In modern times, evangelical Protestants have advocated for the belief that the Bible is the only real standard of truth and true Christian praxis for the church. But is this how the early Jews and Christians, who wrote the biblical books, viewed their sacred texts? And what counted as those sacred texts? Furthermore, there is often a lack of clarity as to what is meant by the famous phrase that became a motto of the German Reformation: sola scriptura. Does it mean that the Bible is the only authority for Christian faith and practice, or does it mean the Bible is the final authority, allowing non-biblical traditions, human reason, and perhaps even experience to have some authority in the church? With this magisterial study, Ben Witherington III invites readers to go back to the time of the writing of the Bible and look at what is said about the sacred texts with a specific focus on how the authority of such texts was viewed. Witherington then walks through Christian history until the point where the phrase sola scriptura actually appears as an authority claim of some kind. Surprisingly, it does not show up until the fourteenth century A.D. and not in the writings of a Protestant. From there, Witherington examines how the phrase continued to be used in the various Reformations and into the modern era. The story of Sola Scriptura also involves the rise of science, the effect of the Enlightenment, and changes in views about human sexuality that have affected the discussion of the Bible's authority in various ways. Students of Scripture, budding scholars, pastors, and laity alike stand to benefit from this book as Christians of all stripes are confronted by the same crises: a profound historical amnesia that is affecting even churches which are bibliocentric; the general chaos in Western culture that has further alienated younger generations from the church and angered the older generations who still attend church; and the increasing biblical illiteracy in the church, including in its pulpits, which has led to churches taking their signals and sense of direction from the culture rather than the biblical witness itself. Such crises will not be overcome without a serious coming to grips with the Bible, its history, and its authority for the Christian life.

Do you know the character of our God--do you know who God is? What does it mean to say that God is love, light, life, and spirit? In Who God Is, world-renowned New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III explores the nature and character of the God of the Bible by focusing specifically on the nouns used to describe who God is. This rich exploration has its foundation in a deep reading of the biblical text. Reflecting on these descriptions of God gives us a fresh understanding of the beauty and uniqueness of the character of our God.

Ben Witherington III attempts to reenchant our reading of Paul in this creative reconstruction of ancient Corinth. Following a fictitious Corinthian man named Nicanor through an eventful week of business dealings and conflict, you will encounter life at various levels of Roman society--eventually meeting Paul himself and gaining entrance into the Christian community there. The result is an unforgettable introduction to life in a major center of the New Testament world. Numerous full-page text boxes expand on a variety of aspects of life and culture as we encounter them in the narrative.

Preaching's Survey of Bibles and Bible Reference InterVarsity Press is proud to present The Lightfoot Legacy, a three-volume set of previously unpublished material from J. B. Lightfoot, one of the great biblical scholars of the modern era. In the spring of 2013, Ben Witherington III discovered hundreds of pages of biblical commentary by Lightfoot in the Durham Cathedral Library. While incomplete, these commentaries represent a goldmine for historians and biblical scholars, as well as for the many people who have found Lightfoot's work both informative and edifying, deeply learned and pastorally sensitive. Among those many pages were two sets of lecture notes on the Acts of the Apostles. Together they amount to a richly detailed, albeit unfinished, commentary on Acts 1-21. The project of writing a commentary on Acts had long been on Lightfoot's mind, and in the 1880s he wrote an article about the book for the second British edition of William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. Thankfully, that is not all he left behind. Now on display for all to see, these commentary notes reveal a scholar well ahead of his time, one of the great minds of his or any generation. Well over a century later, The Acts of the Apostles remains a relevant and significant resource for the church today.

Preaching's Survey of Bibles and Bible Reference award InterVarsity Press is proud to present The Lightfoot Legacy, a three-volume set of previously unpublished material from J. B. Lightfoot, one of the great biblical scholars of the modern era. In the spring of 2013, Ben Witherington III discovered hundreds of pages of biblical commentary by Lightfoot in the Durham Cathedral Library. While incomplete, these commentaries represent a goldmine for historians and biblical scholars, as well as for the many people who have found Lightfoot's work both informative and edifying, deeply learned and pastorally sensitive. In addition to the material on the Acts of the Apostles, published in volume one, there were detailed notes on the Fourth Gospel, a text that Lightfoot loved and lectured on frequently. These pages contain his commentary notes for John 1-12. Lightfoot had long wanted to write a commentary on the Gospel of John, but he was unable to do so due to more pressing demands on his time, as well as his respect for his colleague B. F. Westcott. As a result, though he continued to compile notes on the text, they never saw the light of day until now. Included alongside the commentary are Lightfoot's long out-of-print essays on the historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel. Now on display for all to see, these commentary volumes reveal a scholar well ahead of his time, one of the great minds of his or any generation.

While Paul's letter to the Romans is the most studied and commented-on document from the biblical period, the major exegetical books on Romans from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been overwhelmingly shaped by the Reformed tradition. Through a careful survey of work on Romans by both ancient Church Fathers and modern exegetical scholars, Ben Witherington III here argues that the interpretation of Romans since the Reformation has been far too indebted to -- and at key points led astray by -- Augustinian readings of the text as filtered through Luther, Calvin, and others. In this first full-scale socio-rhetorical commentary on Romans, Witherington gleans fresh insights from reading the text of Paul's epistle in light of early Jewish theology, the historical situation of Rome in the middle of the first century A.D., and Paul's own rhetorical concerns. Giving serious consideration to the social and rhetorical background of Romans allows readers to hear Paul on his own terms, not just through the various voices of his later interpreters. Witherington's groundbreaking work also features a new, clear translation of the Greek text, and each section of the commentary ends with a brief discussion titled -Bridging the Horizons, - which suggests how the ancient text of Romans may speak to us today.

All too often, argues Ben Witherington, the theology of the New Testament has been divorced from its ethics, leaving as isolated abstractions what are fully integrated, dynamic elements within the New Testament itself. As Witherington stresses, "behavior affects and reinforces or undoes belief." Having completed commentaries on all of the New Testament books, a remarkable feat in itself, Witherington now offers the first of a two-volume set on the theological and ethical thought world of the New Testament. The first volume looks at the individual witnesses, while the second examines the collective witness. The New Testament, says Ben Witherington, is "like a smallish choir. All are singing the same cantata, but each has an individual voice and is singing its own parts and notes. If we fail to pay attention to all the voices in the choir, we do not get the entire effect. . . . If this first volume is about closely analyzing the sheet music left to us by which each musician's part is delineated, the second volume will attempt to re-create what it might have sounded like had they ever gotten together and performed their scores to produce a single masterful cantata." What the New Testament authors have in mind, Witherington contends, is that all believers should be conformed in thought, word and deed to the image of Jesus Christ--the indelible image.

InterVarsity Press is proud to present The Lightfoot Legacy, a three-volume set of previously unpublished material from J. B. Lightfoot, one of the great biblical scholars of the modern era. In the spring of 2013, Ben Witherington III discovered hundreds of pages of biblical commentary by Lightfoot in the Durham Cathedral Library. While incomplete, these commentaries represent a goldmine for historians and biblical scholars, as well as for the many people who have found Lightfoot's work both informative and edifying, deeply learned and pastorally sensitive. In addition to the material on the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of St. John, published in volumes one and two, respectively, there were fragments on 2 Corinthians and 1 Peter. Lightfoot was well known as a Pauline expert given his commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, and fragments of his work on Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians were published posthumously. It is therefore a delight to have his notes on 2 Corinthians available for the first time. Lightfoot was also interested in the life and work of Peter. The introduction to his commentary on 1 Peter provides insightful analysis of the chronology and context of the epistle. Lightfoot seeks to demonstrate that Peter knew Paul's work and that these two great apostles were in harmony regarding theology and ethics. Now complete, these three commentary volumes reveal a scholar well ahead of his time, one of the great minds of his or any generation.

Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Volume 2' is the third of three volumes extending Ben Witherington's innovative socio-rhetorical analysis of New Testament books to the latter-Pauline and non-Pauline corpora. By dividing the volumes according to the socioreligious contexts for which they were written, Witherington sheds fresh light on the documents, their provenance, character and importance. Throughout, Witherington shows his thorough knowledge of recent literature on these texts and focuses his attention on the unique insights brought about through socio-rhetorical analysis that either reinforces or corrects those gleaned from other approaches. "Bridging the Horizons" sections point to the relevance of the text for believers today, making this volume of special value to pastors and general readers as well as to students and scholars.

It's AD 70. And amidst smoke, clamor, and terror, Jerusalem is falling to the Romans, its temple being destroyed. As Jews and Christians try to escape the city, we travel with some of them through an imagined week of flight and faith. A scribe makes his way into Galilee in search of records of Jesus' life and teachings. A company of women, responding to a prophecy, travels the route to a new life in Pella. We see friends reunited, join a worship gathering of Jesus followers, and discover treasured manuscripts. In this imaginative and entertaining narrative, New Testament scholar Ben Witherington leads us behind the veil of centuries to see and experience the historical and social realities of this epochal event. Allowing the light of what we do know to conjure possible events, A Week in the Fall of Jerusalem is a fun and informative journey into the wrinkles and folds of a lost story.

Like Ben Witherington's previous commentary Conflict and Community in Corinth, this commentary breaks fresh ground in providing a detailed social and rhetorical analysis of the book of Acts. Written in a readable style, with more detailed interaction with scholarly discussion found in the various excursuses, this commentary draws on the best new insights from a number of disciplines (narratological studies of Luke-Acts, archaeological and social scientific study of the New Testament, rhetorical analysis of Acts, comparative studies in ancient historiography) to provide the reader with the benefits of recent innovative ways of analyzing the text of Acts. In addition there is detailed attention to major theological and historical issues, including the question of the relationship of Acts to the Pauline letters, the question of early Christian history and how the church grew and developed, the relationship between early Judaism and early Christianity, and the relationship between Christianity and the officials of the Roman Empire. Acts is seen as a historical monograph with affinities with the approaches of serious Greek historians such as Thucydides and Polybius in terms of methodology, and affinities with some forms of Jewish historiography (including Old Testament history) in terms of content or subject matter. The book is illustrated with various pictures and charts, which help to bring to light the character and setting of these narratives.

ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award In the field of Pauline studies, much has changed over the last twenty years. Since Ben Witherington III first published his influential book The Paul Quest, monumental works have appeared from scholars such as James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright, E. P. Sanders, and John Barclay. The New Perspective is no longer new, and the flurry of publications continues across a range of specialized studies. Those interested in exploring trends and issues related to Paul may find themselves in need of a map. With Voices and Views on Paul, Ben Witherington and Jason Myers have teamed up to provide a reliable guide to the major terrain of Pauline scholarship. Through a distinctive combination of survey and evaluation, they explain and analyze the thought of recent major Pauline interpreters and track developments over the past two decades. They conclude with an assessment of how these studies have advanced our understanding of Paul and where further work is needed. Voices and Views on Paul offers a helpful service to students, pastors, and anyone seeking to keep up with this dynamic field as scholars continue to wrestle with Paul and his work.

Who was the real Paul? For more than a decade there has been a renewed quest for the figure behind the Pauline letters and the Acts of the Apostles. In this important contribution to the debate, Ben Witherington provides a profile of Paul in his context as a first-century Jewish Christian and a citizen of the classical Roman world. The author engages constructively with recent scholarship in gleaning numerous fascinating insights into the Jew of Tarsus, and show how these contribute to our understanding of his writings.

This unprecedented commentary applies an exegetical method informed by both sociological insight and rhetorical analysis to the study of 1 and 2 Corinthians. In addition to using traditional exegetical and historical methods, this unique study also analyzes the two letters of Paul in terms of Greco-Roman rhetoric and ancient social conditions and customs to shed fresh light on the context and content of Paul's message. Includes 21 black-and-white photos and illustrations.

There is no doubting the legacy of the Protestant Reformers and their successors. Luther, Calvin, and Wesley not only spawned specific denominational traditions, but their writings have been instrumental in forging a broadly embraced evangelical theology as well. In this volume, Ben Witherington wrestles with some of the big ideas of these major traditional theological systems (sin, God's sovereignty, prophecy, grace, and the Holy Spirit), asking tough questions about their biblical foundations. Witherington argues that evangelicalism sometimes wrongly assumes a biblical warrant for some of its more popular beliefs, and, further, he pushes the reader to engage the larger story and plot of the Bible to understand these central elements of belief.