By employing analyses of the literary structure of ancient pseudepigraphical letters and of the logical structure of ethical argument, Lewis R. Donelson discovers in the Pastoral Epistles a consistent theological ethic which has cosmological and cultic grounding. First, an investigation of Greco-Roman religious pseudepigraphical letters identifies those literary patterns which determine the form of argumentation in the Pastoral Epistles. Second, an investigation of the structure of ethical argument produces categories for organizing and analyzing the apparently disorganized arguments in these...

In narratives of tragic drama's history the Judeo-Christian tradition is commonly portrayed as hostile to tragic drama both as an art form and sensibility or vision of life. With an emphasis on divine grace and justice, theorists argue, Jewish and Christian writers completely eschew anything approaching genuine tragedy. However, Jeff Jay demonstrates that in the earliest years of Christian literary activity Mark produced a narrative that is "tragic," for it strongly elicits several of tragedy's recurring motifs and moods, as well as a highly theatrical atmosphere and a poignant sense of...

Philippe Eberhard proposes a medial interpretation of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and draws theological implications concerning faith and our human condition from a Christian humanist standpoint. He brings into focus the middle voice as a way to articulate what it means to listen to language and the Word.His thesis is twofold. First, the hermeneutic event is medial throughout. The core of the mediality of hermeneutics is the subtle balance between the event of understanding, which happens to the subject, and the subject who understands within it. Second, the mediality of...