On 7 April 1537 Philip Melanchthon sent a copy of an epigram he had written to his friend and correspondent in Nuremberg, the preacher Veit Dietrich.1 He had originally composed it as an inscription for a copy of the third edition of his Scholia on Colossians, which he had given to Matthew Devay. He thought Dietrich would enjoy it, too. Not only did these fourteen simple lines of Latin poetry s…
This book examines how the priestly editors of the book of Numbers created a narrative of the forty-year journey through the wilderness to achieve their agenda. The book also focuses on politics, collective memory and transmission of tradition.
A central figure in the reconception of early Christian history over the last three decades, Wayne A. Meeks offers here a selection of his most influential writings on the New Testament and early Christianity. His essays illustrate recent changes in our thinking about the early Christian movement and pose provocative questions regarding the history of this period.Meeks explores a fascinating ra…
The scribes of ancient Israel are indeed the main figures behind the Hebrew Bible, and this book tells their story for the first time. Drawing comparisons with the scribal practices of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, van der Toorn details the methods, assumptions, and material means that gave rise to biblical texts. Traditionally seen as the copycats of antiquity, the scribes emerge here as the …
There are few things I love more than watching my children or students on the edges of their seats, listening to Bible stories with wide-eyed excitement. God’s Word is powerful and active for an audience of any age! Creating a craft that depicts a scene, character, or object from a Bible passage reinforces that story by prompting kids to retain and retell it as they show off their craft.
This volume includes the first edition of a previously unknown text which throws wholly new light on the intellectual history of early medieval Europe. The biblical commentaries (never before printed or studied) represent the teaching of two extraordinarily gifted Greek scholars who came to England from the Byzantine East. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury (668-90) and his colleague Hadrian (d…
This introduction to the New Testament provides a thorough grounding in the study and editing of the New Testament text combined with an emphasis on the dramatic developments in the field. It covers ancient sources in Greek, Syriac, Latin and Coptic and describes the manuscripts and other ancient textual evidence.
This study draws upon the biblical books of Kings, First Isaiah and Chronicles, in conjunction with Assyrian records and ancient Near Eastern archaeology, in order to provide an updated historical reconstruction of the influential Judean monarch Hezekiah.
Luther's commentary consists of two parts: the Gloss and the Scholia. I have translated the latter (WA 56, 155-528) in their entirety. It would not be practical to translate also all the interlinear and marginal glosses (WA 56, 1-154). However, I have translated all glosses to which Luther himself refers in the Scholia. Moreover, all glosses that contain important interpretations or have assume…
This second volume in the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series provides expert, comprehensive guidance in answering significant questions about the Hebrew text. While reflecting the latest advances in scholarship on Hebrew grammar and linguistics, the work utilises a style that is lucid enough to serve as a useful agent for teaching and self-study.
The three works of St. Augustine translated in this volume, in whole or in part, were all published in the years between 410 and 420, when Augustine was in his late fifties or early sixties, still at the height of his powers, and not yet wholly absorbed by the Pelagian controversy, which forced him to imprison his doctrine of Grace in a system of rigid logic—the "Augustinianism" whose authori…
Galatians For You is a new curriculum tool you can use to learn or teach from the book of Galatians. Both student and teacher can use it to walk through Galatians, learning how the gospel message changes the whole of our lives. Combining a close attention to the detail of the text with Tim Keller's trademark gift for clear explanation and compelling insights, this is a uniquely flexible curricu…
It is common knowledge that the Bible has been translated into more languages than any other piece of literature. What is not generally appreciated, however, is the great increase in the number of different translations that have been produced relatively recently, that is, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Before this period, the church, it must be confessed, had been rather slow i…
The primary focus of this book is “special introduction”—that is, it treats historical questions dealing with authorship, date, sources, purpose, destination, and the like. Many recent books devote more space than we do to literary form, rhetorical criticism, and historical parallels. We do not minimize the importance of such topics, and we have introduced them where they directly bear on…
This is a detailed examination of Proverbs 1-9, an early Jewish poetic work and an example of Wisdom literature. The author shows that certain parts of it, profoundly influential on the development of both Judaism and Christianity, belong to a much broader and more intricate set of ideas than older scholarship allowed.
The four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible falls in 2011, and Oxford University Press, which has published King James Bibles since the seventeenth century and has sold uncounted millions of copies over the centuries, has decided to mark the quatercentenary with this account of the fortunes of this translation from 1611 to the present. Th is project …
Nearly two-thirds of the New Testament - including all the letters of Paul, most of the book of Acts, & the book of Revelation - is set outside of Israel, in wither Turkey or Greece. This is a guide through every significant location in the area mentioned in the Bible, with biblical links.
In Jesus and the Ossuaries, Craig A. Evans helps all readers, expert and layperson alike, understand the importance this recent find might have for the quest for the historical Jesus and any historical reconstruction of early Christianity. Evans does this by providing an overview of the most important archaeological discoveries, before examining nine other inscriptions (six on ossuaries, three …
For the first time in one volume, this book presents contributions to the textual criticism of the New Testament made over the past twenty years by Bart Ehrman, one of the premier textual scholars in North America. The collection includes fifteen previously published articles and six lectures (delivered at Duke University and Yale University) on a range of topics of central importance to the fi…
This is a detailed examination of Proverbs 1-9, an early Jewish poetic work and an example of Wisdom literature. The author shows that certain parts of it, profoundly influential on the development of both Judaism and Christianity, belong to a much broader and more intricate set of ideas than older scholarship allowed.
Many people—even people who would call themselves Christians—have difficulties with the Bible. Some people are morally offended by parts of the Bible. Some parts of it do not fit modern ideas about good religion. What do we do with these parts? The Bible has exclusive claims about what is right and wrong in religion. It makes exclusive claims about God. It says that Jesus is the only way to…
Man and Woman, One in Christ demonstrates that careful exegesis of Paul's letters affirms the full equality of men and women in the church and in the home. Exploring the entire Pauline corpus, Philip Barton Payne injects crucial insights and cultural backgrounds into the discussion of Paul's statements regarding women.
Christian exegesis of the Song of Songs has long interacted creatively with - and, more recently, reacted critically against - the allegorical interpretation developed by Origen of Alexandria (c.185-c.254) in his Commentary and two Homilies on the Song of Songs. Interest in Origen's exegesis of the Song's narrative elements has dominated past scholarship, which has almost entirely ignored how O…
Explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a compelling case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament.
In this completely revised and updated edition, François Bovon provides a critical assessment of the last fifty-five years of scholarship on Luke-Acts. The study divides thematically, with individual chapters covering the subjects of history and eschatology, the role of the Old Testament, Christology, the Holy Spirit, conversion, and the church. Each chapter begins with a consideration of the…
Around the corner from where I live, a house is for sale. In bold green letters the lawn sign reads: “I’m Gorgeous Inside!” The message is surprising. From the street, the house is thoroughly ordinary, even run-down........
The result of over thirty years of research and lecturing, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes is a ground-breaking study of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. Bailey examines this canonical letter through the lenses of Paul's Jewish socio-cultural and rhetorical background and the Mediterranean context of the Corinthian recipients. In a set of connected essays, he draws the reader's attentio…
This volume represents the literary record of the international conference convened by the Israel Museum to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the discovery of Dead Sea Scrolls, entitled “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Contemporary Culture.” In 1997, the Israel Museum hosted a gala international conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Dead Sea Scrolls......
Although Ephesians presents itself unambiguously as a letter from Paul the apostle, the genuineness of this claim has frequently been questioned, beginning in the late eighteenth century (Hoehner 2002: 6). At first this may seem surprising, but the practice of composing fictional letters in the name of some influential person was reasonably common in Greco-Roman antiquity and seems to have been…
One of Italy's foremost experts on antiquity addresses a new issue surrounding the birth of Israel and its historic reality.
The main lines of inquiry pursued in this book are nearly all foreshadowed in the lengthy, wide-ranging Chapter 2, ‘Jesus and Gospel’. Here I explore the origin and the varied meanings of the ‘gospel’ word group all the way from its use by Jesus to refer to his own proclamation to its use as the title of a ‘book’ containing an account of the words and deeds of Jesus.
This account of Leviticus presents the biblical work as a literary masterpiece. Seen in an anthropological perspective, Leviticus has a mystical structure which plots the book into three parts corresponding to the three parts of the desert tabernacle, which in turn corresponds to Mount Sinai.
The use of the term “Septuagint” in the title of A New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) requires some justification. According to legend1 it was seventy(-two) Jerusalem elders who at the behest of King Ptolemy II (285–246 BCE) and with the consent of High Priest Eleazaros translated the Scriptures of Egyptian Jewry into Greek from a Jerusalem manuscript inscribed in gold. The …
Provides students with a comprehensive guide through the Greek text of the Gospel of Luke. Together Culy, Parsons, and Stigall explain the text's critical, lexical, grammatical, and linguistic aspects while revealing its carefully crafted narrative style.
Some years ago Professor Martin Hengel, now in Tübingen, suggested that I should gather my widely scattered papers on Jewish and Christian history. Other pressing obligations delayed the preparation of my Scripta Minora, and I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Hengel and to Mr. F.C. Wieder Jr. and Mr. F.Th. Dijkema of Brill’s house for help, patience and understanding. Some papers have be…
At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, a wise father warns his son concerning the multiplication of books: “Furthermore, of these, my son, be warned. There is no end to the making of many books!” (12:12). The Targum to this biblical book characteristically expands the thought and takes it in a different, even contradictory, direction: “My son, take care to make many books of wisdom witho…
Before we can define “Judaism” for the purpose of our study of the New Testament, we had best say what we mean by any religion, the genus of which Judaism forms a species (and, we shall argue, with earliest Christianity as a subspecies of that same species of religion). Defining religion comes before defining a particular religion, just as defining a particular religion takes priority over …
A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and…
In a recent ecumenical study, the Wesleyan theologian Edgardo Colón-Emeric observes that ‘predestination cannot simply be treated as a historical artifact...but as an abiding structural element of a sound doctrine of Christian perfection’.1 By contrast, the American religious historian Peter Thuesen speaks for the majority of contemporary theologians when he warns that predestinarian contr…
This reissue of Barth’s A Shorter Commentary on Romans links to the renewed interest today in a ‘theological’ interpretation of Scripture. In response to the modern preoccupation with what lies behind the text (the author’s context), and to a postmodern preoccupation with what lies in front of the text (the reader’s context), both theologians and biblical scholars are asking the follo…
This book explores some early works of Christian literature, those devoted to the New Testament in the 200 years or so after the rise of Constantine by Juvencus, Sedulius, and Arator. They have been somewhat neglected in the Anglophone world, at least, though there are notable exceptions among the small number of relevant monographs; it is important, especially in an increasingly interdisciplin…
The publication of this monograph marks the culmination of an interest panning a quarter of a century. In 1967,1 was a mature-aged student in a first-year Hebrew class at the University of Melbourne, and my attention was arrested by the lecturer's comment when we first encountered the word loj. I acknowledge my gratitude to Revd Dudley Hallam who described it as 'a rich, old, covenant word'. H…
Picking up on an incomplete ancient definition that requires some supplementation, we have grown accustomed to regarding a letter as “half of a dialogue” or as a continuation of a conversation by other means. Recently we have also learned to understand the letter as a speech or sermon, which has been put down in writing only of necessity under the pressure of circumstances. But does the ina…
Through the ages no literary work has received so much attention as the Bible, which has been handed down from generation to generation so carefully, studied so diligently and commented upon so thoroughly. Many avenues of its writings have been explored and numerous aspects investigated in detail. Especially during the past century biblical scholars have devoted much time and energy in addressi…
This book examines the theology and ethics of land use, especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, in light of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essays explore the biblical writers’ pervasive concern for the care of arable land against the background of the geography, social structures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approach consistently brings …
This book was conceived in an unusual setting. The year was 1976. I had just arrived with my family in Aixen-Provence, France, where I was to spend a sabbatical year teaching at the university. We had rented a house for the year from Michel Vovelle, a well-known French historian who was just packing up to leave for a sabbatical year of his own at Princeton. The lease was for a certain rent, qui…
Cov-e-nant (n): A binding agreement; a compact; a promise. Since biblical times covenants have been a part of everyday life. Simply put, they are promises, agreements, or contracts. But how do they translate into faith and the reading of Scripture? Are covenants merely elements of a narrative? Or do they represent something more? And what are the eternal implications of "cutting" a covenant wit…
The purpose of this book is to tell the story of how God's Word went from being strictly for those in the pulpit to being read, understood, and acted upon by laypeople. It is a story of tragedy and triumph: spilled blood and the preservation of a sacred treasure.
"It is a strange fact that we have never known with certainty who produced the book that has played such a central role in our civilization," writes Friedman, a foremost Bible scholar. From this point he begins an investigation and analysis that readsa as compellingly as a good detective story. Focusing on the central books of the Old Testament-Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuterono…
After first publishing this book in 1995, in subsequent reprintings I was able to correct a few errata, add a biblical index, and update the bibliography. For the present task of thoroughly revising the whole text, I need to take account of the numerous biblical, historical, and systematic studies of Jesus that have appeared in recent years. Many valuable, as well as some questionable, books an…