In Sex, Wives, and Warriors, our understanding of Old Testament narrative is expanded though Phillip Francis Esler's application of an intercultural reading of the texts, focusing on the question: "What would ancient readers have understood from these stories?" This approach reveals previously undiscovered levels of meaning in the Old Testament which readers all too often fail to place in its original cultural and historical context. Esler draws on a wide range of disciplines, and in particular brings the techniques and insights of the social sciences to bear in his analysis. Not only is this reading contextualised and its significance for the Ancient Israelites explored, but Esler utilises scholarship on myth structure and Jungian archetypes to further clarify this original understanding. This is a book ideal for anyone wishing a closer engagement with the biblical texts. Esler makes the narratives resonate with pivotal stories from the Christian and Jewish tradition and in doing so inspires us with their imaginative and literary power and enhances our capacity for intercultural understanding.

In this widely-acclaimed study, Dr Esler makes extensive use of sociology and anthropology to examine the author of Luke Acts' theology as a response to social and political pressures upon the Christian community for whom he was writing. As well as interesting those concerned with prevalent developments in New Testament scholarship, Esler's book offers a New Testament paradigm for those interested in generating a theology attuned to the social and political realities affecting the twentieth-century Christian congregations.

Synopsis: Where did Paul find leaders for his new churches? How did he instruct and develop them? What processes took place to stabilize the churches and institute their new leadership? This book carves a fresh trail in leadership studies by looking at leadership development from a group-dynamic, social identity perspective. Paul engages the cultural leadership patterns of his key local leaders, publicly affirming, correcting, and improving those patterns to conform to a Christlike pattern of sacrificial service. Paul's own life and ministry offer a motivational and authoritative model for his followers, because he embodies the leadership style he teaches. As a practical theologian avant la lettre, Paul contextualizes key theological themes to strengthen community and leadership formation, and equips his church leaders as entrepreneurs of Christian identity. A careful comparison of the Corinthian and Ephesian churches demonstrates a similar overall pattern of development. This study engages Pauline scholarship on church office in depth and offers alternative readings of five Pauline epistles, generating new insights to enrich dogmatic and practical theological reflection. In a society where many churches reflect on their missional calling, such input from the NT for contemporary Christian leadership formation is direly needed. Endorsements: "In this highly readably text, Jack Barentsen rises to the challenging task of using the latest thinking on the psychology of leadership to provide a thoroughgoing, fresh, and highly convincing analysis of leadership in early Pauline communities. The result is not only an excellent theological monograph, but also a model of integrative scholarship that is much more than the sum of its theological and psychological parts. Indeed, as a forensic case study of leadership this is very hard to beat--and there is more to be learned from this volume than in the greater part of the vast managerial literature on this topic." --Alexander Haslam School of Psychology University of Exeter "This volume offers a thorough account of the history of Pauline scholarship of local church leadership, together with the most extensive and detailed investigation into the development of such leadership across two ancient cities associated with the Pauline mission: Corinth and Ephesus. It concludes by offering a consistent portrait of leadership development, together with some wide-ranging implications both for this very important historical field, but also for modern-day church leaders. This is a most welcome study." --Andrew Clarke Divinity and Religious Studies University of Aberdeen "Jack Barentsen's Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission fills a large gap in our current understanding of the organizational arrangements and leadership models utilized by the first followers of Jesus. This impressive monograph is well researched, erudite in formulation, and provocative in its conclusions. I believe that it will become a standard text for students of organizational leadership in the early Church." --Corne J. Bekker Professor of Biblical and Ecclesial Leadership Regent University Author Biography: Jack Barentsen, born and raised in the Netherlands, served as missionary church planter in his native country and now serves as Assistant Professor of Practical Theology and New Testament at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit at Leuven, Belgium (www.etf.edu). He also serves as Secretary of the Institute of Leadership and Ethics at ETF, speaking on leadership and offering consulting services to church leadership teams.

Synopsis: Why and how should we read Old Testament narrative? This book provides fresh answers to these questions. First, it models possible readers of the Bible--religious and nonreligious, professional and nonprofessional--and the reasons that might attract them to it. Second, with the aid of Mediterranean anthropology, it sets out an approach that helps us to interpret a selection of narratives with a cultural understanding close to that of an ancient Israelite. Powerful stories, such as those of Tamar and Judah in Genesis 38, Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-2, Saul and David in 1 Samuel, David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 10-12, and Judith, burst into new light when understood in closer relation to their original audience. Interpreted in this way, these narratives allow us to refresh the memory that links us with pivotal stories in Jewish and Christian identities, they disclose more ample possibilities for being human, they foster our capacity for intercultural understanding, and they provide aesthetic pleasure from their embodying plots of great imaginative power. Endorsements: "Esler shows us how to read afresh in the ancient narratives of the Old Testament. He shows us that these several plots of David and his traveling companions are saturated with old social habits and old cultural presuppositions that summon us to alertness and attentiveness. He offers us his deep learning of how stories work, how folk society functions, and how texts reveal and conceal. The outcome is a fresh invitation to textual materials that we thought we had long since mastered an exhausted. This is a welcome exercise in method that keeps its focus on plot and character in all their thickness." -Walter Brueggemann Columbia Theological Seminary author of A Pathway of Interpretation "Philip Esler has done much to make biblical scholars aware of social-scientific approaches. In this book he brings this perspective to a reading of Old Testament narrative texts, showing just how much social science can illuminate the Bible. The stories of wives, warriors, kings, and madmen are here read against the backdrop of the real society in which they were first told, and so become three-dimensional to the modern reader." -John Barton Oxford University author of Reading of the Old Testament Author Biography: Philip F. Esler is Principal and Professor of Biblical Interpretation at St Mary's University College, Twickenham, London. He is the author of Conflict and Identity in Romans (2003), and New Testament Theology (2005), and the editor of Ancient Israel (2006).

This volume brings together essays by an international group of biblical scholars on Old Testament topics, employing social-scientific methods: anthropology, macro-sociology, social psychology, and so forth.

Esler's innovative proposal features a cutting-edge combination of theology, exegesis, and social analysis. He argues for new thinking about New Testament theology in light of the early social history of Christian communities. His detailed analysis of Paul's letters to the Romans and 1 Corinthians validates his thesis and clarifies its significance for scholarship. Using both the tradition of "the communion of the saints" and social-scientific methods, Esler brings the discipline of New Testament theology back to its theological core. He argues that interpreters also need to take into account both the history of interpretation and the multitude of voices within the contemporary church.