This book highlights the significance of a group of five texts excluded from the standard Christian Bible and preserved only in Ge‘ez, the classical language of Ethiopia. These texts are crucial for modern scholars due to their significance for a wide range of early readers, as extant fragments of other early translations confirm in most cases. Yet they are also noted for their eventual marginalization and abandonment, as a more restrictive understanding of the biblical canon prevailed – everywhere except in Ethiopia, with its distinctive Christian tradition in which the concept of a “closed canon” is alien. In focusing upon 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Epistula Apostolorum, and the Apocalypse of Peter, the contributors to this volume group them together as representatives of a time in early Christian history when sacred texts were not limited by a sharply defined canonical boundary. In doing so, this book also highlights the unique and under-appreciated contribution of the Ethiopic Christian Tradition to the study of early Christianity.

Pauline- and Gospel-centred readings have too long provided the normative understanding of Christian identity. The chapters in this volume features evidence from other, less-frequently studied texts, so as to broaden perspectives on early Christian identity. Each chapter in the collection focuses on one or more of the later New Testament epistles and answers one of the following questions: what did/do these texts uniquely contribute to Christian identity? How does the author frame or shape identity? What are the potential results of the identities constructed in these texts for early Christian communities? What are the influences of these texts on later Christian identity? Together these chapters contribute fresh insights through innovative research, furthering the discussion on the theological and historical importance of these texts within the canon. The distinguished list of contributors includes: Richard Bauckham, David G. Horrell, Francis Watson, and Robert W. Wall.

Producing Christian Culture takes as its thread the 'interpretative genres' within which medieval people engaged with the Bible. Contributors to the volume present specific material as a case study illustrative of a specific genre, whether devotional, homiletical, scholarly, or controversial. The chronological range moves from St Augustine to the use of gospel texts in polemical writing of the first two decades of the 1500s, with focal sections on early medieval Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian theology, the scholastic turn of the High Middle Ages, and the influence of vernacular writing in the later Middle Ages. The tremendous range and vitality of medieval responses to biblical texts are highlighted within the studies.

This title details the cover-up of one of the worst labour tragedies in American history. The authors conducted an archaeological dig of the site and include their observations. It includes many illustrations. It will appeal to readers interested in Irish and Irish-American history, labour history, and the history of technology and medicine. In 1832, fifty-seven Irish Catholic workers were brought to the United States to lay one of the most difficult miles of American railway, Duffy's Cut of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the eyes of the company, these men were expendable. Deaths were common during the building of the railway but this stretch was worse than most. When cholera swept the camp, basic medical attention and community support was denied to them. In the end, all fifty-seven men died and were buried in a mass unmarked grave. Their families in Ireland were never told what happened to them. The company did its best to cover up the incident, which was one of the worst labour tragedies in U.S. history. This book tells the story of these men, the sacrifices they made, and the mistreatment that claimed their lives. learn how Irish labour built the railroads, and about the impact of the Great Cholera Epidemic on American life. The authors argue that the annihilation of the work crew came about because of the extreme conditions of their employment, the prejudice of the surrounding community, and vigilante violence that kept them isolated. The authors' archaeological digs at the site and meticulous historical research shed light on this tragic chapter in American labour history.

One man could have enabled the most audacious terrorist threat against America prior to 9/11 and helped the Nazis win World War II-the Nazi spy pastor, Carl Krepper. His riveting story brings to light a forgotten chapter in the history of the Second World War. As America continues to wrestle with issues surrounding the threat of sabotage and terrorism, this eye-opening work details a very real threat faced by our country in the Second World War, and the key aspects of the underground war that was fought in this country by Nazi agents. The Nazi Spy Pastor: Carl Krepper and the War in America presents the fascinating true story of a secret plot to be executed on American soil-a German sabotage operation with intended targets in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Illinois. This book chronicles, for the first time, the remarkable life of Carl Krepper-naturalized American citizen, Lutheran pastor, and the Nazi deep-cover operative who could have made possible the greatest terrorist threat on American soil prior to the attacks on September 11th. Historian J. Francis Watson draws on newly declassified archival and documentary materials to tell the full story of how a devoted clergyman lost his way and betrayed his calling, instead advocating an ideology that supported genocide and the deaths of innocent victims in America, and how he came to play a key role in the Pastorius sabotage plot. The book covers fascinating cloak-and-dagger details of submarine infiltrations, safe houses, and secret codes, detailing Krepper's life, his work as a Nazi agent, and the FBI sting operation that finally brought about his arrest in December of 1944. This little-known, real-life espionage story will serve students of World War II history and appeal to readers interested in immigration and the integration of immigrant populations as well as the histories of New York and New Jersey. Offers a compelling view into "the mind of a spy," identifying the elements and events that motivated Carl Krepper and led him to his treasonous work Utilizes newly declassified material from the FBI as well as other archival materials from the United States and Germany to provide a more accurate and complete portrayal of Krepper's actions and intentions than previously possible Draws connections between what happened to America during World War II and current national security challenges and threats of terrorism facing the United States in the modern context Documents how Krepper's arrest and trial were used as a basis for the arrest and trial of some of the prisoners at Guantanamo following the events of September 11, 2001

Issues of gender and sexuality have recently come to the fore in all humanities disciplines, and this book reflects this broad interdisciplinary situation. It focuses on issues of gender and sexuality (eros) in the light of the comprehensive divine-human love (agape) which, for the New Testament, lies at the heart of Christian faith and practice. The intention is to outline a distinctively Christian understanding of the male/female relationship reflecting the priority of agape over eros. Key Pauline texts are read alongside modern texts by Virginia Woolf, Freud and Irigaray.

Theological interpretation of the Bible is key to the health and vitality as well as the belief and practice of the church. Just how it is done has been the subject of much discussion and debate over the centuries. In "Reading Scripture with the Church, " four leading biblical scholars make the case for theological interpretation. Each author is given the opportunity to interact with the other three, and all four interact with premodern, modern, and postmodern approaches to biblical interpretation. This is an important book for pastors, teachers, and other serious students of the Bible who will be motivated to embrace the task of interpreting the Bible with greater energy, caution, and precision.

Readers of Paul today are more than ever aware of the importance of interpreting Paul's letters in their Jewish context. In Reading Romans in Context a team of Pauline scholars go beyond a general introduction that surveys historical events and theological themes and explore Paul's letter to the Romans in light of Second Temple Jewish literature. In this non-technical collection of short essays, beginning and intermediate students are given a chance to see firsthand what makes Paul a distinctive thinker in relation to his Jewish contemporaries. Following the narrative progression of Romans, each chapter pairs a major unit of the letter with one or more thematically related Jewish text, introduces and explores the theological nuances of the comparative text, and shows how these ideas illuminate our understanding of the book of Romans.

The so-called Epistula Apostolorum is an early gospel-like text in which the eleven apostles recount a question-and-answer session with the risen Jesus on Easter morning, intended to equip them for the worldwide mission to which they are now called. The Epistula draws selectively from the Gospels of John and Matthew, while disagreeing with its sources at a number of points and claiming definitive status for its own rendering of the apostolic gospel. This book is based on a new translation of this important but neglected text, drawing on the Coptic, Ethiopic, and Latin manuscript evidence and with variants noted in an English-language critical apparatus. Extensive additional notes are provided to clarify issues of text, translation, and exegesis. The central chapters explore major theological themes such as incarnation, resurrection, and eschatology in the light of related texts within and beyond the New Testament.

This groundbreaking approach to the study of the fourfold gospel offers a challenging alternative to prevailing assumptions about the creation of the gospels and their portraits of Jesus. How and why does it matter that we have these four gospels? Why were they placed alongside one another as four parallel yet diverse retellings of the same story? Francis Watson, widely regarded as one of the foremost New Testament scholars of our time, explains that the four gospels were chosen to give a portrait of Jesus. He explores the significance of the fourfold gospel's plural form for those who constructed it and for later Christian communities, showing that in its plurality it bears definitive witness to what God has done in Jesus Christ. Watson focuses on reading the gospels as a group rather than in isolation and explains that the fourfold gospel is greater than, and other than, the sum of its individual parts. Interweaving historical, exegetical, and theological perspectives, this book is accessibly written for students and pastors but is also of interest to professors and scholars.

The so-called Epistula Apostolorum is an early gospel-like text in which the eleven apostles recount a question-and-answer session with the risen Jesus on Easter morning, intended to equip them for the worldwide mission to which they are now called. The Epistula draws selectively from the Gospels of John and Matthew, while disagreeing with its sources at a number of points and claiming definitive status for its own rendering of the apostolic gospel. This book is based on a new translation of this important but neglected text, drawing on the Coptic, Ethiopic, and Latin manuscript evidence and with variants noted in an English-language critical apparatus. Extensive additional notes are provided to clarify issues of text, translation, and exegesis. The central chapters explore major theological themes such as incarnation, resurrection, and eschatology in the light of related texts within and beyond the New Testament.

This volume examines the 'counter-narratives' of the core Christian story, proposed by texts from Nag Hammadi and elsewhere. A noteworthy body of highly respected scholars examine material that is sometimes difficult and often overlooked, contributing to the ongoing effort to integrate Nag Hammadi and related literature into the mainstream of New Testament and early Christian studies. By retracing the major elements of the Christian story in sequence, they are able to discuss how and why each aspect was disputed on inner-Christian grounds, and to reflect on the different accounts of Christian identity underlying these disputes. Together the essays in this book address a central issue: towards the end of the second century, Irenaeus could claim that the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout the world were agreed on a version of the core Christian story which is still recognisable today. Yet, as Irenaeus concedes and as the Nag Hammadi texts have confirmed, there were many who wished to tell the core Christian story differently. Those who criticized and rejected the standard story did so not because they were adherents of another religion, 'Gnosticism', but because they were Christians who believed that the standard account was wrong at point after point. Ranging from the Gospels of Judas and Mary to Galatians and Ptolemy's Letter to Flora, this volume provides a fascinating analysis of how the Christian story as we know it today developed against counter-readings from other early Christian traditions.

Issues of gender and sexuality have recently come to the fore in all humanities disciplines, and this book reflects this broad interdisciplinary situation, although its own standpoint is broadly theological. In contrast to many contemporary feminist theologies, gender and sexuality (eros) are here understood within a distinctively Christian context characterized by the reality of agape - the New Testament's term for the comprehensive divine-human love that includes the relationship of man and woman within its scope. The central problem is concern with key Pauline texts relating to gender and sexuality (1 Cor. 11, Rom. 7, Eph. 5), texts whose influence on western theology and culture has been enduring and pervasive. They are read here in conjunction with later theological and non-theological texts that reflect that influence - ranging from Augustine and Barth to Virginia Woolf, Freud and Irigaray.

This book is novel in its questioning of the adequacy of interpreting Paul from the perspective of the Reformation and in its application of sociological methods to the New Testament. 'In the past few years or so Paul's theology, especially his relationship to Judaism, has become a highly controversial topic in NT studies. In this book Watson launches into that controversy with one of the most important and adventurous contributions to date, which is sure to spark off further controversies in its wake ... that he has managed to produce strikingly novel but not wild or idiosyncratic results is a measure of his rigorous methods of argument' -- Themelios 'A timely contribution, offering a reassessment of the New Testament texts behind the Reformation and encouraging us to see them differently.' -- Theology 'A bold and provocative thesis, presented clearly and readably.' -- Journal of Theological StudiesThis book is novel in its questioning of the adequacy of interpreting Paul from the perspective of the Reformation and in its application of sociological methods to the New Testament. 'In the past few years or so Paul's theology, especially his relationship to Judaism, has become a highly controversial topic in NT studies. In this book Watson launches into that controversy with one of the most important and adventurous contributions to date, which is sure to spark off further controversies in its wake ... that he has managed to produce strikingly novel but not wild or idiosyncratic results is a measure of his rigorous methods of argument' -- Themelios 'A timely contribution, offering a reassessment of the New Testament texts behind the Reformation and encouraging us to see them differently.'-- Theology 'A bold and provocative thesis, presented clearly and readably.' -- Journal of Theological Studies

Producing Christian Culture takes as its thread the 'interpretative genres' within which medieval people engaged with the Bible. Contributors to the volume present specific material as a case study illustrative of a specific genre, whether devotional, homiletical, scholarly, or controversial. The chronological range moves from St Augustine to the use of gospel texts in polemical writing of the first two decades of the 1500s, with focal sections on early medieval Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian theology, the scholastic turn of the High Middle Ages, and the influence of vernacular writing in the later Middle Ages. The tremendous range and vitality of medieval responses to biblical texts are highlighted within the studies.

Once A Pear... is the enthralling cricketing story of Daryl Mitchell - the ultimate 'one-club man'. Daryl graduated from the village game to become the first Worcestershire captain born in the county since 1925. He turned down offers from other, more famous counties to play for the club for 17 years in a turbulent career that saw five promotions, five relegations and short-form triumphs in the Pro40 competition and the Twenty20 Blast. A club legend, 38 first-class county hundreds put him sixth in the all-time list of Worcestershire centurions, while his 295 catches place him eighth in the fielding records. Four years as chairman of the Professional Cricketers' Association speaks volumes for the esteem he is held in by fellow professionals. In Once A Pear... Daryl reveals what it takes to be a successful county cricketer, and the impact on a player's mental health, while exploring how the game has changed in the last 20 years. This is the story of a true cricket man.

The disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology have in modern times been practiced in relative isolation from one another. Francis Watson argues that the separate development of Old and New Testament studies and systematic theology impoverishes all three disciplines and distorts the object of their study. In the past, a "biblical theology" that took seriously the theological responsibilities of the biblical interpreter was criticized by some scholars as detrimental to the practice of both the exegetical and the theological disciplines. Here Francis Watson argues for more theological involvement with exegesis and hermeneutics rather than less: biblical theology, he contends, must be practiced in an interdisciplinary approach that can draw freely on the resources and perspectives of the two exegetical disciplines and of systematic theology. The first part of the book examines particular themes in theological hermeneutics. Contemporary hermeneutical debates-such as the relationship of history-writing and fiction, textual indeterminacy, and interpretative pluralism-are engaged from an explicitly theological point of view. The second part analyzes Christian theological use of the Old Testament. It advocates an approach to Old Testament interpretation in which the retrospective Christian re-reading of Jewish scripture as preparing the way for the coming of Christ is once again taken seriously. This book builds on Watson's previous book Text, Church and World: Biblical Interpretation in Theological Perspective in advocating an approach in which biblical interpretation seeks to contribute directly to the work of Christian theological construction. It is only through this interdisciplinary approach, Watson contends, that the Bible will be interpreted in a manner consistent with its status as the holy scripture of the Christian community.

The three Garima Gospels are the earliest surviving Ethiopian gospel books. They provide glimpses of lost late antique luxury gospel books and art of the fifth to seventh centuries, from the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia. This book reproduces all of the Garima illuminated pages for the first time, and presents extensive comparative material. It will be an essential resource for those studying late antique art and history, Ethiopia, eastern Christianity, New Testament textual criticism, and illuminated books. 316 colour illustrations. Preface and photographs by Michael Gevers. Like most gospel manuscripts, the Garima Gospels contain ornately decorated canon tables which function as concordances of the different versions of the same material in the gospels. Analysis of these tables of numbered parallel passages, devised by Eusebius of Caesarea, contributes significantly to our understanding of the early development of the canonical four gospel collection. The origins and meanings of the decorated frames, portraits of the evangelists, Alexandrian circular pavilion, and the unique image of the Jerusalem Temple are explored.

This is a new release of the original 1938 edition.

That there are four canonical versions of the one gospel story is often seen as a problem for Christian faith: where gospels multiply, so too do apparent contradictions that may seem to undermine their truth claims. In Gospel Writing Francis Watson argues that differences and tensions between canonical gospels represent opportunities for theological reflection, not problems for apologetics. Watson presents the formation of the fourfold gospel as the defining moment in the reception of early gospel literature -- and also of Jesus himself as the subject matter of that literature. As the canonical division sets four gospel texts alongside one another, the canon also creates a new, complex, textual entity more than the sum of its parts. A canonical gospel can no longer be regarded as a definitive, self-sufficient account of its subject matter. It must play its part within an intricate fourfold polyphony, and its meaning and significance are thereby transformed. In elaborating these claims, Watson proposes nothing less than a new paradigm for gospel studies -- one that engages fully with the available noncanonical material so as to illuminate the historical and theological significance of the canonical.

The essays in this collection arose out of a conference held at King's College, London in the spring of 1992. While the contributions do not deny the need for historical criticism and its lasting significance, they believe that it is no longer plausible to identify the results of such criticism with the full reality of the biblical texts. Other approaches are equally legitimate and the new theoretical perspective must be pluralistic. Factors determining the new situation are an acceptance of what is widely called a 'postmodern' condition, the recognition that the Bible is an 'open text' capable of many meanings, the development of a literary approach to the Bible and an emphasis on the importance of the role of the reader. All these issues are reflected in individual essays, by Mark Brett, Phyllis Trible, Werner Jeanrond, Frances Young, Stephen Moore, Stephen Barton, Richard Coggins and the editor. The common threads which emerge from their contributions will prove of the utmost importance for biblical studies in the future, and may well provide a chart of the new courses that it will have to take.

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Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!