This study seeks to make a contribution to current debates about the nature of Wirkungsgeschichte or reception history and its place in contemporary Biblical Studies. The author addresses three crucial questions: the relationship between reception history and historical-critical exegesis; the form of reception history itself, with a focus on the issue of which acts of reception are selected and valorized; and the role of tradition, pre-judgements and theology in relation to reception history. Disagreements about these matters contribute to what many characterise as the fragmentation...

In examining the appropriation of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 4-13, Han argues that the apostle is not only aware of the original contexts of the passages he refers to, but also goes beyond the immediate contexts and brings in the larger context of the Old Testament.

In the course of adapting the Scripture, necessary changes of referent occur and Paul appears to use the method of identification in reading the Old Testament. Whether it is Paul himself, the Corinthians or the opponents, various kinds of identification take place with the scriptural writers and the characters mentioned...

Harnessing Chaos is an explanation of changes in dominant politicized assumptions about what the Bible 'really means' in English culture since the 1960s. James G. Crossley looks at how the social upheavals of the 1960s, and the economic shift from the post-war dominance of Keynesianism to the post-1970s dominance of neoliberalism, brought about certain emphases and nuances in the ways in which the Bible is popularly understood, particularly in relation to dominant political ideas. This book examines the decline of politically radical biblical interpretation in parliamentary politics and...

The theme of divine speech appears at the opening of the Hebrews (1.1-2) and recurs throughout the book, often in contexts suggesting connections to other areas of scholarly interest (christology, soteriology, cosmology, and the writer's understanding of the nature of his discourse). Griffiths begins with a consideration of the genre and structure of Hebrews (offering a new structural outline), concluding that Hebrews constitutes the earliest extant complete Christian sermon and consists of a series of Scriptural expositions. Griffiths then turns to consider Hebrews' theology of divine...

This study offers a new interpretation of 1 Corinthians 5-11:1. Taking a social identity approach, Ho investigates the inner logic of Paul from the ears of the Corinthian correspondence.

Ho argues that Paul consistently indoctrinates new values for the audience to uphold which are against the mainstream of social values in the surrounding society. It is shown that Paul does not engage in issues of internal schism per se, but rather in the question of the distinctive values insiders should uphold so as to be recognisable to outsiders. While church is neither a sectarian nor an...

Focusing specifically on the issue of genre methodology in Acts, Bale presents work which will have clear ramifications for the study of biblical texts in general. The first part of the work surveys the state of genre theory in Acts scholarship and demonstrates its inadequacy for both classifying and interpreting Acts. Bale constructs a new genre model rooted in contemporary genre theory, tackling the problematic issue in Biblical scholarship of the relationship between history and fiction in literature. From this theoretical analysis Bale presents a new, pragmatic model for genre which is...

Lament does not seem to be a pervasive feature of the New Testament, particularly when viewed in relation to the Old Testament. A careful investigation of the New Testament, however, reveals that it thoroughly incorporates the pattern of Old Testament lament into its proclamation of the gospel, especially in the person of Jesus Christ as he both prays and embodies lament.

As an act that fundamentally calls upon God to be faithful to God's promises to Israel and to the church, lament in the New Testament becomes a prayer of longing for God's kingdom, which has been inaugurated in the...

In this book von Wahlde provides an exploration of three distinct cultural and religious backgrounds against which scholars have frequently proposed that the Gospel and Letters of John are to be read and understood.

von Wahlde examines each of these three possibilities in turn, and shows how they may be regarded as plausible or implausible depending upon the evidence available. von Wahlde shows that there are features within the Gospel and/or Letters of John that do in fact suggest that they were influenced either by Gnosticism, Docetism or one of the variant forms of Judaism....

Thomas appears only four times in John's Gospel, yet despite this he is crucially important in understanding the function of the Johannine message. Dennis Sylva provides the first major study which examines the paradox that Thomas is both opposed to a dominant theme in the Fourth Gospel - the eternal life that is a gift to Jesus' followers - and yet is in support of Jesus himself.

Thomas appears to have a foot on both sides of the Johannine dualistic divide. He seems to be existentially at home on one side and yet ideologically at home on the other. No other character in John's...

Paul L. Danove builds on his previous work in the field of biblical linguistics to provide a refinement of the Case Frame Analysis method as applied to the Greek of the New Testament. He shows how the method can be used in clarifying elements of Greek grammar, interpretation, and translation.

In particular Danove distinguishes the semantic implications of active, middle, and passive usages of verbs. He establishes a rigorous basis for distinguishing semantic synonyms and near-synonyms and for clarifying their implications for interpretation and translation. A heuristic feature model...