Essential to an understanding of the New Testament is a comprehension of the individuals, events, and social movements that shaped the setting from which Jesus and his followers emerged. Unfortunately, many accounts by historians can leave readers feeling overwhelmed and confused. New Testament History provides a worthy solution to this problem. A well-known expert on the social situation of the New Testament, Ben Witherington offers an engaging look into the world that gave birth to the Christian faith.

This commentary applies an exegetical method informed by both sociological insight and rhetorical analysis to the study of I and 2 Corinthians. The study also analyzes the two letters of Paul in terms of Greco-Roman rhetoric and ancient social conditions and customs to shed fresh light on the context and content of the message.

This informative, clearly written book introduces the New Testament in two main ways: (1) it explains where the New Testament came from, and (2) it examines the New Testament writings themselves.

Ben Witherington first tells how and why the New Testament documents were written and collected and how they came to be known as the New Testament that we have today. He then discusses the main stories and major figures in the New Testament. Witherington looks particularly at the Gospels, examining how and why their stories differ and pointing out what these ancient biographies actually say about...

Paul's two letters to the Thessalonians stand as some of the very earliest Christian documents, yet they appear well into Paul's missionary career, giving them a unique context well worth exploring. In this first full-scale socio-rhetorical commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Ben Witherington gleans fresh insight from reading Paul's text in the light of rhetorical concerns and patterns, early Jewish theology, and the first-century historical situation in Macedonia.
Witherington's distinctive socio-rhetorical approach helps unearth insights that would otherwise remain hidden using only...

"The Shadow of the Almighty introduces readers to the nature of God by exploring the biblical references to God as "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit." This fruitful approach offers fresh insight into the meaning of the biblical language used for God, giving readers the background necessary for properly understanding the trinitarian perspective of the New Testament and of the Christian faith." "Divided into four chapters, the book looks at "Father" language in early Judaism, at "Father" language in early Christianity, at "Son" language, and at language designating the Spirit. This thorough...

Grace in Galatia is an innovative socio-rhetorical study of Paul's most polemical letter. Ben Witherington breaks new ground by analyzing the whole of Galatians as a deliberative discourse meant to forestall the Galatians from submitting to circumcision and the Jewish law. The commentary features the latest discussion of major problems in Pauline studies, including Paul's view of the law and the relationship between the historical data in Galatians and in Acts. Yet the narrative character of Witherington's work allows it to remain exceedingly accessible. The volume also includes sections...

This book offers the first sustained attempt to read the Gospel of Mark both as an ancient biography and as a form of ancient rhetoric. Ben Witherington applies to Mark the socio-rhetorical approach for which he is well known, opening a fresh new perspective on the earliest Gospel.

Written when the fledging Christian faith was experiencing a major crisis during the Jewish war, Mark provides us with the first window on how the life and teachings of Jesus were presented to a largely non-Jewish audience.

According to Witherington, the structure of Mark demonstrates that...

While Paul's letter to the Romans is the most studied and commented-on document from the biblical period, the major exegetical books on Romans from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been overwhelmingly shaped by the Reformed tradition. Through a careful survey of work on Romans by both ancient Church Fathers and modern exegetical scholars, Ben Witherington III here argues that the interpretation of Romans since the Reformation has been far too indebted to -- and at key points led astray by -- Augustinian readings of the text as filtered through Luther, Calvin, and others.
In...

In recent years Jesus' time, place and social setting have received renewed scholarly attention. New research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish and Hellenistic texts has resulted in a surge of new images of Jesus and new ideas about his ministry. Dubbed the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, this recent effort is a transformation of the first quest, memorialized and chronicled by Albert Schweitzer, and the second quest, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s in the wake of extreme Bultmannian skepticism. The controversial works of John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and Burton Mack, and...

• Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene?
• Did he father a child with her?
• Did Constantine suppress the earliest Gospels and invent the doctrine of Christ's divinity?
• Do the Gnostic Gospels represent the true Christian faith which the early church sought to supplant?

The Da Vinci Code, in blurring the lines between fact and fiction, popularizes the speculations and contentions of numerous more serious books that are also attracting wide attention. How should we respond to claims that we now have documents that reveal secrets about Jesus,...