This book investigates Colossians as a "captivity" letter from the primary implied author, the imprisoned Paul, to an implied audience of mainly Gentile converts currently in danger of influence by local Jews or Jewish Christians. Utilizing a text-centered, literary-rhetorical, and audience-oriented method, it demonstrates new chiastic structures for the entire letter that progressively encourage the audience to resist deceit and conduct themselves according to all the wisdom at their disposal as holy ones in Christ.

This book focuses on worship in the letters of Paul in an effort to shed some light upon this key theme and bring the various dimensions of its significance into the foreground of Pauline studies. Each of the thirteen New Testament letters attributed to Paul are treated exclusively from the aspect of worship, as understood in its most comprehensive sense in the biblical tradition, with the liturgical and the ethical facets of worship held in dynamic interrelationship. The result is a fresh way of reading and listening to the letters of Paul for a deeper appreciation of their original purpose...

Saint Paul is rightly considered a great missionary, evangelist, teacher, preacher, and pastor; but people often forget his role as a pre-eminent and paradigmatic liturgist. Similarly, our most direct access to Paul is through his letters; but we often forget their original function: rituals to be performed publicly in a liturgical assembly. The author corrects this deficiency by focussing on worship in the letters of Paul the Apostle, analysing each of the thirteen letters attributed to him. The result is an innovative new approach that gives the reader a greater understanding of the...

In today's "flatter" world, the most serious criminal activity affecting the United States is increasingly transnational, thereby requiring the active assistance of other countries to combat it. The United States only relatively recently has dealt with this problem by entering into a growing number of bilateral and multilateral treaties, agreements, and formal and informal law enforcement arrangements. This treatise, designed for prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and academics, is written by the former Department of Justice official responsible for supervising the implementation and...

Synopsis: This book proposes a new and comprehensive chiastic structure as well as a new unifying theme for the Letter of James. In accord with this structure that organizes its oral performance, the words "worship to live by" express what the letter as a whole is exhorting its audience to adopt. "Worship" includes not only liturgical worship but also the ethical behavior that complements it, so that the result is a holistic way of worshiping God. And the words "to live by" embrace the worshipful conduct by which to live out presently one's birth to a new life as a believer before the final...

About the Contributor(s):
John Paul Heil is Professor of New Testament at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Letter of James: Worship To Live By (2012).