* Written by one of the world's most widely respected writers on the New Testament * Shows how a close reading of the Gospels points unmistakably to an early belief in the divinity of Jesus * A fascinating and compelling sequel to the author's critically acclaimed Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul

Paul's letters, the earliest writings in the New Testament, are filled with allusions, images, and quotations from the Old Testament, or, as Paul called it, Scripture. In this book, Richard B. Hays investigates Paul's appropriation of Scripture from a perspective based on recent literary-critical studies of intertextuality. His uncovering of scriptural echoes in Paul's language enriches our appreciation of the complex literary texture of Paul's letters and offers new insights into his message. "A major work on hermeneutics. . . . Hays's study will be a work to use and to reckon with for every Pauline scholar and for every student of Paul's use of Old Testament traditions. It is sophisticated, in both a literary and theological sense, and written with considerable wit and confidence."-Carol L. Stockenhausen, Journal of Biblical Literature "Hays has without doubt posed the right question at the right time within the horizon of a particularly important problematic. . . . A new beginning for the question concerning the reception of the Old Testament in the New."-Hans Hubner, Theologische Literaturzeitung "A powerful reading. . . . [Hays's] careful and fresh exegesis . . . challenges not a few traditional or highly regarded readings. . . . A major contribution both to Pauline studies and to our understanding of earliest Christian theology as a living dialogue with the scriptures of Israel."-James D. G. Dunn, forthcoming in Literature and Theology "A fresh interpretation of Paul's references to the Jewish Scriptures. . . . Written in a lively, semipopular style, this important study succeeds in showing that Paul's scriptural quotations and allusions are often more 'polyphonic' and rhetorically meaningful than traditional exegesis has allowed."-David M. Hay, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

The difficulty of interpreting the Bible is felt all over today. Is the Bible still authoritative for the faith and practice of the church? If so, in what way? What practices of reading offer the most appropriate approach to understanding Scripture? The church's lack of clarity about these issues has hindered its witness and mission, causing it to speak with an uncertain voice to the challenges of our time.

This important book is for a twenty-first-century church that seems to have lost the art of reading the Bible attentively and imaginatively. "The Art of Reading Scripture" is written by a group of eminent scholars and teachers seeking to recover the church's rich heritage of biblical interpretation in a dramatically changed cultural environment. Asking how best to read the Bible in a postmodern context, the contributors together affirm up front Nine Theses that provide substantial guidance for the church. The essays and sermons that follow both amplify and model the approach to Scripture outlined in the Nine Theses.

Lucidly conceived, carefully written, and shimmering with fresh insights, "The Art of Reading Scripture" proposes a far-reaching revolution in how the Bible is taught in theological seminaries and calls pastors and teachers in the church to rethink their practices of using the Bible.

Contributors: Gary A. Anderson
Richard Bauckham
Brian E. Daley
Ellen F. Davis
Richard B. Hays
James C. Howell
Robert W. Jenson
William Stacy Johnson
L. Gregory Jones
Christine McSpadden
R. W. L. Moberly
David C. Steinmetz
Marianne Meye Thompson

The claim that the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection took place "according to the Scriptures" stands at the heart of the New Testament's message. All four canonical Gospels declare that the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms mysteriously prefigure Jesus. The author of the Fourth Gospel states this claim succinctly: in his narrative, Jesus declares, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me" (John 5:46). Yet modern historical criticism characteristically judges that the New Testament's christological readings of Israel's Scripture misrepresent the original sense of the texts; this judgment forces fundamental questions to be asked: Why do the Gospel writers readthe Scriptures in such surprising ways? Are their readings intelligible as coherent or persuasive interpretations of the Scriptures? Does Christian faith require the illegitimate theft of someone else's sacred texts? Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels answers these questions. Richard B. Hays chronicles the dramatically different ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture and reveals that their readings were as complementary as they werefaithful. In this long-awaited sequel to his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul , Hayshighlights the theological consequences of the Gospel writers'distinctive hermeneutical approaches and asks what it might mean for contemporary readers to attempt to read Scripture through the eyes of the Evangelists. In particular, Hays carefully describes the Evangelists'practice of figural reading aan imaginative and retrospective move that creates narrative continuity and wholeness. He shows how each Gospel artfully uses scriptural echoes to re-narrate Israel's story, to assert that Jesus is the embodiment of Israel's God, and to prod the church in its vocation to engage the pagan world. Hays shows how the Evangelists summon readers to a conversion of their imagination. The Evangelists'use of scriptural echo beckons readers to believe the extraordinary: that Jesus was Israel's Messiah, that Jesus is Israel's God, and that contemporary believers are still on mission. The Evangelists, according to Hays, are training our scriptural senses, calling readers to be better scriptural people by being better scriptural poets.

John's apocalyptic revelation tends to be read either as an esoteric mystery or a breathless blueprint for the future. Missing, though, is how Revelation is the most visually stunning and politically salient text in the canon. Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation explores the ways in which Revelation, when read as the last book in the Christian Bible, is in actuality a crafted and contentious word. Senior scholars, including N.T. Wright, Richard Hays, Marianne Meye Thompson, and Stefan Alkier, reveal the intricate intertextual interplay between this apocalyptically charged book, its resonances with the Old Testament, and its political implications. In so doing, the authors show how the church today can read Revelation as both promise and critique.

Reading the Bible Intertextually explores the revisionary hermeneutical practices of the writers of the four gospels. Each of the contributors examines the distinctive ways that the canonical evangelists put a particular ""spin"" on the story of Jesus through rereading the Old Testament in different ways. In addition, the evangelists' different ways of reading Israel's Scripture are correlated with different visions for the embodied life of the community of Jesus' followers. This is an exciting new reading of the gospels, bringing interdisciplinary and intertextual readings to the texts, articulated by some of the most brilliant New Testament scholars of our time.

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.

At the 2010 Wheaton Theology Conference, leading New Testament scholar N. T. Wright and nine other prominent biblical scholars and theologians gathered to consider Wright's prolific body of work. Compiled from their presentations, this volume includes Tom Wright's two main addresses, one on the state of scholarship regarding Jesus and the other on the state of scholarship regarding the apostle Paul. The other nine essays critically interact with these two major themes of Wright's works. Much appreciation is shown, overviews are given, perspective is provided and some pointed questions are also raised. Together these essays represent the best of critical yet charitable dialogue among serious and rigorous scholars on theological themes vital to Christian faith that will propel New Testament scholarship for the next decade to come. With essays by Jeremy Begbie Markus Bockmuehl Richard B. Hays Edith M. Humphrey Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh Nicholas Perrin Marianne Meye Thompson Kevin J. Vanhoozer

"The Conversion of the Imagination contains selected essays of Richard Hays on Pauline hermeneutics, written over a period of more than twenty years. Together, they constitute a probing examination of Paul's approach to scriptural interpretation, showing that Paul's readings of Israel's Scripture sought to reshape the theological imagination of his churches.

For all of the Bible's popularity both in the church and in Western culture, confusion reigns about what the Bible is, its relationship to God, its relationship to its human authors and readers, and its proper use. Living and Active answers these fundamental questions by looking anew at Scripture from the perspective of Christian doctrine. Rather than treating the Bible as a sourcebook for theology, Telford Work uses systematic theology to build a compelling new doctrine of Scripture: the doctrine of God establishes the Bible's triune character and purpose; the doctrine of salvation explains the mission of Scripture in ancient Israel, in the career of Jesus, and in the life of his followers; the doctrine of the church relates the Bible's qualities to those of its reading communities, describes the relation of Scripture and tradition, and appreciates the Bible's role in worship and in personal salvation. Drawing in this way on the full resources of Christian dogmatics allows us to see the Bible at work accomplishing God's purposes in the world. Throughout the book, Work incorporates insights from the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and evangelical traditions in order to produce a truly ecumenical doctrine of Scripture. He also interacts with patristic theology and practice, historical-critical methods of interpretation, and postmodern thought, refusing to draw lines between biblical studies, ethics, history, philosophy, and theology. As a result, Living and Active is the most comprehensive, balanced, and relevant statement of Scripture now available. It clearly portrays the Bible as integral to the economy of salvation and the life of the church, it offers solutions to the current crisis of biblical authority and practice, and it prescribes fruitful ways to preach, teach, and live Scripture in today's world.

Paul's first letter to the Corinthians was addressed originally to a fledgling mission church in Corinth. Paul's absence from the church had allowed serious problems to arise within the Corinthian community, but the problems that he addresses in this letter do not always seem based on explicitly theological ideas. The brilliance of Paul, though, is that he frames the issues in theological terms and reflects on them in the light of the gospel.

"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 Reading Backwards Richard B. Hays maps the shocking ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture to craft their literary witnesses to the Church's one Christ. The Gospels' scriptural imagination discovered inside the long tradition of a resilient Jewish monotheism a novel and revolutionary Christology. Modernity's incredulity toward the Christian faith partly rests upon the characterization of early Christian preaching as a tendentious misreading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Christianity, modernity claims, twisted the Bible they inherited to fit its message about a mythological divine Savior. The Gospels, for many modern critics, are thus more about Christian doctrine in the second and third century than they are about Jesus in the first. Such Christian "misreadings" are not late or politically motivated developments within Christian thought. As Hays demonstrates, the claim that the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection took place "according to the Scriptures" stands at the very heart of the New Testament's earliest message. All four canonical Gospels declare that the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms mysteriously prefigure Jesus. The author of the Fourth Gospel puts the claim succinctly: "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me" (John 5:46). Hays thus traces the reading strategies the Gospel writers employ to "read backwards" and to discover how the Old Testament figuratively discloses the astonishing paradoxical truth about Jesus' identity. Attention to Jewish and Old Testament roots of the Gospel narratives reveals that each of the four Evangelists, in their diverse portrayals, identify Jesus as the embodiment of the God of Israel. Hays also explores the hermeneutical challenges posed by attempting to follow the Evangelists as readers of Israel's Scriptureacan the Evangelists teach us to read backwards along with them and to discern the same mystery they discovered in Israel's story? In Reading Backwards Hays demonstrates that it was Israel's Scripture itself that taught the Gospel writers how to understand Jesus as the embodied presence of God, that this conversion of imagination occurred early in the development of Christian theology, and that the Gospel writers' revisionary figural readings of their Bible stand at the very center of Christianity.

The claim that the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection took place "according to the Scriptures" stands at the heart of the New Testament's message. All four canonical Gospels declare that the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms mysteriously prefigure Jesus. The author of the Fourth Gospel states this claim succinctly: in his narrative, Jesus declares, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me" (John 5:46). Yet modern historical criticism characteristically judges that the New Testament's christological readings of Israel's Scripture misrepresent the original sense of the texts; this judgment forces fundamental questions to be asked: Why do the Gospel writers readthe Scriptures in such surprising ways? Are their readings intelligible as coherent or persuasive interpretations of the Scriptures? Does Christian faith require the illegitimate theft of someone else's sacred texts? Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels answers these questions. Richard B. Hays chronicles the dramatically different ways the four Gospel writers interpreted Israel's Scripture and reveals that their readings were as complementary as they werefaithful. In this long-awaited sequel to his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul , Hayshighlights the theological consequences of the Gospel writers'distinctive hermeneutical approaches and asks what it might mean for contemporary readers to attempt to read Scripture through the eyes of the Evangelists. In particular, Hays carefully describes the Evangelists'practice of figural reading aan imaginative and retrospective move that creates narrative continuity and wholeness. He shows how each Gospel artfully uses scriptural echoes to re-narrate Israel's story, to assert that Jesus is the embodiment of Israel's God, and to prod the church in its vocation to engage the pagan world. Hays shows how the Evangelists summon readers to a conversion of their imagination. The Evangelists'use of scriptural echo beckons readers to believe the extraordinary: that Jesus was Israel's Messiah, that Jesus is Israel's God, and that contemporary believers are still on mission. The Evangelists, according to Hays, are training our scriptural senses, calling readers to be better scriptural people by being better scriptural poets.

In view of the proliferation of conflicting images of Jesus in the church, in the academy, and in popular culture, it is no wonder that his identity sometimes appears more elusive than ever. Seeking the Identity of Jesus brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars -- from the fields of biblical studies, theology, and church history -- to focus on the complex problems surrounding the quest for the historical Jesus. Their perspectives are richly informed by Scripture, testimony from the church's past, and experience of the risen Jesus in the present.