Always observing the established techniques of New Testament analysis, especially redaction criticism, Professor Esler makes extensive use of sociology and anthropology to examine the author of Luke-Acts' theology as a response to social and political pressures on the Christian community for whom he was writing. Various themes such as table-fellowship, the law, the temple, poverty and riches, and politics are examined to determine how they have been influenced by the social and political background of Luke's audience. This book offers a New Testament paradigm and warrant for those interested...

Scholarly assessment of Jewish communities in the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman Diaspora has, in the past, been dominated by our knowledge of the large and influential communities in Rome and Alexandria. This book brings together the evidence for significant Jewish communities in another part of the Diaspora, namely Asia Minor. By collating archaeological, epigraphic, classical, New Testament and patristic sources, the book provides an invaluable and coherent description of the life of Jewish communities in Asia Minor, and so gives a more complete picture than was previously available of...

This book examines the roles and functions that women assumed in the early Christian communities from AD 33 to the Council of Nicaea. It surveys, too, the views about women held by various New Testament authors including Paul and the Evangelists.

Some manuscripts of the book of Acts have a slightly longer version of the book that is familiar to us, a version called the Western Text, which is made up of small amounts of additional material scattered throughout the work. Various theories have been proposed to account for the existence of the Western Text, although no real consensus has emerged. In recent years this material, long thought to be inauthentic, has been reexamined by a number of scholars who have come to the conclusion that it may derive from Luke, the author of Acts. This study puts forward the ingenious thesis that Luke...

This study shows how classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophical and ethical traditions inform Paul's Letter to the Romans. It concentrates especially on Protreptic, a kind of literature deriving its name from the title of a lost writing of Aristotle that has been largely reconstructed by scholars in our time. The Protreptic writers seek to awaken their readers to a realization of human frailty and then to commit themselves to a new way of life. Guerra shows also how the political conditions of Nero's Rome are reflected herein.

This study combines an analysis of the argumentative complexities of Romans 1-8 with the presentation of modern theories of how meaning arises and functions. These theories (especially as represented by Umberto Eco) shed important light on two central questions raised by Paul's method: why does he reason so persistently about matters that depend ultimately on supernatural enlightenment, and why, where he does, are his arguments often so unclear and so hard to reduce to logical consistency? This book seeks to answer both questions.

We are used to the idea of people believing in Christ, but did the early church consider that Jesus also had faith in God? This book examines the meaning of faith in Judaism and Graeco-Roman literature, identifies two main trajectories of interest in the question of Jesus' faith, and traces the progress of these trajectories through the literature of the first four Christian centuries, up to the point where the interpretation of Jesus as a man of faith eventually proved incompatible with the orthodoxy of Nicene Christianity.

This work makes sense of the apostle Paul's paradoxical description of his ministry in 2 Corinthians: "When I am weak, then I am strong " In an extensive inquiry into the thought-world of Roman Corinth, Savage demonstrates that the Corinthians are evaluating Paul according to the social standards of their day. Since this is the exact antithesis of his own perspective, Paul can only resort to paradox by way of defense.

This study refutes the allegation that the author of Luke and Acts showed no systematic thought about the significance of Jesus' death, that is, he has no theologia crucis. Peter Doble focuses sharply on the Gospel's death scene and explores those features which appear in Luke alone, then extends the results into the longer account of Jesus' final days in Jerusalem. In the final section, Doble demonstrates how specific words and patterns from Wisdom shape and fill Luke's retelling of the story of Jesus' entrapment, trials and death. Luke wanted his readers to understand that what had happened...

This study reconstructs the apocalyptic eschatology in Matthew's Gospel so that we may understand his time and concerns. Sociological analysis of apocalypticism in Judaism and early Christianity shows that such a comprehensive world view, which emphasized the final judgement and its aftermath within a dualistic and deterministic framework, was adopted by minority or sectarian groups undergoing a situation of great crisis. The Matthean community, after the first Jewish war against Rome, came into conflict with Judaism, gentiles and the larger Christian movement. Matthew's distinctive vision...