The interpretation of 1 Cor 8-10 as a coherent argument is complicated by several factors, most significantly the apparent contradictions in the text (primarily an issue within chapter 8) and the remarkable changes in Paul's tone (primarily an issue with how 10:1-22 relates to 8:1-13 and 10:23-11:1). Trent A. Rogers argues that Paul consistently prohibits believers from eating y appealing first to their obligation to love other believers and then to their obligation of exclusive faithfulness to Christ. The approach of his analysis is to examine how the representation of God functions in...

Paul's primary scriptural source in Romans 1-4 (and the epistle as a whole) is the prophecy of Isaiah and its redemptive narrative centering in the -proclamation of good news-. Paul understands the content of this good news to be the revelation of God's righteousness in the sacrificial death of the messiah. It is the source of redemption from the power of sin and death and the basis of the everlasting (new) covenant, and hence that which effects redemptive recreation. Robert C. Olson explains how the expansive sweep of this redemptive narrative in Isaiah stretches from its allusions to the...

A scholarly consensus holds that Luke is ambivalent toward the Pharisees, or at least that he has left readers with an ambiguous depiction of them. What previous evaluations of the Lukan Pharisees have left unanswered, however, is why Luke would give such an impression of these characters and then what might lie behind the rhetorical effects of ambiguity. Justin R. Howell reevaluates the long-standing debate about the Pharisees in Luke-Acts, arguing the thesis that there is ambiguity in the Lukan Pharisees because, in his portrayals of them, the author has applied what ancient Greco-Roman...

In staging his story of Jesus, Luke dedicates considerable space to the characters known as sinners. Scholars have noted this peculiarly Lukan emphasis. Still, scholarly attention has tended to limit itself to the so-called sinner texts, that is, the pericopae containing the word -sinner- or its cognates. The multiple indirect references to sin and sinners have been overlooked. Responding to this lacuna, Slawomir Szkredka examines the role of both direct and indirect references to sinfulness in the initial episodes of Jesus' activity. His study reveals that the sinners are not an easily...