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This volume investigates the early, second-century reception of the Fourth Gospel. This is an era when its fortunes are surrounded by silence and mystery. It was assumed, until quite recently, that Gnostic and other so-called heterodox groups were the first ones to appreciate this gospel, and hence the mainstream Christians avoided using it until Irenaeus rescued it for the church. Lately, this view has been challenged by several scholars for several reasons. The contributions in this volume, written by leading specialists in their respective fields, offer an approachable, fresh, comprehensive and up-to-date view of the second-century reception of John s Gospel, in a situation where new understandings about various forms of early Christianity and its multiformity have started to emerge.
The Prologue to John's Gospel has been an enigmatic object of inquiry in the history of biblical scholarship. This volume reengages readers with thirteen essays from various perspectives on the Prologue. These perspectives include source oriented approaches, form oriented approaches, functional approaches, and alternative non-traditional approaches. This book attempts to pave new paths to understanding the Prologue and cause readers to think more deeply about the beginning of John's Gospel.
In The Intertextual Reception of Genesis 1-3 in Irenaeus of Lyons, Stephen Presley explores the intertextual nature of Irenaeus’ interpretation of Genesis 1-3 by drawing on contemporary discussions on the topic. Irenaeus interprets the creation accounts, Presley argues, in continuity with the rest of the scriptural witness through a series of reading strategies including: a literary sense, prophetic fulfillment, typology, philological associations, organizational strategies, narratival arrangements, prosopological interpretation, illustrative identification, and general-to-particular reasoning. Irenaeus’ perspective competes with his Gnostic interlocutors who utilize similar methods of interpretation, but fashion distinctive textual relationships between Genesis 1-3 and other texts. These reading strategies circumscribe precisely how Irenaeus’ intertextual exegesis is applied to these creation texts within the integrative structure of his theological perspective.
In recent years, the disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology have grown apart and largely lost the means of effective communication with one another. Unfortunately, this relational disconnect affects more than just these particular fields of study; it impacts the life of the church as a whole. The first St. Andrews Conference on Scripture and Theology brought leading biblical scholars and systematic theologians together in conversation, seeking to bridge the gap between them. Due to its profound influence on the development of Christian theology, John's Gospel is an ideal base for rekindling fruitful dialogue. The essays here -- taken from the inaugural conference -- consider...
In The Trinitarian Testimony of the Spirit, Kyle R. Hughes offers a new approach to the development of early Christian pneumatology by focusing on how Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian linked the Holy Spirit with testimony to the deity and lordship of the Father and the Son. Drawing extensively on recent studies of prosopological exegesis and divine testimony in the ancient world, Hughes demonstrates how these three pre-Nicene Christian writers utilized Scripture and the conventions of ancient rhetoric and exegesis to formulate a highly innovative approach to the Holy Spirit that would contribute to the identification of the Spirit as the third person of the Trinity.
John S. Kloppenborg gives a detailed analysis of one of the most difficult of Jesus' parables, the parable of the Tenants (Mark 12:1-12; Gospel of Thomas 65). He examines the ways in which Christians have typically read and mis-read the parable, and places the parable firmly in the context of the practices of ancient viticulture. The author models a new approach to the interpretation of the parables of Jesus. First, he critically engages the history of interpretation of the text, inquiring into the ideological interests that the parable has engaged during the history of its use in Christian churches and in political discourse. Second, he reconstructs the social world in which the parable was...
How did the Church get Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John instead of Thomas, Mary, Peter, and Judas? C. E. Hill presents evidence for how and why, despite the numerous Gospels that appeared in the earliest Christian centuries, four (and only four) Gospels came to be embraced by the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches alike.
John's Gospel directs attention to the vision of community. Andrew Byers argues that ecclesiology is as central a Johannine concern as Christology.
English summary: The Pastoral Epistles speak more than other early Christian scriptures about faith ( pistis ), and they do it differently than Paul does. An interpretation of all the records of faith (pistis word family) shows that the scope of pistis in the Corpus Pastorale is huge. On the one hand, it is a primary word, framing all references of Christian life, and on the other hand it is completely determined by the relation to Christ and/or God. Thus faith has an integrating character, and at the same time it indicates the center of Christian existence. At the beginning of this first monograph about faith in the Pastoral Epistles, the author examines some fundamental terms, such as fait...
This volume argues that Titus’s invocation of Crete affected the ways early readers developed their identities. Using archaeological data, classical writings, and early Christian documents, he describes multiple traditions that circulated on Crete and throughout the Roman Empire concerning Cretan Zeus, Cretan social structure, and Cretan Judaism. He then uses these traditions to interpret Titus and explain how the letter would intersect with and affect readers’ identities. Because readers had differing conceptions of Crete based on their location and access to and evaluation of Cretan traditions, readers would have developed their identities in multiple, conflictual, even contradictory ways.