Sharon Betsworth examines the narratives, parables, and teachings of and about children in the gospels and the literature of Early Christianity.

Betsworth begins with a discussion of the social-historical context of children and childhood in the first century before discussing the role of children in all four gospels. She shows that for Mark and Matthew, children are integral to understanding each evangelist's perspective on the reign of God and on Jesus' identity in each Gospel. In the Gospel of Luke the childhood of Jesus is shown to be crucial to the broader themes of the Gospel....

This study offers a new interpretation of 1 Corinthians 5-11:1. Taking a social identity approach, Ho investigates the inner logic of Paul from the ears of the Corinthian correspondence.

Ho argues that Paul consistently indoctrinates new values for the audience to uphold which are against the mainstream of social values in the surrounding society. It is shown that Paul does not engage in issues of internal schism per se, but rather in the question of the distinctive values insiders should uphold so as to be recognisable to outsiders. While church is neither a sectarian nor an...

In this book von Wahlde provides an exploration of three distinct cultural and religious backgrounds against which scholars have frequently proposed that the Gospel and Letters of John are to be read and understood.

von Wahlde examines each of these three possibilities in turn, and shows how they may be regarded as plausible or implausible depending upon the evidence available. von Wahlde shows that there are features within the Gospel and/or Letters of John that do in fact suggest that they were influenced either by Gnosticism, Docetism or one of the variant forms of Judaism....

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media (DBAM) is a convenient and authoritative reference tool which relates specific terms and concepts to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Particularly since the early 1980s, scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture, and ritual for considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel,...

At the end of several of his letters the apostle Paul claims to be penning a summary and farewell greeting in his own hand: 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, cf. Colossians, 2 Thessalonians. Paul's claims raise some interesting questions about his letter-writing practices. Did he write any complete letters himself, or did he always dictate to a scribe? How much did his scribes contribute to the composition of his letters? Did Paul make the effort to proofread and correct what he had dictated? What was the purpose of Paul's autographic subscriptions? What was Paul's purpose in calling...

For two centuries scholars have sought to discover the historical Jesus. Presently such scholarship is dominated not by the question 'Who was Jesus?' but rather 'How do we even go about answering the question, "Who was Jesus?"?'

With this current situation in mind, Jonathan Bernier undertakes a two-fold task: one, to engage on the level of the philosophy of history with existing approaches to the study of the historical Jesus, most notably the criteria approach and the social memory approach; two, to work with the critical realism developed by Bernard Lonergan, introduced into New...

A number of New Testament passages depict the Holy Spirit acting in conjunction with gospel preaching or other forms of humanly given communication about Jesus, yet there is considerable disagreement about how these passages should be interpreted. Unresolved exegetical debates about the correlative action (the "dual testimony") of the Spirit and the humanly conveyed word plague the interpretation of whole writings, extended sections of individual works, and important themes.

This book examines this contested motif in a focused and comprehensive way. It begins by taking the Pauline,...

Questions regarding the afterlife are many, and the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts pay a great deal of attention to them: why does Luke speak about several different forms of the afterlife? Why is resurrection described as a person's transformation into an angelic being? How many abodes are appointed for the righteous and the wicked after death? Alexey Somov addresses these queries in relation to the apparent confusion and variety found in the text, and in respect of the interrelatedness of these issues, and their connection with other eschatological issues in Luke-Acts, and in...

Allen Hilton examines how pagan critics ridiculed the early Christians for being uneducated and how a few literate Christians took up pen to defend the uneducated members of their churches. Hilton sheds light on the peculiarity of this "defense" in which the authors openly admit that the critics have the facts on their side, noting that the Book of Acts even calls two of its heroes, Peter and John, illiterates. Why did these authors, intent on presenting Christianity in a positive light, volunteer such a negative detail? The answer to this question reveals a fascinating social exchange...