This book is about the ""beginnings"" or prologues to the four canonical Gospels, which refer to topics to be dealt with in what follows and offer guidance as to the particular way in which the author feels the rest of the book should be read. The beginnings also contain significant hints as to what the end of the story will be. Beginnings qualifies as a basic introduction to the contents of the Gospels and a helpful starting point for reading this literature. Using the metaphor a key that opens the door, Morna Hooker moves sequentially through Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as, respectively,...

Morna D. Hooker is Professor Emerita of Divinity at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, England. She is coeditor of the Journal of Theological Studies and the author of nine books, including Pauline Pieces and From Adam to Christ.

Here is a fascinating study that contributes much to our understanding of the Gospel tradition and, in addition, provides evidence that biblical theology is still alive and flourishing. Morna Hooker reviews the prophetic actions in the Old Testament and compares these with the way in which prophetic figures behaved in Jesus's day, in particular John the Baptist and the so-called sign prophets. She then turns to Jesus and considers those actions that can be described as prophetic signs or dramas. Hooker discusses the sign of Jonah, Jesus's refusal to perform signs, the miracles and other...

Mission is one of the key subjects for the church today. What does it mean to live the Christian faith in a world of many faiths and none? In this book, two leading scholars explore what mission and discipleship meant for some of the earliest Christian communities. Morna Hooker and Frances Young outline the nature of mission for the earliest Christian communities (in the New Testament and beyond) and relate this to the context of the mission and discipleship today, thereby engaging with and challenging some common assumptions made about mission today. Originally presented as the Hugh Price...

This book, dedicated to the memory of David Stacey, Morna Hooker's late husband, is an expanded version of the Shaffer Lectures delivered atYale Divinity School in February 1995. It is more than just a commemoration, however, since it also carries on David Stacey's work on Prophetic Drama in the Old Testament, published by Epworth Press in 1990, and contains as an appendix his ideas for a second volume, outlined in a lecture on 'The Last Supper as Prophetic Drama'. Professor Hooker begins by reviewing the prophetic actions in the OId Testament and compares them with the way in which prophetic...