This volume, which emerges from an SNTS seminar in 1985 1986, analyses one of the best-known, but also one of the most intriguing, of Jesus' discourses within the Fourth Gospel. Previous studies of the Shepherd Discourse have concentrated either on its historical setting in the life of Jesus (Simonis) or on the prehistory of its text (Bullmann and his school). The present study, consisting of essays written by an international team of specialists, adopts a more contextual approach. The Shepherd Discourse is here situated in the text of the Fourth Gospel, with particular emphasis on the preceding chapter and on the subsequent Passion narrative. The internal coherence of John 10 so becomes clearer, and it is seen that - in spite of its links with Gnostic ideas - the roots of the Discourse in Old Testament and Jewish texts about the shepherds of Israel become apparent.

First Thessalonians is one of the most discussed books of the New Testament. This volume by today's top Thessalonians scholars introduces readers to the current scholarly debate on Paul's earliest letter, discussing the difficult challenges that 1 Thessalonians poses to modern readers and explaining the various methods now being used to interpret this important New Testament letter.

New Testament scholar Johannes Beutler brings together a lifetime of study and reflection in this acclaimed commentary, first published in German in 2013 and now available to English-speaking audiences for the first time. Moving through the Gospel of John with a careful and critical eye, Beutler engages the relevant primary and secondary sources; summarises the existing discussion; and presents syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analyses of the text. As he meticulously examines the Fourth Gospel, Beutler pays special attention to the influence of Old Testament and Early Jewish traditions, to the overall structure of the Gospel of John, and to evidence suggesting a later stratum of contextualised "re-readings" in the composition of the Gospel. Bold, literary, and theological, this volume represents a landmark work of German biblical scholarship.

The work is based on the last command of the risen Jesus to his disciples in Matthew's account of the events that followed the resurrection of Jesus. The command is: "Make disciples of all nations". The command reverses the initial restriction of the disciples to only the lost sheep of the house of Israel. The work presents the command as the climax of Matthew's post-resurrection account, which is told in four scenes and each of the scenes contains a command. The last command sanctions the mission to the Gentiles without ending the mission to Israel. Making disciples involves baptism to increase the number of Christians (Church growth) and teaching to increase adherence to the teachings of Jesus (Church life).