Product Description: The world seems more fractured each day. People are asking, "Is this the End?" Never have the headlines been this jarring, the cultural changes this rapid, or the moral decay this pronounced. What on earth is happening? After each new occurrence, the most oft-heard questions are, “Will the world ever be the same again?” and “Where is God in all of this?” Over the last few decades, Dr...read more

This landmark handbook, written by distinguished Pauline scholars, and first published in 2003, remains the first and only work to offer lucid and insightful examinations of Paul and his world in such depth. Together the two volumes that constitute the handbook in its much revised form provide a comprehensive reference resource for new testament scholars looking to understand the classical world in which Paul lived and work. Each chapter provides an overview of a particular social convention, literary of rhetorical topos, social practice, or cultural mores of the world in which Paul and his audiences were at home. In addition, the sections use carefully chosen examples to demonstrate how particularly features of Greco-Roman culture shed light on Paul's letters and on his readers' possible perception of them.For the new edition all the contributions have been fully revised to take into account the last ten years of methodological change and the helpful chapter bibliographies fully updated. Wholly new chapters cover such issues as Paul and Memory, Paul's Economics, honor and shame in Paul's writings and the Greek novel.

The 'assemblies' founded by Paul in the cities of the Mediterranean world were in many respects comparable to the synagogues of Diaspora Jews which flourished in the same locations. The comparison illuminates many features in the social formation of the first Christians, a complex and variegated process that continued through many generations of early Christianity. In these seminal essays - some previously published, some newly written - John M.G. Barclay examines aspects of the construction of early Christian identity, especially within the Pauline tradition (during and after Paul's lifetime). Treating topics as diverse as food, family, money, circumcision, constitutional theory, and ethnic stereotypes, these essays place Christian communities in close comparison with Diaspora Judaism. Adopting a broader lens, placing both Jews and Christians in the larger context of the Roman world, there are ground-breaking studies of the social boundaries between Christians and outsiders, the formation of a Christian social dialect, and early Christian attitudes to old and young, to slavery, marriage, and death, to Roman religion and the Roman Empire. Early Christian identity is shown to have been fragile, contentious, often under-defined, socially creative, and multiple in expression: in their practices, their conventions, their social attitudes and their language, the Pauline churches emerge as sometimes conformist and sometimes radically innovative. These essays both model and stimulate a programme of socio-historical research that has much fresh light to shed on the formation of early Christianity. Wissenchaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament No. 275

Product Description: Advocates of the established hypotheses on the origins of the Synoptic gospels and their interrelationships (the Synoptic Problem), and especially those defending or contesting the existence of the "source" (Q), are increasingly being called upon to justify their position with reference to ancient media practices...read more

Essential classroom resource for New Testament courses In this book, a group of international scholars go in detail to explain how the author of the Gospel of John uses a variety of narrative strategies to best tell his story. More than a commentary, this book offers a glimpse at the way an ancient author created and used narrative features such as genre, character, style, persuasion, and even time and space to shape a dramatic story of the life of Jesus. Features: An introduction to the Fourth Gospel through its narrative features and dynamics Fifteen features of story design that comprise the Gospel of John Short, targeted essays about how John works that can be used as starting points for the study of other Gospels/texts

Product Description: Little attention is usually given to the space or place of the kingdom. Yet Matthew employs the distinctive phrase “kingdom of heaven” and also portrays Jesus as Immanuel (God with us). In this volume Patrick Schreiner argues that by expanding one's view of space one can see that Jesus' purpose is to reorder the space of the earth in Matthew as the heavenly king...read more

Product Description: Engaging resources for understanding the importance of bodies and spaces in producing and interpreting persuasive language This volume collects essays that represent intellectual milestones that are informing sociorhetorical interpretation during the twenty-first century...read more

Product Description: This study analyzes Matthew`s economic language against the backdrop of other early Jewish and Christian literature and examines its import for the narrative as a whole. Careful attention to this neglected aspect of Matthew`s theology demonstrates that some of the Gospel`s central claims about atonement, Jesus` death and resurrection, and divine recompense emerge from this conceptual matrix...read more