The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy.
The Rabbis of classical Judaism, in the first six centuries of the Common Era, commented on the teachings of ancient Israel's prophets and shaped, as much as they were shaped by, prophecy.
Maps and Meaning is rooted in the authors’ experience as clergy and chaplains and is relevant to those looking for a fresh perspective on biblical narratives related to the role of the priest, patients, soldiers, and others who spend time “outside the camp.
In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire traced the narrative development of the divine character in the Old Testament, placing the God portrayed at the end of that long story at the center of theological discussion.
Were eunuchs more usually castrated guardians of the harem, as florid Orientalist portraits imagine them, or were they trusted court officials who may never have been castrated?
Scholars of early Christianity are awakening to the potential of Pompeiis treasures for casting light on the settings and situations that were commonplace and conventional for the first urban Christians.
A fundamental problem in Christian theology has been that of determining whether God can be an object of experience and how we should account for God’s empirical availability to us.
Scott Shauf compares the portrayal of the divine in Acts with portrayals of the divine in other ancient historiographical writings, the latter including Jewish and wider Greco-Roman historiographical traditions.
In these chapters, a group of renowned international scholars seek to describe Paul and his work from “within Judaism,” rather than on the assumption, still current after thirty years of the “New Perspective,” that in practice Paul left behind aspects of Jewish living after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah).
Christians around the world recite the “Lord’s Prayer” daily, but what exactly are they praying for—and what relationship does it have with Jesus’ own context?
Power and Politics in the Book of Judges studies political culture and behavior in premonarchic Israel, focusing on the protagonists in the book of Judges.
Hezekiah is a critical figure in the Hebrew Bible, which credits him with major political, social, and religious reforms in Judah’s history and the weathering of a major crisis in the invasion of the Assyrians under their emperor, Sennacherib.
Maia Kotrosits challenges the contemporary notion of “early Christian literature,” showing that a number of texts usually so described—New Testament writings including Hebrews, Acts, the Gospel of John, Colossians, and 1 Peter, as well as the letters of Ignatius, the Gospel of Truth, and the Secret Revelation of John—are “not particularly interested” in a distinctive Christian identity or self-definition.
Biblical scholars have often contrasted the exegesis of the early church fathers from the eastern region and school of Syrian Antioch against that of the school of Alexandria.
Scholars of the Gospel of Mark usually discuss the merits of patristic references to the Gospel’s origin and Mark’s identity as the “interpreter” of Peter.
It is a commonplace today that Paul was a Jew of the Hellenistic Diaspora, but how does that observation help us to understand his thinking, his self-identification, and his practice?
Although healing constitutes both a major theme of biblical literature and a significant practice of biblical communities, healing themes and experiences are not always conspicuous in presentations of biblical theology.
Readers have long puzzled over the absence from the Johannine “Last Supper” of any words by Jesus over bread and wine—suggesting to some that John is indifferent or even hostile to sacramental thought or action—and the apparent dislocation to the feeding miracle, in John 6, of Jesus’ declaration that believers must eat his flesh.
The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light.
The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light.
Roland Boer and Christina Petterson here produce a critical survey showing that the rise of capitalist theory was shaped by the way different economic philosophers—Smith, Hobbes, Grotius, Malthus, Locke––read the Bible.
The "e;Great Whore"e; of the Book of Revelationthe hostile symbolization used to illustrate the authors critique of empirehas attracted considerable attention in Revelation scholarship.
In his brilliant introduction on the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner asks:How do you read a book that does not identify its author, tell you where it comes from, or explain why it was written - a book without a preface?
Although the political interpretation of Paul is still considered something of a novelty in North America and Europe, it is well established in Latin America and among theologians of liberation.
The Texts @ Contexts series gathers scholarly voices from diverse contexts and social locations to bring new or unfamiliar facets of biblical texts to light.
When scholars have set Jesus against various conceptions of the messiah and other redemptive figures in early Jewish expectation, those questions have been bound up with the problem of violence, whether the political violence of a militant messiah or the divine violence carried out by a heavenly or angelic figure.
The "e;dilemma of early Christology,"e; Kaiser observes, is found in the early Christian claims to have "e;seen the Lord"e; and "e;beheld his glory"e; - expressions that in early Judaism would have pointed unequivocally to visions of Israel's God.
Although several scholars have written about how Luke portrays Jesus and the apostles as prophets, no one has yet provided a comprehensive theory as to why Luke’s protagonists resemble the prophets.
Presuming that the heart of Paul’s gospel announcement was the news that God had raised Jesus from the dead (as indicated in 1 Thessalonians 1:9b-10), Pillar explores the evidence in Paul’s letter and in aspects of the Roman imperial culture in Thessalonica in order to imagine what that proclamation would have evoked for its first hearers.
