In the Gospel of Luke, the aged Simeon foresees the future opposition which Jesus will face (2.34-35) and concludes his ominous oracle with a vivid description of the final outcome of Jesus' ministry: '...so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed' (2.35). Bullard presents an investigation of the narrative and Christological significance of this 'revelation of thoughts' in the ministry of Jesus, especially as this revelation is demonstrated and fulfilled in Jesus' ability to know the thoughts in the hearts of those whom he encounters throughout the Gospel.

Bullard first...

This book discusses the composition of the synoptic gospels from the perspective of the Farrer hypothesis, a view that posits that Mark was written first, that Matthew used Mark as a source, and that Luke used both Mark and Matthew. All of the articles in the volume are written in support of the Farrer hypothesis, with the exception of the final chapter, which criticizes these articles from the perspective of the reigning Two-Source theory. The contributors engage the synoptic problem with a more refined understanding of the options set before each of the evangelists pointing towards a...

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...

Sharon Betsworth examines the narratives, parables, and teachings of and about children in the gospels and the literature of Early Christianity.

Betsworth begins with a discussion of the social-historical context of children and childhood in the first century before discussing the role of children in all four gospels. She shows that for Mark and Matthew, children are integral to understanding each evangelist's perspective on the reign of God and on Jesus' identity in each Gospel. In the Gospel of Luke the childhood of Jesus is shown to be crucial to the broader themes of the Gospel....

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...

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....

Paul and the Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition provides a fresh examination of the relationship of Greco-Roman philosophy to Pauline Christianity and an in-depth look at different approaches currently employed by scholars who draw upon philosophical settings in the ancient world to inform their understanding of Paul. The book is divided into two sections, one consisting of essays that situate Greco-Roman philosophy as a social setting for Pauline Christianity, and one consisting of exegetical studies dealing with various passages where motifs emerging from ancient philosophical...

At the end of several of his letters the apostle Paul claims to be penning a summary and farewell greeting in his own hand: 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, cf. Colossians, 2 Thessalonians. Paul's claims raise some interesting questions about his letter-writing practices. Did he write any complete letters himself, or did he always dictate to a scribe? How much did his scribes contribute to the composition of his letters? Did Paul make the effort to proofread and correct what he had dictated? What was the purpose of Paul's autographic subscriptions? What was Paul's purpose in calling...

For two centuries scholars have sought to discover the historical Jesus. Presently such scholarship is dominated not by the question 'Who was Jesus?' but rather 'How do we even go about answering the question, "Who was Jesus?"?'

With this current situation in mind, Jonathan Bernier undertakes a two-fold task: one, to engage on the level of the philosophy of history with existing approaches to the study of the historical Jesus, most notably the criteria approach and the social memory approach; two, to work with the critical realism developed by Bernard Lonergan, introduced into New...

A number of New Testament passages depict the Holy Spirit acting in conjunction with gospel preaching or other forms of humanly given communication about Jesus, yet there is considerable disagreement about how these passages should be interpreted. Unresolved exegetical debates about the correlative action (the "dual testimony") of the Spirit and the humanly conveyed word plague the interpretation of whole writings, extended sections of individual works, and important themes.

This book examines this contested motif in a focused and comprehensive way. It begins by taking the Pauline,...