The concept of perfection is central to the Epistle to the Hebrews but what is the precise meaning to be attached to the perfecting of Christ and the perfecting of Christians? Is teleioun to be understood in a cultic or ethical sense, or with reference to glorification; or is it employed in a formal sense so that the meaning has to be determined solely from the context? A thorough survey of the background literature suggests to Dr Peterson that it is only the context and, in particular, the object of the verb which can decide its sense on any specific occasion, and it is this method he...

This book offers a consistent explanation of the peculiarity of the language of the Apocalypse (or Book of Revelation), namely that the rules of Greek grammar are broken because of the influence of Hebrew and Aramaic. It advances previous similar hypotheses in three ways. First, it focuses chiefly on the verbal system. Secondly, by methodically citing the ancient Greek translations of the Old Testament to demonstrate Hebrew/Aramaic influence, it serves as a limited survey of the syntax of the Septuagint. Thirdly, it argues that the Apocalypse's grammar was influenced not by later...

The aim of this study is to show that the Evangelists, to an extent hitherto unrecognised, wrote narratives which set out to distinguish Jesus's time from their own.

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...

Completely re-evaluates the backgound to and provenance of the preface to Luke's Gospel.

During the first two centuries CE there was a common awareness that familial tensions were generated by conversion to the Christian faith. Yet studies of Christian origins have so far paid comparatively little attention to the impact of the Christian movement upon attitudes to family ties and natural kinship. Dr Barton aims to remedy this deficiency by means of a detailed study of the relevant passages in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, where the sections relating to family concerns are studied from four different angles: form-critical, redaction-critical, literary-critical and sociological....

A discussion combining classical logic and literary theory to put a new perspective on Paul's rationality.

Evaluates the evidence for the early church's interest in Jesus as a believer in God.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke is a Hellenistic writer who uses conventional modes of narration, characterization and argumentation to present Jesus in the manner of the familiar figure of the dinner sage. In this original and thought-provoking study, Willi Braun draws both on social and literary evidence regarding the Greco-Roman elite banquet scene and on ancient prescribed methods of rhetorical composition to argue that the Pharisaic dinner episode in Luke 14 is a skillfully crafted rhetorical unit in which Jesus presents an argument for Luke's vision of a Christian society. His...

Shows the unique aspects of Luke's account of Jesus's death coming from Wisdom patterns and words.