This book is an original evaluation of Luke's reliability as the first historian of Christianity.

A study of the hymnic and liturgical material in the New Testament which describes Christ's nature and person.

In this detailed exegesis of Ephesians 5: 21-33 Dr Sampley not only elucidates the meaning of this difficult and historically important passage, but he also discusses and describes the background and sources of the Epistle. In particular he traces the history of the traditions incorporated in it and demonstrates convincingly that the writer of Ephesians drew heavily on certain passages in Genesis and Leviticus. Ephesians can be seen as a mosaic of traditions ingeniously arranged and employed to express the new message of the early church. This book should be of interest to all Old and New...

This is a study of a group of terms which have a central importance in the New Testament. It is well known that dikaiosune and its cognates have a wide range of related but separable meanings; their correct interpretation in particular contexts can significantly affect the understanding of Christian concepts of justification, forgiveness and moral regeneration. Dr Ziesler has examined in detail the use of these terms in the New Testament and has provided entensive comparative material from Qumran writings, rabbinical sources and hellenistic Greek. This study will be of interest to all New...

The idea of pre-existence has a long history in early Jewish and Biblical traditions. Professor Hamerton-Kelly studies the various forms the idea takes in these traditions as they emerge in the New Testament. He pays special attention to the themes of Wisdom and the Son of Man, with detailed references to the relevant texts and sources. His conclusions are that there are two basic types of the idea of pre-existence in the New Testament - which he calls ?protological? and ?eschatological? respectively - and two entities which were chiefly understood in terms of these types - namely, Christ and...

The author studies the Pauline corpus in order to trace the process of institutionalisation in the Pauline communities. She claims that development can be traced since we have not only letters from Paul himself, but also the Pastoral epistles from the beginning of the second century, as well as Ephesians and Colossians, writings which are characteristic of the ambiguous period following the disappearance of the earliest authorities. This is the first substantial examination of the Pauline corpus from this angle; it also incorporates effectively insights from the social sciences.

This study examines one significant theological theme in Luke-Acts, that of 'The plan of God'. It traces the way this theme is developed throughout Luke-Acts, both through direct statements by the writer and through various associated means such as divine appearances, signs and wonders, the fulfilment of prophecy, and indications of fate as of necessity. Dr Squires locates Luke's use of this theme in the context of the history-writing of the Hellenistic period, noting numerous passages in those works which illumine Luke's theological purposes. His book shows how the notion of the plan of God...

An intriguing new interpretation of the paradox at the heart of Paul's understanding of his ministry.

This study reconstructs the life of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor responsible for the execution of Jesus. The first section provides the historical and archaeological background. The following chapters look at six first-century authors: Philo, Josephus and the four gospel writers. Each chapter asks how Pilate is being used as a literary character in each work, why each author describes Pilate in a different way, and what this tells us about the relationship between each author and the Roman state.

This is the last of the late Vincent Taylor's many notable contributions to NT scholarship and in particular to the controversy about the sources of St Luke's gospel. Taylor defends and develops the arguments in favour of a non-Markan basis for Luke which he first presented in 1926 in Behind the Third Gospel. He answers critics of that book by a detailed study of the Passion Narrative and concludes that St Luke used, in this part of his gospel at least, a special source, an authority which was as old as Mark but independent of it and which preserved accounts of the death and resurrection of...