Beginning with Jesus' birth, Ken Bailey leads us on a kaleidoscopic study of Jesus in the four Gospels. Bailey examines the life and ministry of Jesus with attention to the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, Jesus' relationship to women and especially Jesus' parables. Throughout the author employs his trademark expertise as a master of Middle Eastern culture to lead us into a deeper understanding of the person and significance of Jesus, lifting away the obscuring layers of modern Western interpretation to reveal Jesus in the light of his actual historical and cultural setting.

The result of over thirty years of research and lecturing, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes is a ground-breaking study of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. Bailey examines this canonical letter through the lenses of Paul's Jewish socio-cultural and rhetorical background and the Mediterranean context of the Corinthian recipients. In a set of connected essays, he draws the reader's attention to the letter's rootedness in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, the intentional theological structure of Paul's epistolary organization and the Near Eastern cultural practices that inflect Paul's rhetorical performance. All of this is brought to bear in teasing out the nature of Paul's response to the critical situations facing the Corinthian community: racial, ethnic and theological divisions, sexual misconduct, intimate interaction with pagan practices and disputes about church practices.

* Considers every major passage in the Bible that takes up the theme of the Good Shepherd * Shows how each biblical writer adapted and applied the shepherd theme for his own situation and purposes

An introduction for undergraduates to every stage of sociological research, showing how to deal effectively with typical problems they might encounter. The book is fully updated to include examples from the LA riots and the 1992 presidential elections.