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The lack of serious and sustained investigation of the historical figure of James "the Just", brother of Jesus, is one of the curious oversights in modern critical study of Christian origins. James the Just and Christian Origins addresses this problem. The questions that surround this exceedingly important, yet largely ignored figure are several and complicated. Was he really the brother of Jesus? How influential was he in the early church? What was the nature of his relationship to the other apostles, especially to Paul? How did James understand Christianity’s relationship to Judaism and to the people of Israel? Out of this grows a very important question: In its generative moment, was Christianity in fact as well as in its self-awareness, a species of Judaism? Contributors from several countries are currently engaged in collaborative study in James and early Jewish Christianity. James the Just and Christian Origins is the first of several planned volumes to be published.
This book charts the shifting boundaries of Judaism from antiquity to the modern period in order to bring clarity to what scholars mean when they claim that ancient texts or groups are “within Judaism,” as well as exploring how rabbinic Jews, Christians, and Muslims have negotiated and renegotiated what Judaism is and is not in order to form their own identities. Belief in Jesus as the Messiah was seen as part of first-century Judaism, but by the fourth or fifth century, the boundaries had shifted and adherence to Jesus came to be seen as outside of Judaism. Resituating New Testament texts within first- or second-century Judaism is an historical exercise that may broaden our view of what Judaism looked like in the early centuries CE, but normatively these texts remain within Christianity because of their reception history. The historical “within Judaism” perspective, however, has the potential to challenge and reshape the theology of contemporary Christianity while at the same time the long-held consensus that belief in Jesus cannot belong within Judaism is again challenged by the modern Messianic Jewish movement.
Noting that a traditional understanding of Paul as “convert” from Judaism has fueled false and often dangerous stereotypes of Judaism, and that the so-called “new perspective on Paul” has not completely escaped these stereotypes, František Ábel has gathered leading international scholars to test the hypotheses of the more recent “Paul within Judaism” movement. Though hardly monolithic in their approach, these scholars’ explorations of specific topics concerning Second Temple Judaism and Paul’s message and theology allow a more contextually nuanced understanding of the apostle’s thought, one free from particular biases rooted in unacknowledged ideologies and traditional interpretations transmitted by particular church traditions. Contributors include František Ábel, Michael Bachmann, Daniel Boyarin, William S. Campbell, Kathy Ehrensperger, Paula Fredriksen, Jörg Frey, Joshua Garroway, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Isaac W. Oliver, Shayna Sheinfeld, and J. Brian Tucker.
Revised thesis (Ph.D.) - Bangor University (North Wales), 2011.
In this book, Christoph Ochs presents for the first time an extensive study of the use of the Gospel of Matthew in Jewish polemics. These often overlooked texts advance numerous exegetical arguments against Jesus' divinity, the incarnation, and the Trinity. Seven Jewish polemical key texts comprise the main sources for this inquiry: Qissat Mujadalat al-Usquf (c. 8/9th century) and Sefer Nestor ha-Komer (before 1170), Sefer Milhamot ha-Shem (c. 1170), Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne (c. 13th century), Nizzahon Vetus (13-14th century), Even Bohan (late 14th century), Kelimmat ha-Goyim (c. 1397), and Hizzuq Emunah (c. 1594). Together with the relevant passages in the original Hebrew and in translation, each text is presented with a historical and exegetical introduction. Contemporary parallels are also discussed, but in less detail. The result is a compendium of arguments against the divinity of Jesus based on the Jewish interpretation of Matthew.
Nicholas Ellis examines the interplay present in early Jewish literature between authors' theological assumptions on divine agency in evil and their readings of biblical testing narratives. Ellis takes as a starting point the Epistle of James , and compares this early Christian work against other examples of ancient Jewish interpretation. Ellis shows how varying perspectives on the divine, satanic, and human roles of testing exercised a direct influence on the interpretation of popular biblical testing narratives such as Abraham and Isaac, Job, and the Trials in the Wilderness. Read in light of the broader Jewish literature, Ellis argues that the theology and hermeneutic found in the Epistle of James as such relate to divine testing are closely paralleled by the so-called 'Rewritten Bible' tradition. Within James' cosmic drama, God stands as righteous judge, with the satanic prosecutor indicting both divine integrity and human religious loyalty.
In this book, Michael J. Thate offers an experiment in reception criticism in its consideration of the formation and reception of the historical Jesus discourse. He also attempts to historicize Leben-Jesu-Forschung within debates and narratives of secularization. These two foci guide the book through its two parts. First Thate explicates Schweitzer's dominant archival function in Leben-Jesu-Forschung, while aiming to make fragile the "grand architect's" receptive hegemony. Then he combines critical memory theory and other theoretical readings of the material in an attempt to refocus the study of the historical Jesus as early Christian memory politics in the service of identity explication. He attempts to problematize Schweitzer's legacy of a tidy systematic approach in which much of historical Jesus scholarship continues to operate.
Publisher's description: The volume assembles twenty previously published studies by Devorah Dimant, which have been re-edited, updated, and furnished with an introductory essay written especially for this collection. The studies survey and analyze Jewish works composed in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek during the Second Temple period, and discuss their contents, ideas, and connections to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Particular attention is paid to central issues, such as the apocalyptic worldview and literature and its relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among others, specific themes related to the Aramaic Tobit and 1 Enoch are analyzed as well as the links detected between the Hebrew Qumran writings Pseudo-Ezekiel and the Apocryphon of Jeremiah and the later apocalyptic works 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. The introductory essay provides a general framework and pertinent terminology for discussing the literature in question. Together these essays offer a broad and fresh perspective of the Jewish literary scene in antiquity, with special attention to the one nurtured in the land of Israel.
Matthew V. Novenson, ed., Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity is a collection of state-of-the-art essays by leading scholars on views of God, Christ, and other divine beings in ancient Jewish, Christian, and classical texts.
This book examines why Paul waits until the end of his letter to the Corinthians before mentioning the important theme of resurrection.