The interpretation of the phrase 'the testimony of Jesus' in the Book of Revelation has been the centre of much debate, with no clear consensus regarding its meaning. One of the most important but often neglected issues is whether or not the phrase can be read consistently across each instance of its occurrence. The opening lines of the Apocalypse clearly specify that 'the testimony of Jesus' is a moniker for the book of Revelation itself, indicating that the phrase is an internal self-reference to the book's own message. Nevertheless, most interpreters are reluctant to apply this interpretation to the phrase in other parts of the book, leading to varied and inconsistent interpretations of the phrase. Following the intratextual pattern of the apocalyptic books of Daniel and 1 Enoch we can see that it is entirely possible that 'the testimony of Jesus' is a reference to Revelation's own message, an interpretation which is then supported by Dixon's in-depth study of each of the passages in which the phrase occurs. The exploration of the rhetorical impact of interpreting the phrase in this way shows that 'the testimony of Jesus' is not just another title for John's writing, but is something that is given to and even characterizes those who hear the message of the Apocalypse.

The Life of Jesus is the biographical account of Jesus' supernatural birth, extraordinary life, unjust death, confirmed resurrection, and promised return to earth. The text from all four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is harmonized into a singular narrative and presented chronologically. Other features include: - Words of Jesus in red - Reader's edition single-column format without verse numbers - Contemporary, easy-to-read font - Subject headings that introduce sections of the Bible text and its source in the Gospels - Expanded text from the other Gospels for the richest presentation of duplicate accounts.

Hierdie boek is die werklike woorde van Jesus.

Jesus het in die Bybel baie met sy dissipels gepraat, maar daardie woorde is net so van toepassing vandag as wat dit was in daardie tyd. Die woorde van Jesus is gegroepeer in temas. Daardeur kan die leser meer leer oor die lesse wat die Here sy volk leer.

Die eerste van sy soort in Afrikaans!

In this new presentation of the Gospels, Terry Eagleton makes a powerful and provocative argument for Jesus Christ as a social, political and moral radical, a friend of anti-imperialists, outcasts and marginals, a champion of the poor, the sick and immigrants, and as an opponent of the rich, religious hierarchs, and hypocrites everywhere--in other words, as a figure akin to revolutionaries like Robespierre, Marx, and Che Guevara.

There exists a deep tension between the biblical view of servant leaders and the status that Christian leaders today often desire and pursue. Many pastors and other church leaders, like it or not, struggle with ambition. In this book Craig Hill shows how the New Testament can help Christian leaders deal with this problem honestly and faithfully. Hill examines such passages as the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 to show how New Testament authors helped early Christians construct their identity in ways that overturned conventional status structures and hierarchies. Status and ambition, Hill says, are not often addressed forthrightly in the church, as Christians either secretly indulge those impulses or feebly try to quash them. Hill's Servant of All will help Christian leaders reconcile their human aspirations and their spirituality, empowering them to minister with integrity.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus teaches people and proclaims the kingdom of God. But that's not all. He also questions - a lot. Jesus asks questions that challenge and unsettle. Questions that cut to the heart of human experience. Questions that - like a plow plunging deeply into hard soil - split life open. Distinguished theologian Michael Buckley in this book meditates on fourteen key personal questions that Jesus asks in the Gospel of John - such questions as "What do you seek?" "Do you know what I have done to you?" "How can you believe?" "Do you take offense at this?" "Do you love me?" Readers will be challenged to new ways of thinking and living as they seek to follow Jesus.

The Holy One in Our Midst: An Essay on the Flesh of Christ aims to defend the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum-the doctrine that maintains the Son of God was not restricted to the flesh of Christ during the incarnation-by arguing that it is logically coherent, biblically warranted, catholically orthodox, and theologically useful. It shows that none of the standard objections are devastating to the extra, that the doctrine is rooted in the claims of Christian Scripture and not merely a remnant of perfect being philosophical theology, and that the doctrine plays an important role in contemporary theological discussion. In this way, James R. Gordon revives an important Catholic doctrine that has fallen out of favour in contemporary theology. Secondarily, this project aims to integrate biblical, philosophical, and systematic theology by showing that the tools and methods of each distinct discipline can contribute to the goals and aims of the others.

CHRISTIAN STUDIES / GNOSTICISMIn his earlier book The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran, Robert Feather analyzed the Dead Sea Scroll engraved on copper that is considered the work of the secretive, devout Jewish sect known as the Essenes, who lived at Qumran around the time of Jesus. In The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran, Feather now presents persuasive, powerful evidence illustrating the strong link between the Qumran Essenes and teachings of the Christian Scriptures, demonstrating that both John the Baptist and Jesus were intimately involved with this community. He further supports the claim that early Christians continued a belief system centered on a form of monotheism first formulated by the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten and uniquely espoused by the Essenes at Qumran. To assist his research into the Essene community's way of life, Feather met with Jozef Milik, previously a Catholic priest and one of the scholars who worked on deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s. Feather learned that during Milik's work somewhere near the Qumran ruins, he had excavated a headless corpse that he believed to be that of John the Baptist. Feather tracks down the site of this grave and gives an eyewitness account of the final burial place of John the Baptist, offering physical and photographic evidence never before published. ROBERT FEATHER is a metallurgist, engineer, journalist, andscholar of world religions. He is the founding editor of The Metallurgist, editor of Weighing and Measuring, and the author of The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran. He lives in London.

Paul's apostolic proclamation of "one Lord Jesus Christ" in 1 Corinthians lies at the very heart of Christian belief. It forms the starting point of the Christological declaration in the Nicene Creed and is the basis of every subsequent statement of the church on the person and work of Jesus. In Ecce Homo Aaron Riches argues that this basic proclamation of Christ's divine unity is the only legitimate starting point for Christology. Interacting with theologians throughout the ages, Riches narrates the development of the church's doctrine of Christ as an increasingly profound realisation that the depth of the difference between humans and God is realised only in perfect union with God. He sets the apostolic proclamation in its historical, theological, and mystical context, showing that it ultimately surpasses every theological attempt to divide or reduce the "one Lord Jesus Christ."

The Politics of Jesus is a powerful new biography of Jesus told from the margins. Miguel A. De La Torre argues that we all create Jesus in our own image, reflecting and reinforcing the values of communities-sometimes for better, and often for worse. In light of the increasing economic and social inequality around the world, De La Torre asserts that what the world needs is a Jesus of solidarity who also comes from the underside of global power. The Politics of Jesus is a search for a Jesus that resonates specifically with the Latino/a community, as well as other marginalized groups. The book unabashedly rejects the Eurocentric Jesus for the Hispanic Jesus, whose mission is to give life abundantly, who resonates with the Latino/a experience of disenfranchisement, and who works for real social justice and political change. While Jesus is an admirable figure for Christians, The Politics of Jesus highlights the way the Jesus of dominant culture is oppressive and describes a Jesus from the barrio who chose poverty and disrupted the status quo. Saying "no" to oppression and its symbols, even when one of those symbols is Jesus, is the first step to saying "yes" to the self, to liberation, and symbols of that liberation. For Jesus to connect with the Hispanic quest for liberation, Jesus must be unapologetically Hispanic and compel people to action. The Politics of Jesus provocatively moves the study of Jesus into the global present.

Answers to critical questions regarding the study of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith The conclusions of the quest for the historical Jesus, which casts the majority of Christ's life as a myth, are a stark contrast to the orthodox view of Christ as presented in the Bible. Pate demonstrates that a critical analysis of the gospel text along with historical and cultural methods of investigation actually point toward an orthodox view of Christ. This work argues that the canonical Gospels are the most trustworthy information we have about the gospel writers as well as the life and ministry of Jesus, including his death, visit to hades, resurrection, and ascension. Readers will be encouraged by the reliability of the Gospel writers, the reality of Jesus' humanity and deity, and the inferiority of the apocryphal gospels.

Some scholars believe that Jesus' punitive instructions about possessions and material goods amount to little more than antiquated sayings. By contrast, Jesus Consumer combines modern consumer research with the latest writings on historical Jesus to propose a model for contemporary consumer behavior that pays serious regard to Jesus' "consumption teachings." The author argues that Jesus' consumer teachings possess the greatest potential to help us effect positive change in our personal lives and social relationships. We need to interpret and enact his teachings symbolically, not follow them literally.

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,

Recent scholarship on the historical Jesus has rightly focused upon how Jesus understood his own mission. But no scholarly effort to understand the mission of Jesus can rest content without exploring the historical possibility that Jesus envisioned his own death. In this careful and far-reaching study, Scot McKnight contends that Jesus did in fact anticipate his own death, that Jesus understood his death as an atoning sacrifice, and that his death as an atoning sacrifice stood at the heart of Jesus' own mission to protect his own followers from the judgment of God.

The traditions about Jesus and his teaching circulated in oral form for many years, continuing to do so for decades following the writing of the New Testament Gospels. James Dunn is one of the major voices urging that more consideration needs to be given to the oral use and transmission of the Jesus tradition as a major factor in giving the Synoptic tradition its enduring character.

"The last few years have witnessed an unprecedented stream of blockbuster-style claims about the man from Nazareth. Believers and sceptics alike have hardly had time to process one controversial theory before the next one hits the market." Recent claims about the life of Jesus have raised many questions about the historicity of the man from Nazareth. In this accessible book, John Dickson addresses such issues as: When and where was Jesus born? Did he marry? What should we make of the "miracles" he is reported to have performed? How should we treat the claim that he rose from the dead? And can we be sure that he even existed? In eleven chapters - covering the historical reliability of the New Testament, Jesus' birth and family, his historical context, his teachings, miracles, death, resurrection and subsequent appearances " Dickson clears away the mists of speculation, revealing the founder of Christianity in sharp focus. This is a must-read for anyone wanting a lucid response to the controversial conspiracy theories of the post-modern age.

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.

Historical Jesus asks two primary questions: What does historical mean? and How should we apply this to Jesus?
Anthony Le Donne begins with the unusual step of considering human perception how sensory data from sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are interpreted from the very beginning by what we expect, what weve learned, and how we categorize the world. In this way Le Donne shows how historical memories are initially formed. He continues with the nature of human memory and how it interacts with group memories. Finally, he offers a philosophy of history and uses it to outline three dimensions from the life of Jesus: his dysfunctional family, his politics, and his final confrontation in Jerusalem.
This little book is ideal for those with no background in religious studies even those with no faith who wish to better understand who Jesus was and how we can know what we do know about him.

Raised in a traditional Jewish family, international television host Jonathan Bernis was taught from a young age that "Jews don't--and can't --believe in Jesus." Yet in his study of the Bible, including the Torah, he found overwhelming evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really was the Jewish Messiah.
With warmth and transparency, Bernis talks about discovering Jesus in history, too, and how it was that the Jewish Yeshua became the Gentile Jesus. By presenting historic evidence that Jesus is Messiah and refuting common Jewish objections, Bernis gives Christians the knowledge and tools they need to share their Lord with their Jewish friends in a loving, effective way.

What really happened back in the first century, in Jerusalem and around the Sea of Galilee, that changed the shape of world history? Who is this figure that emerges from history to have a profound impact on culture, ethics, politics, and philosophy? Join historian John Dickson on this journey through the life of Jesus. This book, which features a self-contained discussion guide for use with Life of Jesus DVD, will help you and your friends dig deeper into what is known about Jesus' life and why it matters.'John Dickson has done a marvelous job of presenting the story of Jesus, and the full meaning of that story, in a way that is both deeply faithful to the biblical sources and refreshingly relevant to tomorrow's world and church. I strongly recommend this study to anyone who wants to re-examine the deep historical roots of Christian faith and to find them as life-giving as they ever were.'---Tom Wright

In "Jesus, Gnosis and Dogma" Roukema investigates and assesses the various views of Jesus in early Christianity, basing his approach on a distinction between historical and theological statements about Jesus. Historical statements can be arrived at through a critical study of the earliest records, although Roukema recognizes that scholars differ widely here. Theological statements about Jesus are to do with what has been and is believed about him.
Roukema demonstrates that Gnostic traditions about Jesus mostly derive from the earlier traditions preserved in the New Testament writings and do not give a more accurate view of the historical Jesus. He shows that the view of Jesus as the divine Lord (Yahweh) and Son of God is inspired by an early Jewish pattern that was exploited by the very first Christians. In spite of some later dogmatic precisions, there is more continuity between the New Testament picture of Jesus and the Nicene creed than between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of early Gnosticism. Even the essence of the Trinitarian dogma appears to have Jewish roots.

How did early Christians remember Jesus--and how did they develop their own ""Christian"" identities and communities? In this accessible and revelatory book, Greg Carey explores how transgression contributed to early Christian identity in the Gospels, Acts, Letters of Paul, and Revelation. Carey examines Jesus as a friend of sinners, challenger of purity laws, transgressor of conventional masculine values of his time, and convicted seditionist. He looks at early Christian communities as out of step with ""respectable"" practices of their time. Finally, he provides examples of contemporary Christians whose faith requires them to ""do the right thing,"" even when it means violating current definitions of ""respectability.

This is the first fully comprehensive account of the debate between modern scholars on the Jesus of history before he became the Christ of faith. David Boulton surveys all the major schools of historical Jesus scholarship in turn: the liberal Jesus Seminar, the conservative 'New Questers' and the radical sceptics, covering over 30 experts. He lays out the sources, biblical, 'heretical' and secular, taking in the most recent discoveries and explaining where historians agree and disagree in recovering a credible portrait of the man behind 'the greatest story ever told'.

A distinguished religious artist explores the beauty and truth found in icons of Christ's transfiguration, weaving together iconographic representations and theological interpretation.

Jesus is the most influential person who ever lived. But for many of us, he has ceased to be a real person. We've sanitised him with pious jargon, framed him in stained glass, and reduced him to a religious puppet who floats through biblical landscapes dispensing Christian cliches and nice advice. It's time for a fresh look at the man this book describes as "a square peg in a society of round holes." Whether you're new to Jesus or just want to rediscover him with fresh eyes, this is the book for you. No dry theological treatise, it's written in an engaging, sometimes even humorous, style. In short, readable chapters, you'll get a tour of important background info and fascinating history that will bring to life the era in which Jesus lived. Then you'll read about his birth, his adult ministry and teaching, and the crucial last week of his life on earth. You'll catch a glimpse of the impact and excitement as news of Jesus spread around the world. And finally, you'll be inspired to think about what Jesus means for us today.