This new approach to biblical theology addresses the unity of the canon from an interdisciplinary perspective. The canon's unity is discussed as constituted both by an interpreted subjective unity "in front of" the text and by the subject matter "behind" the text. The volume includes Jewish and Christian contributions by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, philosophy, and theology.

Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) has been described as "the greatest and at the same time the most controversial theologian in German Protestant theology since Schleiermacher." The controversy was epitomized by a nineteenth-century British critic who wrote that his theory "makes of Christianity a thing of purely natural origin, calls in question the authenticity of all but a few of the New Testament books, and makes the whole collection contain not a harmonious system of divine truth, but a confused mass of merely human and contradictory opinions as to the nature of the Christian...