Hierapolis in the Heavens is a project which brings together several articles and essays Kreitzer has written on the letter to the Ephesians and follows up a new suggestion he first put forward in 1997 as to the setting and provenance of the epistle. Nothing quite like this has yet been published on Ephesians, particularly as it does offer some important new archaeological, textual and numismatic evidence for scholarly consideration. The book should also be of interest to social-historians of the first-century world as it argues that the letter we know as Ephesians was written to what was,...

Here, gathered for the first time, is a collection of Loveday Alexander's critically acclaimed essays on the Acts of the Apostles. In this collection of essays, Alexander addresses the central question 'What kind of book is Acts?' She approaches the text of Acts with a finely-tuned sense of the complexities of the conventional codes that governed reading and writing in the classical world, and argues that the differences between New Testament texts and contemporary writings in the Graeco-Roman world can be as revealing as the similarities. The collection begins with Alexander's classic...

Horton brings together the latest research on the origins of the gospels and their transmission, and provides the only guide to the Chester Beatty Codex P45. Provides an introduction to the gospel genre and examining literacy among early Christians and all that is known about the origins and transmission of the gospels. Also focuses on the significance of P45, its place as the earliest Christian gospel-book, its unique readings, the earliest extant version of the gospel of Mark, and how the manuscript was found piece by piece by an American collector.

Since the work of E.P. Sanders, most modern approaches to this topic have been focused on social or sociological aspects of the issue (particularly in relation to Paul's mission to the Gentiles), but the last few years have seen an increasing willingness to open up questions seemingly 'settled' in the New Perspective, and a renewed desire to examine the structures of theology concerning grace and human action both in Paul and in his contemporary Judaism. It seems now worthwhile to examine to what extent there was an internal debate within Judaism about divine grace and its relation to...

The aim of this book is to establish and explore New Testament belief in the end of the world through an investigation of texts which - on the face of it - contain 'end of the world' language. It engages with recent discussion on how Jewish and early Christian 'end of the world' was meant to be understood, and interacts especially with N.T. Wright's proposals. The first part of the book is given over to background and focuses on the Old Testament, Jewish apocalyptic and related literature and Graeco-Roman sources. The latter have seldom been brought into play in previous discussion. The...

An application of current linguistic research on discourse markers to sentence conjunctions in Matthew's Gospel. This treatment combines linguistic insights with a detailed examination of Matthew's use of kai, de and similar conjunctions in narrative passages, culminating in a verse by verse commentary on the structure of Matthew's;miracle chapters', Matthew 8-9. Black breaks new ground in linguistic theory by modelling the interplay between features such as sentence conjunction, word order, and verb tense in the portrayal of continuity and discontinuity in Greek narrative. A volume of...

For first-century people, cosmology was a fundamental part of their worldview. Whether it was the philosopher contemplating the perfection of the heavenly orbits, the farmer searching the sky for signs of when to plant his crops, or the desert-dwelling sectarian looking for the end of the world, the cosmos held an endless fascination and occupied a prominent place in their understanding of life.

For most ancient peoples, cosmology and theology were inseparable. Thus, when the Jewish and Christian Scriptural traditions begin with the bold claim, "In the beginning God created the...

This book contains essays on the letters and theology of the Apostle Paul from leading Pauline scholars. The majority of the essays are based on papers given in the first Finnish national seminar on Paul held in the University of Helsinki in January 2007.
Finnish contributions to scholarly discussion on Pauline theology have been widely recognized as challenging and thought-provoking, particularly in regards to Paul's view on the Mosaic Law and soteriology. Heikki Raisanen's view on Paul's inconsistent thinking about Law and other topics has served to polarize discussion among...

Arguing against restricting the meaning of purity language to the individual moral sphere (as many commentaries do), the central argument of Purity and Worldview in the Epistle of James is that purity language both articulates and constructs the worldview in James's epistle. Lockett offers a taxonomy of purity language, applied as a heuristic guide to understand the function of purity and pollution in the epistle. Through this analysis the study concludes that James is not calling for sectarian separation, but rather demonstrates a degree of cultural accommodation while calling forth...

This book engages critically one of the most pervasive sets of assumptions within modern biblical studies: namely, that because John is theological and different from the Synoptics, it cannot be historical - nor does it contribute anything of substance to the quest for the historical Jesus. Part I develops a brief history of the debate. Part II assesses critically the strengths and weaknesses of six planks comprising the foundation for two major platforms. The first involves 'the de-historicization of John', the second 'the de-Johannification of Jesus'. Part III takes on centrally the...