This textbook provides an introduction to the Second Temple period (520 BCE-70 CE), the formative era of early Judaism and the milieu of Jesus and of the earliest Christians. By paying close attention to original sources--especially the Bible, the Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus--Frederick J. Murphy introduces students to the world of ancient Jews and Christians. "Early Judaism: The Exile to the Time of Christ," designed to serve students and teachers in the classroom, will also be of great interest to anyone looking for an entree into this pivotal period. It contains suggestions for primary readings, bibliographies, maps, illustrations, glossaries, and indexes.

This is a literary and theological study of the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo--a long, well-written reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible written by a Palestinian Jew of the first century C.E. Using the methodologies of redaction and literary criticism, Murphy provides an analysis of the whole of the Biblical Antiquities. After a chapter-by-chapter analysis, Murphy addresses several topics more generally--major characters, major themes, and the historical context of the work. Full concordances to the Latin text are provided to assist future research on Pseudo-Philo. This book will prove an important resource for students of Jewish interpretation of the Bible at the end of the Second Temple period. It also sheds light on Jewish thought of the period regarding covenant, leadership in Israel, women in Israel, relations with Gentiles, divine providence, divine retribution, eschatology, and many other subjects. Furnishing a broad interpretive context for future work on the Biblical Antiquities, this study gives students of the Bible access to an important literary and religious product of first-century Judaism.

Jesus and the Gospels is one of the most popular religion courses at colleges, and it is required at many seminaries and divinity schools. This textbook, written by an award-winning educator, is designed for a semester-long course in both these settings. Moreover, it could be used as a supplementary text in courses on christology, the historical Jesus, New Testament literature, and the Bible.

Murphy will provide an introduction to the gospels that does justice to the full range of modern critical methods and insights. He will discuss the implications of these methods for how we understand the nature of the gospels and how we can read them today. The chapters will sketch the portrait of Jesus that emerges from each gospel, and then examine the canonical view of Jesus by comparing and contrasting these pictures, as well as the ones that emerge from the non-canonical gospels and from the modern quest for the historical Jesus.

Chapter list:

Introduction, Theological and Historical Backgrounds;

Chapter 1, What is a Gospel?

Chapter 2, History of Critical Methods for Gospel Study;

Chapter 3, The Gospel of Mark;

Chapter 4, Q;

Chapter 5, Matthew;

Chapter 6, Luke;

Chapter 7, John;

Chapter 8, Other Gospels (Gospel of Thomas, Infancy Gospels, other Apocryphal Gospels); Chapter 8, Christian Interpretations of Jesus;

Chapter 9, The Historical Jesus;

Chapter 10, Conclusion; Glossary; Further Reading; Notes; Subject Index. (Charts, sidebars, illustrations, and maps.)"

The Book of Revelation is one of the most difficult of biblical books to understand, depicting the clash of cosmic powers, the interplay of bizarre images, and the specific problems of particular churches in the Roman province of Asia. Despite its opacity, Revelation has enjoyed great influence down through the ages, an influence felt in art, literature, and theology. The relative ease with which its images can be adapted to varied situations, however, has produced problematic interpretations that are far from what the author intended. Many misinterpretations of Revelation result from lack of appreciation of its original contexts: historical, social, literary, theological. To address this problem and to enable today's readers to understand how the book would have been read by early Christians, this commentary makes available the best in recent and classic biblical scholarship on Revelation and its setting. The result is that the reader will see Revelation in its original contexts and thereby fully comprehend it as one possible Christian response to specific conditions in the eastern Roman Empire in the first century. "Murphy's commentary is insightful and a pleasure to read. It is an excellent introduction to a fascinating and complex biblical book. I recommend it highly for students, pastors, and lay people." Adela Yarbro Collins, University of Chicago Frederick J. Murphy is professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, and the author of The Religious World of Jesus and Pseudo-Philo: Rewriting the Bible.