In Engaging the Passion, Oliver Larry Yarbrough has gathered an impressive array of scholars to survey the wealth of ways in which the death of Jesus has been portrayed and represented in Scripture, liturgy and music, literature, art and film, theology, and ethics. In addition to addressing topics many readers will find familiar-gospel narratives, Holy Week services, Bach Passions, and well-known paintings-the essays also treat rap music, street art, a contemporary Buddhist Passion, Chagall's crucifixions, the poetry of Walt Whitman and Countee Cullen, J. R. R. Tolkien's unlikely hero Frodo Baggins, images from the battlefield, and stories from the soup kitchen. The contributors approach their topics from a variety of perspectives-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and secular; their voices differ as well, from the challenging to the comforting and from the academic to the confessional. Addressing the faithful, the skeptical, and the curious, Engaging the Passion is unique in its breadth and rare in the diverse voices of its contributors. Amply illustrated and with accompanying discography and filmography, it will be a welcome resource for classes in Scripture, theology, liturgy, and the arts, as well as for personal and congregational study.

One of the remarkable developments in the contemporary study of Paul is the dramatic interest in his thought amongst European philosophers. This collection of leading scholars makes accessible a discussion often elusive to those not already conversant in the categories of European philosophy. The book includes reflections on what the church can learn from the philosophers and provides insights into Paul's thought and work that matters to citizens of the world - believers and non-believers alike.

John Shelby Spong, bestselling author and Episcopal bishop of Newark, NJ, challenges the doctrine of the virgin birth, tracing its development in the early Christian church and revealing its legacy in our contemporary attitudes toward women and female sexuality.

Who was Jesus? A prophet? There have been many of those. A miracle-worker? A radical revolutionary? A wise teacher? There have been many of these, too. In his latest book, renowned Scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink asks, What is unique about Jesus of Nazareth, and what did he really want? Lohfink engages the perceptions of the first witnesses of his life and ministry and those who handed on their testimony. His approach is altogether historical and critical, but he agrees with Karl Barth's statement that "historical criticism has to be more critical." Lohfink takes seriously the fact that Jesus was a Jew and lived entirely in and out of Israel's faith experiences but at the same time brought those experiences to their goal and fulfilment. The result is a convincing and profound picture of Jesus.

According to Hagenston, Jesus had such a hard edge when it came to Gentiles that he coined his own unflattering term for them-dogs. He limited what he was offering strictly to Jews. Yet the religion that began in his name quickly transformed into a predominantly Gentile movement centered on blood sacrifice to obtain God's forgiveness, a practice rejected by many Jews long before Jesus came on the scene. Furthermore the sacrifice was not just of an animal, but of Jesus himself. How did this happen? Hagenston exposes the roots of brutal justice underpinning traditional Christianity, but finds hope in a Jewish movement toward grace that preceded and influenced the historical Jesus.

The Resurrected God is an exciting, innovative examination of the resurrection of Christ and its relationship to the doctrine of the Trinity in the mature work of Karl Barth, particularly across the three parts of volume IV of the Church Dogmatics. John Drury argues that, for Barth, the subject and basis of Christ's resurrection is the triune God. The volume demonstrates that Barth explicated the doctrine of Christ's resurrection through a unique Trinitarian grammar and grounds the event of the resurrection in the eternal triune being of God. Closely expositing and analyzing Barth's deployment of this Trinitarian grammar in the fourth volume, the author turns to a constructive reconsideration of Barth's earlier doctrine of the Trinity in the first volume, examining that material in light of the concept of God operative in the later work. Thinking with and beyond Barth, the author concludes that resurrection is inextricably linked with the Triune life of the God who raises and is raised.

A slow rumbling, that has been building up among New Testament scholars for the past twenty years, is only now beginning to make its effects felt on a more general public. A new Paul is beginning to emerge, one who differs from the Paul of Augustine and Luther, who is no friend to the traditional orthodoxy that has co-opted him for almost two thousand years.

To help us see Paul in this new way, Scott arrives at three conclusions argued step-by-step throughout the book: Paul was called; His concern was with the nations; Paul addresses particular situations, not a universal human condition.

The new Paul threatened Roman authorities with anti-imperial rhetoric, much of which is still operative today. Thus, the new Paul may prove an even more radical challenge to church and society than did the historical Jesus.

"Jesse's Lineage" explores the interconnections between David, Jesus, and Jesse James. All three of these figures evoked complicated and conflicted reactions from their contemporaries - considered criminals by some, saviors by others. David lives the life of a bandit while on the run from Saul; Jesus dies the death of a bandit alongside other bandits; Jesse James is the paragon of the bandit in the American West and yet his life and death is also understood in biblical terms. Iron Age Judah, Roman Galilee, and Reconstruction era Missouri alike invoke the context of colonial "territories" and areas of resistance. Such contexts give birth to bandits, the heroes of the subaltern. After their deaths, David, Jesus, and Jesse James live on thorough equally complicated and conflicted textual, ritual, and cultural memories. Their stories intertwine through reference and allusion as Jesus' mission is understood in terms of David's promise, and Jesse's death is understood in terms of Jesus' betrayal. The biography of each figure is further complicated by the processes of folk memory and oral transmission.

Noted biblical scholar Elizabeth Struthers Malbon asks a literary question in this landmark volume: how does the Markan narrative characterise Jesus? Through a close narrative analysis, she carefully examines various ways the Gospel discloses its central character. The result is a multi-layered Markan narrative christology, focusing not only on what the narrator and other characters say about Jesus (pro-jected christology), but also on what Jesus says in response to what these others say to and about him (deflected christology), what Jesus says instead about himself and God (refracted christology), what Jesus does (enacted christology), and how what other characters do is related to what Jesus says and does (reflected christology). Holding significant implications for those who wish to use Mark's Gospel to make claims about the historical Jesus, as well as for those who wish to use Mark's Gospel to construct confessions about the church's belief, Malbon's research is a groundbreaking work of scholarship.

In this book, the third in the Heart of Christian Faith series, Alister E. McGrath provides an exploration of how we can best understand Jesus Christ using analogies, illustrations, and stories. This short, accessible guide also provides a pastoral and spiritual consideration of the difference that our belief in God makes to the way in which we think about ourselves and our world. With future volumes to examine other core Christian principles, McGrath's new series will define "mere Christianity" to a new generation for many years to come.

The voice of Jesus has for centuries been obscured and his vision skewed even by well-intended gospel writers, who transmitted his words to serve their own concerns. The Gospel of Jesus frees Jesus' voice from the accretions of time and lets his challenging wisdom stand out as never before. This single composite gospel, created out of the sayings and reports that were deemed probably historical by the Jesus Seminar, is an essential resource for anyone seeking to detect the words of Jesus as they were heard by his earliest listeners. Features of the new edition: New introduction Updated translation and notes Expanded index of sayings and stories User-friendly format

Jesus Christ has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for two millennia, and His birth the pivotal event of our calendar. He is the focus of Scripture: as Luther declared, 'The entire Scripture deals only with Christ everywhere.' He is the heart of mission, the message that countless Christians cross land and sea, continents and cultures, to deliver. In masterly surveys, John Stott looks at the New Testament witness, at the way the church has portrayed Christ down through the centuries, and at the influence Christ has had on individuals over the last two millennia. Finally, turning to the book of Revelation, he asks what Jesus Christ should mean to us today. Here is the fruit of a lifetime of biblical study, rigorous Christian thought and devotion to the person of Jesus Christ. 'John Stott paints a picture of the incomparable Christ on a huge canvas. He applies his incisive mind, his commitment to Scripture and his sense of awe at God's purpose in human history, focusing with humility on the Jesus he knew and loved throughout his life. The result is a rare combination of wisdom and inspiration.' - Roy McCloughry

A lawyer uses stringent legal principles to assess the credibility of Jesus' resurrection

Was the Tomb Empty? is a careful, critical attempt, by a highly qualified British lawyer and judge, to examine the evidence concerning the resurrection from the dead of Jesus of Nazareth.

After a review of the basic legal principles involved regarding the use of evidence (What standard of proof is acceptable? Are we dealing with history or myth? What are our preconceptions?), this succinct but powerful document considers the testimony of individuals involved (Paul, James, Peter); the various resurrection accounts, their inconsistencies, and their value as evidence; possible sites for Jesus' tomb; sources from outside the gospels, such as Josephus, Tacitus and Pliny; logical alternatives to the resurrection; and the opinions of experts in the fields of history, literary history, paleography, and law.

Could this most improbable story be, at heart, true? What are the implications?

Light is one of the most ancient and significant metaphors adopted by Christianity by which to understand the significance of Jesus Christ. The Easter liturgy, for instance, is marked by beautiful and powerful rituals proclaiming Christ as the light of the world in his death and resurrection. That understanding developed over subsequent centuries into a larger doctrine of illumination-how Christians come to understand and know God through Christ the Light. In this work, David Whidden takes up that theme in contesting a standard paradigm of interpretation that asserts that Aquinas eliminated the doctrine of illumination in his theology. In Christ the Light, Whidden argues that illumination is a critical systematic motif in Aquinas' theology, one that involves the nature of truth, knowledge, and God; at the root, Aquinas' theology of light, or illumination, is Christological, grounding human knowledge of God and eschatological beatitude. This volume establishes the theological network formed by the crucial motif of light/illumination in Aquinas, from how theology operates to the systematic, sacramental, and moral coordinates in Aquinas' theology. Christ the Light thus provides a much needed and illuminating retrieval of the one of the most important and creative theologians in the western Christian tradition.

This volume discusses conceptual elements of messianic traditions that are identified in the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul by examining the nature and functions of the divine figure and of the messiah figure. Comparative analysis presented here demonstrates that the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul share specific conceptual elements of messianic traditions. The combination of shared elements is so striking as to preclude the possibility that the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul constituted independent, parallel developments. It cannot be claimed, however, that Paul was familiar with the text of the Parables of Enoch; there are no direct quotes of the Parables anywhere in Paul's Letters. Waddell does however show that Paul was familiar with the conceptual elements of the Enochic messiah, and that Paul developed his concept of the Kyrios out of the Son of Man traditions in the Book of the Parables of Enoch. Waddell specifically argues Pauline christology was at the very least heavily influenced by Enochic Son of Man traditions.

This book will appeal to those many Christians who struggle with the concept of the virgin birth. Andrew Lincoln's Born of a Virgin? begins by discussing why the virgin birth is such a difficult and divisive topic for Christians. The book then deals with a whole range of literary, historical, and hermeneutical issues from a perspective that takes seriously creedal confessions and theological concerns. As part of his exegetical investigation of the New Testament texts, Lincoln considers the literary genre and distinctive characteristics of the birth narratives as ancient biography. Further, he delineates how changes in our views of history and biology decisively affect any traditional understanding of the significance of an actual virgin birth, and he explores what that means for the authority of Scripture and creed, along with implications for Christology and for preaching and teaching from the birth narratives.

This volume explores nearly every facet of contemporary Jesus research -- from eyewitness criteria to the reliability of memory, from archaeology to psychobiography, from oral traditions to literary sources. With contributions from forty internationally respected Jewish and Christian scholars, this distinguished collection of articles comes from the second (2007) Princeton-Prague Symposium on Jesus Research. It summarizes the significant advances in understanding Jesus that scholars have made in recent years through the development of diverse methodologies. Readers already knowledgeable in the field will discover unique angles from well-known scholars, and all will be amply informed on the current state of Jesus studies. Contributors Dale C. Allison Jr., Mordechai Aviam, Richard Bauckham, Darrell L. Bock, Donald Capps, James H. Charlesworth, Bruce Chilton, Michael Allen Daise, Arye Edrei, Kathy Ehrensperger, Casey D. Elledge, Craig A. Evans, Peter W. Flint, Sean Freyne, David Hendin, Tom Holmen, Richard A. Horsley, Jeremy M. Hutton, Craig Keener, Werner H. Kelber, Ulrich Luz, Gabriel Mazor, Lee Martin McDonald, Doron Mendels, Daniel F. Moore, Suleiman A. Mourad, Etienne Nodet, Lidija Novakovic, Gerbern S. Oegema, George L. Parsenios, Pheme Perkins, Petr Pokorny, Stanley E. Porter, Brian Rhea, Jan Roskovec, D. Moody Smith, Gerd Theissen, Geza Vermes, Walter P. Weaver, Robert L. Webb,

Amanda Witmer presents an investigation of exorcism in the activities of the historical Jesus, particularly the connection between spirit possession and exorcism on the one hand and the socio-political context of first-century Galilee on the other. Witmer draws on research from the areas of sociology, anthropology, archaeology and biblical studies to illuminate this aspect of Jesus' career, as well as the broader social implications of spirit possession in those he treated and the exorcisms themselves. Evidence found in the strands underlying the Synoptic Gospels is evaluated using the criteria of authenticity and comparative analysis in order to establish early and historical material. Questions posed and answered concern the historical plausibility of Jesus' role as exorcist, the possibility that his own career began with a period of spirit possession, and the meaning that his exorcisms conveyed to his first-century audience. Thus, the methodology includes textual analysis, sociological analysis of general cultural patterns within which first-century Palestine can be fitted, and anthropological analysis of the plausible functions of both spirit possession and exorcism in agrarian societies.

What does it mean for Jesus to be "deified" in early Christian literature? Although the divinity of Jesus was a topic of profound and contested discussion in Christianity's early centuries, believers did not simply assert that Jesus was divine; in their literature, they depicted Jesus with the specific and widely-recognized traits of Mediterranean deities. Relying on the methods of the history of religions school and ranging judiciously across Hellenistic literature, M. David Litwa shows that at each stage in their depiction of Jesus' life and ministry, early Christian writings from the beginning relied on categories drawn not from Judaism alone, but on a wide, pan-Mediterranean understanding of deity: how gods were born, how they acted to manifest power, even how they died-and, after death, how they were taken up into heaven and pronounced divine. Litwa's samples take us beyond the realm of abstract theology to dwell in the second- and third-century imagination of what it meant to be a god and shows that the Christian depiction of Christ was quite at home there.

Nicolas Notovitch was born into an aristocratic Jewish family, but converted to Christianity in his youth. A prolific journalist, author of twelve books (and some say spy), he travelled widely in the east, visiting India, Afghanistan and Ladakh. After a riding accident that broke his leg, Notovitch recuperated at a Tibetan monastery in Hemis. Here, he heard of a manuscript that revealed astonishing information on the sixteen 'Lost Years of Jesus' - the period between Christ's visit to the Jerusalem Temple at the age of twelve and His baptism in the Jordan, about which the bible is strangely silent. The Tibetan manuscript relates that Jesus spent this time traveling to India and Tibet to study the spiritual disciplines of the East. He then returned to Israel, via Persia, where He taught until eventual crucifixion. This account was published by Notovitch in 1887 as 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ'. It caused an immediate sensation, stirring passions on both sides, shaking the foundations of orthodox Christianity, and raising a storm of controversy that, after more than 125 years, has not yet abated. An exciting, thought-provoking book, and essential reading for anyone interested in the life of the historical Jesus.

This thoroughly revised edition of the best-selling textbook provides an in-depth survey of current historical Jesus studies. Beginning with a brief discussion of early Jesus-quest research and methodologies, Mark Allan Powell develops insightful overviews of some of the most influential participants in the field today, including Marcus Borg, Jon Dominic Crossan, John Meier, E. P. Sanders, and N. T. Wright. Powell has expanded his original work with completely new material to reflect the latest scholarship.

The question of the historical Jesus is not only a historical question but also a historic one. And historic questions can be the most scandalous, says Joe Bessler, because they challenge the assumptions governing societies. Like Galileo questioning the Ptolemaic universe, historic questions transgress the limits of authority, belonging, and institutional legitimacy. Each of the three quests of the historical Jesus-from the original quest in the early 20th century, through the new quest, to the renewed quest in the late 20th century-has opened up new questions. In A Scandalous Jesus, Bessler seeks to capture the historic questions that surround and shape research on the historical Jesus and assess the impact of the differing quests on theological and cultural life.

Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Many admire his spiritual teachings; some go further and claim him as the messiah, while a few deny he ever existed at all. But everyone has an opinion about this obscure preacher who lived his brief life in one of the less significant regions of the Roman Empire; and who, in being crucified, died the traditional death for criminals and trouble-makers. Jesus lived in turbulent times. Under Roman rule, Judea was a hotbed of nationalist, political and religious interests, all vying for power. Jesus was caught in the middle of these, allied to none and ultimately reviled by all. 'My kingdom is not of this world, ' he said, though he agreed taxes should be paid to the Romans. 'Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.' He taught simply but challengingly, advocating love for our enemies, a spirit of forgiveness and respect for children. What else was new about Jesus? He spoke of a new way of being which he called 'the kingdom of God.' This was not a place but an inner state, and the doorway to this kingdom was trust in a heavenly father. As he would often say: 'Have anxiety about nothing.' It was a trust Jesus himself required in a life full of conflict; not least with his family who largely disowned him. 'Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?' he famously asked when they attempted to rein him in. In 'Conversations with Jesus of Nazareth', the questions are imagined, but the words of Jesus are not; they are authentically his, taken from the various records of his life in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Thomas. Jesus himself never wrote anything down, but in a culture of oral transmission, his words, deeds and stories were well-remembered, and it's not hard to see why. 'It's the shape of our heart which Jesus is interested in, ' says Simon Parke. 'This is what comes across when talking with him. It's not what we do that matters, but who we are, and that's why he upset the religious people of his day: he didn't give them anything to hide behind. He's not always easy company, I agree, but his life and his words - they have the undoubted ring of truth.'

Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian. That affirmation may seem obvious, but here an international cast of Jewish and Christian scholars spell out its weighty and often complex consequences for contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. Soundings in the Religion of Jesus contextualizes Jesus and the writings about him that set the stage for Jewish-Christian relations for the next two thousand years. Of equal importance, this book considers the reception, celebration, and (too often) the neglect of Jesus' Jewishness in modern contexts and the impact such responses have had for Jewish-Christian relations. Topics explored include the ethics of scriptural translation, the ideological motives of Nazi theologians and other "quests" for the Historical Jesus, and the ways in which New Testament portraits of Jesus both help and hurt authentic Jewish-Christian dialogue.