You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Book of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel (6th century B.C.E.) is a book of forceful language and impressive images. Its message is often clear, sometimes mysterious. The book had great impact in Jewish and early Christian literature as well as in western art. This book deals with the intentions of the book of Ezekiel, but also focuses on its use by subsequent writers, editors or artists. It traces Ezekiel's influence in Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God, in Paul, the Gospels, and Revelation, and also shows that Ezekiel's imagery, via Jewish mysticism, influenced the visionary art of William Blake. Presenting contributions from leading biblical scholars in Oxford and Leiden, based on their unique collaborative research, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working in the field of biblical studies, including those studying the Hebrew Bible, its early versions, 'inter-testamental' Judaism, New Testament and Early Christianity, and the reception of Biblical literature in later centuries.
In this careful and provocative study, Chad Thornhill considers how Second Temple understandings of election influenced key Pauline texts with sensitivity to social, historical and literary factors. While Paul is able to move beyond ancient categories of a collective view of election, Thornhill shows how he also follows these patterns.
Focusing on a strength of the faculty of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, this volume is a collection of nine essays by an international group of scholars who have used texts from the Greco-Roman world to illuminate various aspects of the New Testament.
Shawn J. Wilhite's commentary on the Didache complements the study of early Christianity through historical, literary, and theological readings of the Apostolic Fathers, seeking to be mindful of critical scholarship while commenting on a final-form text. The Didache includes a brief introduction to this relevant text, the use of Scripture by the Didachist, and the theology of the Didache. The commentary proceeds section by section with a close ear to the text of the Didache, relevant early Christian literature, and current scholarship.
This is the first of a four-volume groundbreaking study of Christological origins. The fruit of twenty years research, Jesus Monotheism lays out a new paradigm that goes beyond the now widely held view that Paul and others held to an unprecedented "Christological monotheism." There was already, in Second Temple Judaism and in the Bible, a kind of "christological monotheism." But it is first with Jesus and his followers that a human figure is included in the identity of the one God as a fully divine person. Volume 1 lays out the arguments of an emerging consensus, championed by Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, that from its Jewish beginnings the Christian community had a high Christology a...
In this book, Sung Uk Lim examines the narrative construction of identity and otherness through ongoing interactions between Jesus and the so-called others as represented by the minor characters in the Gospel of John. This study reconfigures the otherness of the minor characters in order to reconstruct the identity of Jesus beyond the exclusive binary of identity and otherness. The recent trends in Johannine scholarship are deeply entrenched in a dialectical framework of inclusion and exclusion, perpetuating positive portrayals of Jesus and negative portrayals of the minor characters. Read in this light, Jesus is portrayed as a superior, omniscient, and omnipotent character, whereas minor ch...
Although the Epistle of Barnabas may be best known for its Two Ways Tradition or its anti-Jewish use of Scripture, its contents reveal much that will be of interest to anyone studying Christian origins. In keeping with other contributions to the Apostolic Fathers Commentary Series, this volume not only introduces readers to critical issues such as date, authorship, and opponents but also reflects on the multifaceted scriptural interpretations at play within the argument and sketches the theological beliefs that underlie the text. The commentary also provides a fresh English translation of the Greek text while endeavoring to highlight the internal literary connections within the Epistle of Barnabas. In so doing, this book provides a knowledgeable and accessible interpretation of a fascinating early Christian document.
The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of scholarship on dress in the ancient world. These recent studies have established the extent to which Greece and Rome were vestimentary cultures, and they have demonstrated the critical role dress played in communicating individuals’ identities, status, and authority. Despite this emerging interest in ancient dress, little work has been done to understand religious aspects and uses of dress. This volume aims to fill this gap by examining a diverse range of religious sources, including literature, art, performance, coinage, economic markets, and memories. Employing theoretical frames from a range of disciplines, contributors to the volume demonstrate how dress developed as a topos within Judean and Christian rhetoric, symbolism, and performance from the first century BCE to the fifth century CE. Specifically, they demonstrate how religious meanings were entangled with other social logics, revealing the many layers of meaning attached to ancient dress, as well as the extent to which dress was implicated in numerous domains of ancient religious life.
“They bring three charges against us: atheism, Thyestean banquets, and Oedipean unions.” So a late second-century Christian Apologist wrote with reference to his critics. Against these and other charges the Apologists rallied. Not so, they maintained. It was not the Christians but their critics who were the atheists and the Christians were the true theists. They were atheists only insofar as they denied the fabricated gods of the cults and the immoral deities of theaters. That, they explained, was why Christians absented themselves, whatever the cost, from the imperial cult, theaters, and amphitheaters. They were not cannibals, as Thyestes was when he ate the flesh of his children. To su...
What was the original purpose of the Gospel of Matthew? For whom was it written? In this magisterial two-volume commentary, Walter Wilson interprets Matthew as a catechetical work that expresses the ideological and institutional concerns of a faction of disaffected Jewish followers of Jesus in the late first century CE. Wilson’s compelling thesis frames Matthew’s Gospel as not only a continuation of the biblical story but also as a didactic narrative intended to shape the commitments and identity of a particular group that saw itself as a beleaguered, dissident minority. Thus, the text clarifies Jesus’s essential Jewish character as the “Son of David” while also portraying him in o...