has also been a favorite with researchers. However, scarce interest has been paid to subjects who have comprehension difficulties. This book is an attempt to remedy this situation. In so doing, this volume answers the following questions: * Does a reading comprehension problem exist in schools? * How important and widespread is the problem? * Is the problem specific? * How can a reading comprehension difficulty be defined and identified? * Does the "syndrome" have a single pattern or can different subtypes be identified? * What are the main characteristics associated with a reading comprehension difficulty? * When can other well-identified problems add to our understanding of reading comprehension difficulties? * Which educational strategies are effective in preventing and treating reading comprehension difficulties? * What supplementary information can we get from an international perspective?

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (or Paidika) is one of the most unusual gospels in the Christian tradition. Instead of revealing the compassionate Jesus so familiar to us from the biblical Gospels, it confronts its readers with a very different Jesus - a child who sometimes acts like a holy terror, killing and harming others for trifling faults. So why is Jesus portrayed as acting in such an 'unchristian' fashion? To address this question, Cousland focuses on three interconnected representations of Jesus in the Paidika: Jesus as holy terror, as child, and as miracle-working saviour. Cousland endeavours to show that, despite the differing character of these three roles, they present a unified picture. Jesus' unusual behaviour arises from his 'growing pains' as a developing child, who is at the same time both human and divine. Cousland's volume is the first detailed examination of the Christology of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and provides a fresh and engaging approach to a topic not often discussed in representations of Jesus.

In our everyday lives, friends are the people whom we spend the most time with, go through struggles with, and who know us best. Each of Jesus' friends-Peter, John, Matthew, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus-travelled with Jesus and were part of His daily ministry, and each has a compelling story to tell. There were some who would question or doubt Him...and one would even betray Him. Kingsbury brings these fascinating personalities to life in ways that will not only help bring you closer to the truths found in Scripture, but also to Christ. By combining valuable, instructive Bible study with compelling, insightful character sketches of Jesus' companions, Kingsbury provides you with a deeper understanding of the scriptural teachings featuring these fascinating people. Emotionally powerful, thought-provoking, and soulful, The Friends of Jesus will help you to appreciate the Bible and understand how it applies to your relationships with the most important people in your life.

The Titles of Jesus in Christology was recognised as a major contribution to Christological study when it was first published in German in 1963. Its translation into English a few years later cemented this status. Hahn undertakes a massive and detailed examination of the various traditions that led to the use of names for Jesus that we now recognise as characteristic of the very early Church. Moreover, he carefully distinguishes between the different Christological conceptions present in these differing branches of primitive Christianity, and embodied in the terms they produced. His analysis and categories have been followed by many later scholars, who built on his detailed study of the peculiarities of the different titles given to Jesus by the different communities that followed him.

Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.

This book concerns the politics of religion as expressed through apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Dzhublyk in Transcarpathian Ukraine. On the one hand, the analysis provides insights into the present position of Transcarpathia in regional, Ukraine-wide, and European struggles for identity and political belonging. The way in which the apparitions site has been conceived and managed raises questions concerning the fate of religious communities during and after socialism, the significance of national projects for religious organizations, and the politics of religious management in a situation in which local religious commitments are relatively strong and religious organizations are relatively weak. The analysis contributes to the ethnography and history of this particular region and of the post-socialist world in general. On the other hand, the changing status of the apparition site over the years allows investigation of the questions concerning authority, legitimacy, and power in religious organizations, especially in relation to management of religious experiences.The analysis aims at clarification of such concepts as religious institutions, organizations but also religious experiences and is relevant to anthropology, sociology and religious studies. It is argued that the important question in analyses of religious apparitions should not be how an individual experience becomes institutionalized and instrumentalized, but how experience becomes a tool for negotiation and transformation in the religious field.

The revival of interest in the Protestant Reformation in the mid-twentieth century was marked by several studies of John Calvin. J.F. Jansen, however, noted that these had shed new light on almost every aspect of his thought except that which lies at the heart of his theology - the doctrine of Christ's work. In Calvin's Doctrine of the Work of Christ, Jansen corrects this omission, providing a fresh study of Calvin's work in this area with special reference to his exegetical writings. Besides critiquing Calvin's development of the doctrine, he also examines the traditional theological formula of the three offices of Christ as prophet, priest and king. Reacting against the return to this formula by contemporary theologians such as Emil Brunner, he shows that an alternative conception of Christ's work is possible.

The aim of historical Jesus research is to identify the authentic material from which the historical figure as a social type underneath the overlay is constructed. Pieter Craffert's anthropological historiography offers an alternative framework for dealing with Jesus of Nazareth as a social personage fully embedded in a first-century Mediterranean worldview and the Gospels as cultural artefacts related to this figure. This cross-cultural model represents a religious pattern that refers to a family of features for describing those religious entrepreneurs who, based on regular Altered State of Consciousness experiences, perform a specific set of social functions in their communities.

In The Day the Revolution Began Tom Wright invites you to consider the full meaning of the event at the heart of the Christian faith - Jesus' crucifixion. As he did in his acclaimed Surprised by Hope, Wright once again challenges commonly held beliefs, this time arguing that the Protestant Reformation did not go far enough in reshaping our understanding of the Cross. With his characteristic rigour and incisiveness, he goes back to the New Testament to show that Jesus' death not only releases us from the guilt and power of sin, but is nothing less than the beginning of a world-wide revolution that continues to this day - a revolution that creates and energizes a movement responsible for restoring and reconciling the whole of God's creation. The Day the Revolution Began will take you to a new level in your appreciation of the meaning of Jesus' sacrifice: opening up its powerful and amazing implications, inspiring you with a renewed sense of purpose and hope, and reminding you of the crucial role you can play in the world-transforming movement that Jesus started.

Powerful and moving readings, stories and poems for Easter. The accounts of scapegoating, of power and violence and hope found in the gospels will always be current and significant. The story of Jesus Christ and of those who surrounded him remains a defining narrative of our time. Using artistic and theological licence, Rachel Mann writes with the voices of the characters involved in the biblical accounts of passion and resurrection. Unafraid to explore the darkest aspects evoked by these events, she says: 'The intention of both the more humorous and the visceral stories is to play with abiding themes of death and new life in ways which - in church contexts at least - break unusual ground. Some readers may find some of the language crude and offensive. It is not my intention to offend or outrage, but - to indicate that there are places and experiences where blasphemy is prayer and prayer is blasphemy.'

A Catholic Quest for the Historical Christ brings together a collection of interrelated essays on the historical Jesus and primitive Christology. Sensitive to the diverse, but traditionally Protestant assumptions and perspectives of the ""Quest"" as well as to the widely lamented disconnect between New Testament exegesis and classical dogmatic theology, an alternative approach is proposed in these pages. Ecumenical and conciliar reference points, along with non-confessional historical methods (e.g. archeology) shape the basic project, which nevertheless assumes some distinctive and important Catholic contours. This particular synthesis injects the voice of a missing interlocutor into an established conversation that has not infrequently been both historically confused and dogmatically (and philosophically) numb. The book is divided into three sections: Historical Foundations, Theological Perspectives, and Jesus and the Scriptures. While the individual chapters represent independent probes, the cumulative argument and arc of the study drives in clear and concerted directions. After a first approach to the Gospel data, attentive at once to historiographical and historical questions, a series of interventions reorienting the present scholarly discussion are suggested. These various, foundational essays lead, finally, to a sustained mediation on the mind of Christ, considered as a unique reader of the Scriptures: a meditation having its proper reflex and reflection in the way Christians themselves, as readers of the Gospels, participate in the Lord's own encounter with the living Word.

A very unusual apologetic angle by two psychiatrists

'Son of Man' is practically the only self-designation employed by Jesus himself in the gospels, but is used in such a way that no hint is left of any particular theological significance. Still, during the first many centuries of the church, the expression as it was reused was given content, first literally as signifying Christ's human nature. Later 'Son of Man' was thought to be a christological title in its own right. Today, many scholars are inclined to think that, in an original Aramaic of an historical Jesus, it was little more than a rhetorical circumlocution, referring to the one speaking. Mogens MA1/4ller's 'The Expression 'Son of Man' and the Development of Christology: A History of Interpretation' is the first study of the 'Son of Man' trope, which traces the history of interpretation from the Apostolic Fathers to the present, concluding that the various interpretations of this phrase reflect little more than the various doctrinal assumptions held by its interpreters over centuries.

'Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism' analyses the ideology underpinning contemporary scholarly and popular quests for the historical Jesus. Focusing on cultural and political issues, the book examines postmodernism, multiculturalism and the liberal masking of power. The study ranges across diverse topics: the dubious periodisation of the quest for the historical Jesus; 'biblioblogging'; Jesus the 'Great Man' and western individualism; image-conscious Jesus scholarship; the 'Jewishness' of Jesus and the multicultural Other; evangelical and 'mythical' Jesuses; and the contradictions between personal beliefs and dominant ideological trends in the construction of historical Jesuses. 'Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism' offers readers a radical revisioning of contemporary biblical studies.

For almost two thousand years, various images of Jesus accompanied Jewish thought and imagination: a flesh-and-blood Jew, a demon, a spoiled student, an idol, a brother, a (failed) Messiah, a nationalist rebel, a Greek god in Jewish garb, and more.

This volume charts for the first time the different ways that Jesus has been represented and understood in Jewish culture and thought. Chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field cover the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - Talmud, Midrash, Rabbinics, Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Messianism, Hagiography, Modern Jewish Literature, Thought, Philosophy, and Art to address the ways in which representations of Jesus contribute to and change Jewish self-understanding throughout the last two millennia. Beginning with the question of how we know that Jesus was a Jew, the book then moves through meticulous analyses of Jewish and Christian scripture and literature to provide a rounded and comprehensive analysis of Jesus in Jewish Culture.

This multidisciplinary study will be of great interest not only to students of Jewish history and philosophy, but also to scholars of religious studies, Christianity, intellectual history, literature and cultural studies.

The four Gospels that begin the Bible's New Testament tell the life of Jesus. But each Gospel relates a slightly different version of events. Some stories appear only in one Gospel, while certain other stories are different in each. What Leo Tolstoy sought to do in "The Gospel In Brief" was to apply his tremendous skills as a writer to tell the life of Jesus in one seamless narrative, thus integrating the four Gospels. The result is a work that reads like a novel, complete with twelve chapters. The project was very important to Tolstoy. With "The Gospel In Brief", he sought to democratize access to the Gospel, making the life of Jesus accessible to everyone. (He particularly had in mind the Russian peasantry.) Tolstoy based his translation on his study of the original Greek versions of the Bible. Unfortunately the Russian Orthodox Church viewed the book as sacrilegious. How dare he re-write the sacred texts? The Church worked to suppress "The Gospel In Brief", and in 1901, it permanently excommunicated Tolstoy, Russia's greatest novelist.