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Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies is a multivolume series that seeks to introduce key ancient texts that form the cultural, historical, and literary context for the study of the New Testament.Each volume will feature introductory essays to the corpus, followed by articles on the relevant texts. Each article will address introductory matters, provenance, summary of content, interpretive issues, key passages for New Testament studies and their significance.Neither too technical to be used by students nor too thin on interpretive information to be useful for serious study of the New Testament, this series provides a much-needed resource for understanding the New Testament in its first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman context. Produced by an international team of leading experts in each corpus, Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies stands to become the standard resource for both scholars and students.Volumes include:Apocrypha and the SeptuagintOld Testament PseudepigraphaThe Dead Sea ScrollsThe Apostolic FathersPhilo and JosephusGreco-Roman LiteratureTargums and Early Rabbinic LiteratureGnostic LiteratureNew Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha

Luke and the Jewish Other takes up the debated question of the orientation of Luke toward the Jewish people. Building on recent studies in the social history of early Jewish-Christian relations, it offers an analysis of Luke's portrayal of Jewish and Christian identities that challenges the common assumption that the construction of religious identity in antiquity necessarily depended upon antagonistic relations with others. Taking account of the deep and often divisive difference that belief in Jesus made in Luke's community, the author argues that Luke hoped to bring about both a rapprochement with and the conversion of contemporary Jews. Through this account of identity and alterity in the Gospel of Luke, the book cuts across boundaries of biblical studies, history, theology, and social theory, proposing a way forward for the study of Luke's relation to Judaism and of the'parting of the ways'between Jews and Christians in the early Common Era.

In this volume, A. Boyd Luter initially makes the case that the Letter of James was the first New Testament document and that it was written for a primarily Messianic Jewish audience in the Diaspora. Its early origin places James as the foundational Messianic Jewish Scripture of the new covenant era. That, however, is a drastically different take on the letter's dating, audience, and purpose from the long-held supersessionist view in which Israel is replaced by the church. In the supersessionist understanding, James is one of the later New Testament books, originating supposedly at a time when it was already expected for the church to be symbolically'the twelve tribes in the Diaspora.'And, since a common first impression of the letter is that its style is reflective of Old Testament wisdom literature, it was taken as dealing with practical issues of the Christian life through a staccato format much like Proverbs. Instead, through the elegant literary vehicle of an overarching inverted parallel structure, the Letter of James communicates its author's approach to issues among his Messianic Jewish audience related to spiritual growth and purity, as well as putting away class-based favoritism and the relationship between faith and works.

A highly respected New Testament scholar offers an accessible introduction to Paul that situates him clearly within first-century Judaism.

Covenant and the People of God gathers twenty-four essays from friends and colleagues of Messianic Jewish theologian and New Testament scholar Mark S. Kinzer, in honor of his seventieth birthday. The essays are organized around two central themes that have animated Kinzer's work: the nature of the covenant and what it means to be the people of God. The volume includes fascinating discussions of some of the most sensitive areas related to Jewish-Christian dialogue, post-supersessionist interpretation of Scripture, and the theological shape of Messianic Judaism. Among the contributors are scholars working in North America, Europe, and Israel. They include: Gabriele Boccaccini, Douglas A. Campbell, Holly Taylor Coolman, Gavin D'Costa, Jean-Miguel Garrigues, Douglas Harink, Richard Harvey, Vered Hillel, Jonathan Kaplan, Daniel Keating, Amy-Jill Levine, Antoine Levy, Gerald McDermott, Michael C. Mulder, David M. Neuhaus, Isaac W. Oliver, Ephraim Radner, Jennifer M. Rosner, David J. Rudolph, Thomas Schumacher, Faydra L. Shapiro, R. Kendall Soulen, Lee B. Spitzer, and Etienne Veto.

Study Hebrews in its Second Temple ContextFollowing the proven model established in Reading Romans in Context, Reading Mark in Context, and Reading Revelation in Context, this book brings together a series of accessible essays that compare and contrast the theology and hermeneutical practices of the book of Hebrews with various early Jewish literature.Going beyond an introduction that merely surveys historical events and theological themes, this textbook examines individual passages in Second Temple Jewish literature in order to illuminate the ideas and emphases of Hebrews'varied discourses. Following the rhetorical progression of Hebrews, each chapter in this textbook:pairs a major unit of Hebrews with one or more sections of a thematically related Jewish textintroduces and explores the historical and theological nuances of the comparative textshows how the ideas in the comparative text illuminate those expressed in HebrewsIn addition to the focused comparison provided in the essays, Reading Hebrews in Context offers other student-friendly features that help them engage broader discussions, including an introductory chapter that familiarizes students with the world and texts of Second Temple Judaism and a glossary of important terms. The end of each chapter contains a list of other thematically-relevant Second Temple Jewish texts recommended for further study and a focused bibliography pointing students to critical editions and higher-level discussions in scholarly literature they might use to undertake their own comparative studies.

The research of Martha Himmelfarb has pushed scholars to re-examine what we thought we knew about the formative histories of Judaism and Christianity. In studies on such topics as apocalypses, pseudepigrapha, and messianism, Himmelfarb opened up new perspectives on Second Temple Judaism and its legacy within its late antique and medieval successor communities. Inspired by the sweeping breadth of her learning and scholarship, this volume explores the transmission and transformation of Jewish and Christian texts and traditions within and across the boundaries of language, culture, and religion. The volume's contributors range widely across sources, genres, and contexts, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic Judaism to Nag Hammadi literature and Jewish and Christian magic, and from classical rabbinic literature and patristic writings, to Hekhalot literature and medieval midrashim. Contributors not only revisit the histories of apocalypticism, sectarianism, and messianism but also take up questions regarding the materiality of manuscripts, the boundaries of religious communities and identities, the ritual uses of heavenly visions, and the history of Jewish priests and priesthood before and after the destruction of Jerusalem Temple. In dialogue with Himmelfarb's work, the volume exemplifies the value of studying Jewish and Christian traditions in concert as well as bridging the disciplinary divides that too often fragment the fields of Biblical Studies, Second Temple Judaism, New Testament Studies, Rabbinics, Patristics, Late Antiquity, and Medieval Studies.

To date, scholarly study of the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4:21-31 has not paid adequate attention to the way Paul's use of the story - chiefly in relation to the figure of Hagar - can be located within streams of ancient Jewish tradition. In this study, Ryan Heinsch fills this scholarly gap by considering Paul's allegorical portrayal of the figure of Hagar in Galatians 4:21-31 within the context of ancient Judaism. The author argues that Paul stands in continuity with - rather than against - ancient Judaism in that he, like other Jews in antiquity, portrays Hagar and her descendants as non-Jews. As a result, the author demonstrates further that Galatians 4:21-31 is not to be read as a polemic against Jews, Jewish Christ-followers, or the continuing validity of the Jewish law (as is common among interpreters), but rather, that Galatians 4:21-31 is an allegory Paul develops about the experience of gentiles in general and the once pagan Galatian gentiles in particular.

In contrast to scholarly belief that the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews envisions the transcendent, heavenly world as the eschatological inheritance of God's people, Jihye Lee argues that a version of an Urzeit-Endzeit eschatological framework - as observed in some Jewish apocalyptic texts - provides a plausible background against which the arguments of Hebrews are most comprehensively explained. Instead of transcendence to the heavenly world that will come after the destruction of the shakable creation, Lee suggests the possibility of a more dualistic new world.By first defining Urzeit-Endzeit eschatology, Lee is then able to explore its place in both pre and post 70 CE Second Temple Judaism. In examining Enoch, the Qumran Texts, Jubilees, the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch and finally the Book of Revelation, Lee compares a multitude of eschatological visions and the different depictions of the transformation of the world, judgement and the new world to come. Bringing these texts together to analyse the issue of God's Rest in Hebrews, and the nature of the Unshakable Kingdom, Lee concludes that Hebrews envisions the kingdom as consisting of both the revealed heavenly world and the renewed creation as the eschatological venue of God's dwelling place with his people.

The contributors to this volume take as their theme the reception of Jewish traditions in early Christianity, and the ways in which the meaning of these traditions changed as they were put to work in new contexts and for new social ends. Special emphasis is placed on the internal variety and malleability of these traditions, which underwent continual processes of change within Judaism, and on reception as an active, strategic, and interested process. All the essays in this volume seek to bring out how acts of reception contribute to the social formation of early Christianity, in its social imagination (its speech and thought about itself) or in its social practices, or both. This volume challenges static notions of tradition and passive ideas of'reception', stressing creativity and the significance of'strong'readings of tradition. It thus complicates standard narratives of'the parting of the ways'between'Christianity'and'Judaism', showing how even claims to continuity were bound to make the same different.

Israel and the Nations: Paul's Gospel in the Context of Jewish Expectation provides various perspectives of leading contemporary scholars concerning Paul's message, particularly his expressed expectation of the end-time redemption of Israel and its relation to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish nations, in the context of Jewish eschatological expectation. The contributors engage the increasingly contentious enigmas relating to Paul's Jewishness: had his perception of living in a new era in Christ and anticipating an imminent final consummation moved him beyond the bounds of what his contemporaries would have considered Judaism, or did Paul continue to think and act “within Judaism”?

Häufig wird dem Hebräerbrief in wissenschaftlichen sowie kirchlichen Verlautbarungen ein negatives Verhältnis zum Judentum bescheinigt oder es wird ihm vorgeworfen, eine'judenfeindliche'Wirkungsgeschichte durch seine Theologie begünstigt zu haben. Doch anders als häufig kritisiert, wird die alttestamentliche Tradition sowie die Bedeutung Israels im Hebräerbrief gerade nicht marginalisiert. Vielmehr zeigt Andreas-Christian Heidel exegetisch auf, dass sich durch eine israeltheologische Relektüre des theologischen Gesamtzeugnisses des Hebräerbriefs, ausgehend von Hebr 11,39-40, ein ekklesiologischer Heilsplan Gottes in Sachanalogie zu Röm 9-11 formulieren lässt. Dessen Ziel ist die eschatologische Vereinigung des einen glaubenden Gottesvolkes, welches sich durch alle Zeiten, Orte und menschliche Identitäten als ecclesia invisibilis hindurchzieht. Diese Einheit wird durch das Bekenntnis zu Jesus als Christus nicht infrage gestellt, sondern vielmehr darin verbürgt.

The editors of The Jewish Annotated New Testament show how and why Jews and Christians read many of the same Biblical texts – including passages from the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Psalms – differently. Exploring and explaining these diverse perspectives, they reveal more clearly Scripture's beauty and power. Esteemed Bible scholars and teachers Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler take readers on a guided tour of the most popular Hebrew Bible passages quoted in the New Testament to show what the texts meant in their original contexts and then how Jews and Christians, over time, understood those same texts. Passages include the creation of the world, the role of Adam and Eve, the Suffering Servant of Isiah, the book of Jonah, and Psalm 22, whose words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” Jesus quotes as he dies on the cross. Comparing various interpretations – historical, literary, and theological - of each ancient text, Levine and Brettler offer deeper understandings of the original narratives and their many afterlives. They show how the text speaks to different generations under changed circumstances, and so illuminate the Bible's ongoing significance. By understanding the depth and variety by which these passages have been, and can be, understood, The Bible With and Without Jesus does more than enhance our religious understandings, it helps us to see the Bible as a source of inspiration for any and all readers.

In most modern discussions of the Eucharist, the Jewish temple and its services of worship do not play a large role. They are often mentioned in passing, but little work is done in grounding, organizing, or explicating the connections between these things and the Eucharistic celebration. In Table and Temple, David Stubbs sheds light on the reasons for this neglect and shows the important role the temple and its worship played in the imagination of Jesus and his disciples about what was to become a central Christian practice. He then explores the five central meanings of the temple and its main services of worship, demonstrating their relationship to the five central meanings of the Christian Eucharist. These central meanings of the temple itself, the daily, weekly, and monthly sacrifices, and the three pilgrim feasts are linked to the history of salvation. Stubbs distills them to (1) the real presence of God and God's Kingdom among God's people, (2) thanksgiving for creation and providence, (3) remembrance of past deliverance, (4) covenant renewal in the present, and (5) a hopeful celebration of the feast to come. They provide a solid ground upon which to organize contemporary Christian Eucharistic imagination and practice. Such a solid ground not only expands our theology and enriches contemporary practice—it can also bring greater ecumenical unity to this central Christian rite.

In A Stranger in Jerusalem, Trevan Hatch attempts to situate the stories about Jesus within their Jewish context. Jesus was a Jew, his friends were Jews, his first followers were Jews, he studied the Hebrew Scriptures (either orally or from texts), he worshiped in the synagogue, and he occasionally traveled to Jerusalem to observe the Israelite festivals. Hatch illustrates that Jesus does not seem to have rejected Judaism or acted as a radical outsider in relation to his Jewish peers, but rather he worked within a Jewish framework. The overarching questions addressed in this book are (1) how can an understanding of early Judaism illuminate our understanding of the Jesus traditions, (2) how did Jesus relate to his Jewish world and vice versa, (3) why did the Gospel writers portray Jesus and his Jewish peers the way they did, and (4) how would Jews in the first and second centuries have interpreted the Jesus traditions upon hearing or reading them? Hatch explores several topics, including childhood and family life in first-century Galilee; Jewish notions of baptism and purity; Jewish prophets and miracle workers; Jewish ideas about the messiah; and Jesus'relationship with Judas, the Pharisees, the priestly establishment in Jerusalem, the Jewish populace, and his own disciples.

The Gospel of John is renowned for the challenges it presents to interpreters: its historical complexity, theological and literary unity, and its consistently critical stance toward characters known as'the Jews'. There is abundant scholarly literature on each of these challenges, and yet there are very few studies that consider the Gospel as a whole in light of these pressing issues. Mark Blumhofer offers a fresh approach to understanding the Fourth Gospel, one that draws together the insights of scholarship in all of these areas. He shows that a historically sensitive, ethically attuned, and theologically and literarily compelling reading of the Fourth Gospel lies before us in the synthesis of the approaches that have long been separated. Unlike studies that consider only a narrow portion of the Gospel, Blumhofer's unique approach draws on most of it and shows how common themes and interests run throughout the narrative of John.

The present volume gathers up studies by Peter J. Tomson, written over thirty-odd years, that deal with ancient Jewish law and identity, the teachings of Jesus, the letters of Paul, and the historiography of early Jews and Christians. Notable subject areas are Jewish purity laws, divorce law, and the use of the name'Jews'. The author also examines Jesus'teachings as understood in their primary and secondary contexts, the various situations Paul's highly differentiated rhetoric may have addressed, and the causes contributing to the growing tension between Jews and Christians and the so-called parting of the ways.

Jarvis J. Williams argues that the Jewish martyrological ideas, codified in 2 and 4 Maccabees and in selected texts in LXX Daniel 3, provide an important background to understanding Paul's statements about the cursed Christ in Gal. 3.13, and the soteriological benefits that his death achieves for Jews and Gentiles in Galatians. Williams further argues that Paul modifies Jewish martyrology to fit his exegetical, polemical, and theological purposes, in order to persuade the Galatians not to embrace the'other'gospel of their opponents. In addition to providing a detailed and up to date history of research on the scholarship of Gal. 3.13, Williams provides five arguments throughout this volume related to the scriptural, theological and conceptual, lexical, grammatical and polemical points of contact, and finally the discontinuities between Galatians and Jewish martyrological ideas. Drawing on literature from Second Temple traditions to directly compare with Gal. 3.13, Williams adds new insights to Paul's defense of his Torah-free-gentile-inclusive gospel, and his rhetoric against his opponents.

Over fifty years ago, Vatican II's Nostra Aetate 4 drew from Romans 11 to challenge the way Paul's voice has been used to negatively discuss Jews and Judaism. The church called for Catholics to conceptualize Jews as'brothers'in'an everlasting covenant,'and many other Christian organizations have expressed similar sentiments in the years since. Nevertheless, the portrayal of Jews as'branches broken off,''hardened,''without faith,''disobedient,'and'enemies of God'whom Christians have'replaced'as'true Israel,'are among the many ways that readers encounter Paul's views of Jews and Judaism in today's translations and interpretations of this chapter, and throughout the letter as well. In the chapters in this volume, Nanos shows why these translations and interpretive decisions, among others, do not likely represent what Paul wrote or meant. Each essay offers challenges to the received view of Paul from the research hypothesis that Paul and the Christ-followers to whom he wrote were still practicing Judaism (a Jewish way of life) within subgroups of the Jewish synagogue communities of Rome, and that they understood Paul to observe Torah and promote Judaism for their communities.

Pious Jews of the Second Temple period sought to conform their lives to Torah, the law God had given Israel. Their different sects disagreed, however, on how to interpret particular laws and even on the question of who had the authority to interpret them. Jesus and his earliest followers, while focusing primarily on what they believed God was doing in their own day, were repeatedly confronted with issues raised by its relation to God's prior revelation in Torah. This volume contains studies by Stephen Westerholm devoted to the meaning and place of Torah in Early Judaism as well as to New Testament understandings, particularly those of the gospels and Pauline literature. Attention is also given to the'New Perspective on Paul,'to recent discussions of justification and Paul's relation to Judaism, and to aspects of the transmission of Jesus tradition among his earliest followers.

'Jewish-Christianity'is a contested category in current research. But for precisely this reason, it may offer a powerful lens through which to rethink the history of Jewish/Christian relations. Traditionally, Jewish-Christianity has been studied as part of the origins and early diversity of Christianity. Collecting revised versions of previously published articles together with new materials, Annette Yoshiko Reed reconsiders Jewish-Christianity in the context of Late Antiquity and in conversation with Jewish studies. She brings further attention to understudied texts and traditions from Late Antiquity that do not fit neatly into present day notions of Christianity as distinct from Judaism. In the process, she uses these materials to probe the power and limits of our modern assumptions about religion and identity.

In this book, Catherine Sider Hamilton introduces a new lens through which to view the death of Jesus in Matthew. Using the concept of'innocent blood', she situates the death of Jesus within a paradigm of purity and pollution, one that was central in the Hebrew Scriptures and early Judaism from the Second Temple to the rabbis. Hamilton traces the theme of innocent blood in Matthew's narrative in relation to two Jewish traditions of interpretation, one (in Second Temple literature) reflecting on the story of Cain and Abel; the other (chiefly in rabbinic literature) on the blood of Zechariah.'Innocent blood'yields a vision that resists the dichotomies (intra muros vs extra muros, rejection vs redemption) that have characterized the debate, a vision in which both judgment and redemption - an end of exile - may be true.'Innocent blood'offers a new approach not only to the meaning of Jesus'death in Matthew but also to the vexed question of the Gospel's attitude toward contemporary Judaism.

The present volume reexamines both ancient Christian and Jewish portrayals of outsiders. In what ways, both positive and negative, do ancient writers interact with and relate to those outside of their ethnicity or religious tradition? This volume devotes itself to the methodological questions surrounding the use of diverse ancient sources for the construction of the other. The goal is to shed new light on ancient interactions between different religious groups in order to describe more accurately these relationships.

In this historical and theological study, John G. Gager undermines the myth of the Apostle Paul's rejection of Judaism, conversion to Christianity, and founding of Christian anti-Judaism. He finds that the rise of Christianity occurred well after Paul's death and attributes the distortion of the Apostle's views to early and later Christians. Though Christian clerical elites ascribed a rejection-replacement theology to Paul's legend, Gager shows that the Apostle was considered a loyal Jew by many of his Jesus-believing contemporaries and that later Jewish and Muslim thinkers held the same view. He holds that one of the earliest misinterpretations of Paul was to name him the founder of Christianity, and in recent times numerous Jewish and Christian readers of Paul have moved beyond this understanding.Gager also finds that Judaism did not fade away after Paul's death but continued to appeal to both Christians and pagans for centuries. Jewish synagogues remained important religious and social institutions throughout the Mediterranean world. Making use of all possible literary and archaeological sources, including Muslim texts, Gager helps recover the long pre-history of a Jewish Paul, obscured by recent, negative portrayals of the Apostle, and recognizes the enduring bond between Jews and Christians that has influenced all aspects of Christianity.

The third and final installment of James Dunn's magisterial history of Christian origins through 190 C.E., Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity covers the period after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. through the second century, when the still-new Jesus movement firmed up its distinctive identity markers and the structures on which it would establish its growing appeal in the following decades and centuries. Dunn examines in depth the major factors that shaped first-generation Christianity and beyond, exploring the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, the Hellenization of Christianity, and responses to Gnosticism. He mines all the first- and second-century sources, including the New Testament Gospels, New Testament apocrypha, and such church fathers as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, showing how the Jesus tradition and the figures of James, Paul, Peter, and John were still esteemed influences but were also the subject of intense controversy as the early church wrestled with its evolving identity. Comprehensively covering an important, complex era in Christianity that is often overlooked, this volume is a landmark contribution to the field.

One of the most interesting questions facing New Testament scholarsHow did Christianity emerge from Judaism?is often addressed in general and indirect terms. John Ashton argues that in the case of the Fourth Gospel, an answer is to be found in the religious experience of the Evangelist himself, who turned from being a practicing Jew to professing a new revelation centered on Christ as the intermediary between God and humanity.

At the origin of the Watchers tradition is the single enigmatic reference in Genesis 6 to the sons of God who had intercourse with human women, producing a race of giants upon the earth. That verse sparked a wealth of cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Here leading scholars explore the contours of the Watchers traditions through history, tracing their development through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings. This volume provides a lucid survey of current knowledge and interpretation of one of the most intriguing theological motifs of the Second Temple period.

Will man Christentum und Judentum heute verstehen, muss man an ihren gemeinsamen Anfang zurückgehen. Bis Anfang des 2. Jahrhunderts kannten die Mitglieder der christlichen Gemeinden nur Gesetz und Propheten als ihre heilige Schrift und zwar in aramäisch-hebräischer und griechischer Überlieferung. Die Neuheit ihres Glaubens, etwa an den neuen Bund, an die neue Schöpfung oder an das Handeln Gottes in Jesus von Nazareth, war eine innerjüdische Glaubenserfahrung. Dies zu begründen und die Folgerungen für den christlichen Glauben heute zu ziehen, ist Ziel dieses Buches.

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 Mujādalat 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) et al. 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. Jewish polemicists focused in particular on Jesus'portrayal as a human (e.g. as sleeping, hungry, and ignorant) and passages where he differentiates himself from God. Some of these arguments can be traced back to philosophical and heterodox dogmatic debates in antiquity, while others look surprisingly modern. The aim of the polemicists was to highlight what they saw as contradictions between Christian Scriptures and Christian beliefs.

Jesus was a Jew and not a Christian. That affirmation may seem obvious, but here an international cast of Jewish and Christian scholars spell out its weighty and often complex consequences for contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue. Soundings in the Religion of Jesus contextualizes Jesus and the writings about him that set the stage for Jewish-Christian relations for the next two thousand years.Of equal importance, this book considers the reception, celebration, and (too often) the neglect of Jesus'Jewishness in modern contexts and the impact such responses have had for Jewish-Christian relations. Topics explored include the ethics of scriptural translation, the ideological motives of Nazi theologians and other'quests'for the Historical Jesus, and the ways in which New Testament portraits of Jesus both help and hurt authentic Jewish-Christian dialogue.

In the wake of the Holocaust, a number of influential scholars argue for a «bi-covenantal» or «two-covenant» approach to Paul's view of Israel and the Gentiles. They maintain that Israel has always been right with God apart from Jesus Christ, and that the death of Jesus is salvifically relevant only for the Gentiles. Through Him the Gentiles can receive the same blessings the Jewish people possess by virtue of the Law of Moses. The Sonderweg proponents argue that the Jewish people need Jesus, but the future conversion of all Israel mentioned in Romans 11:25-27 takes place when the Lord himself preaches the gospel to Israel at the second coming. The church need not evangelize the Jewish people. But neither of these positions does justice to Paul's letters, where he teaches that the Jewish people need Jesus for their justification, and God will use the evangelistic efforts of the church to bring it about.

The Matthean Beatitudes in Their Jewish Origins: A Literary and Speech Act Analysis examines how Matthew used Jewish concepts as paradigmatic utterances for the Matthean community. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew was the most Jewish of the Synoptic Gospels, and Matthew's paradigm was the needed transition for understanding the role of the new community post-70 AD. The importance and role of Jewish concepts is evident in Matthew's work. More specifically, the literary nature of the Beatitudes demonstrates a composition that evolved from oral origins. Speech act theory is utilized to point out the oral features of the text as well as to reveal what Jesus did in his sayings. Moreover, a speech act model is presented and applied to the Beatitudes'pericope. Their significance lies in the authoritative utterances of Jesus. By employing speech act theory on the Beatitudes, the sayings of Jesus are investigated to illustrate the force of his eloquence on the Christian community.

'God Crucified'and Other Essays on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity The basic thesis of this important book on New Testament Christology, sketched in the first essay'God Crucified, is that the worship of Jesus as God was seen by the early Christians as compatible with their Jewish monotheism. Jesus was thought to participate in the divine identity of the one God of Israel. The other chapters provide more detailed support for, and an expansion of, this basic thesis. Readers will find not only the full text of Bauckham's classic book God Crucified, but also groundbreaking essays, some of which have never been published previously

This is a collection of twenty-four essays by Richard Bauckham first published between 1976 and 2008, some of which have been updated for this volume. Many aspects of the literature and thought of early Judaism are covered, including life after death, the provenance of the Pseudepigrapha, the Jewish apocalypses, the book of Tobit, the Horarium of Adam, and the Contra Apionem of Josephus. There are discussions of'the parting of the ways'between early Judaism and early Christianity and of the relevance of early Jewish literature for the study of the New Testament. Other essays throw light on specific aspects or texts of early Christianity by relating them to their early Jewish context. These include studies of the delay of the parousia, the restoration of Israel in Luke-Acts, and the use of Latin names by Paul and other Jews in the early Christian movement. The essays in this volume result from the author's conviction, throughout his career, that the New Testament texts can only be understood adequately through wide-ranging and detailed study of the Judaism of the late Second Temple period.

The period since the close of World War II has been agonizingly introspective—not least because of the pain of reassessing Christianity's attitude to Judaism. The early Christian materials have often been examined to assess their role in the long-standing negative attitude of Christians to Jews. The motivation for the early church's sometimes harsh attitude was partly theological—it needed to define itself over against its parent—and partly sociological—it needed to make clear the line that divided the fledgling group of Christian believers fromt he group with which it was most likely to be confused. This collection of studies emphasizes the context and history of early Christianity in reconsidering many of the classic passages that have contributed to the development of anti-Judaism in Christianity. The volume opens with an essay that clearly delineates the state of the question of anti-Judaism in early Christianity. Then follow discussions of specific passages in the writings of Paul as well as the Gospels.

En esta obra tenemos la información necesaria para comprender la cosmovisión monotíesta judía. Vemos que la idea de Jesús como Dios era perfectamente reconciliable con esa cosmovisión, y que la Cristología más temprana ya era la más elevada: Jesús es Dios. Tanto el Jesús exaltado, como el humano y crucificado pertenecen a la identidad única de Dios. Bauckham explica que esta visión tiene consecuencias importantes para la idea del Nuevo Testamento sobre Dios. La identidad divina de Jesús se encuentra tnato en su humillación, sufrimiento y muerte, como en su gloria celestial.

Twenty years on from its original appearance, this ground-breaking first volume in N. T. Wright's magisterial series,'Christian Origins and the Question of God', still stands as a major point of reference for students of the New Testament and early Christianity. This latest impression has been completely reset to make Wright's elegant and engrossing text more readable.'The sweep of Wright's project as a whole is breathtaking. It is impossible to give a fair assessment of his achievement without sounding grandiose: no New Testament scholar since Bultmann has even attempted - let alone achieved - such an innovative and comprehensive account of New Testament history and theology.'Richard B. Hays

It makes no sense to do theological work in an ivory tower. The necessity of defining the concept'people of God'may be illustrated by at least four elements of present-day experience: the baffling fate and often shocking politics of the State of Israel since the six-day war in 1967; the anti-Jewish elements which still shame many books written for the church, and many Christian declarations about Israel; the stuttering progress in matters of Jewish-Christian unity; and, finally, the need for a united and unequivocal testimony to Jesus Christ who is a Jew and the Son of God, and as such the saviour of the world. Markus Barth combines Pauline exegesis, church history and dogmatics in this provocative contribution to an important contemporary debate.

The Gospel accounts of the transfiguration of Jesus continue to puzzle the average reader. The purpose of this book is to address some of the perplexing issues surrounding the event, and to explain the significance of the transfiguration, particularly in Matthew's Gospel. It demonstrates that Matthew's account of the event is to be seen in the context of first-century controversy between Christians and Jews about Jesus and Moses, with the Jews emphasizing Moses'greatness and Matthew portraying the transfiguration within Moses-Sinai categories and also in terms of the enigmatic Son of Man figure in Daniel 7. Possible influence of the transfiguration event is also seen elsewhere, particularly in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, where, the author argues, Paul uses his Damascus road experience as a counter to his opponents'emphasis on the law and Peter's witness to Jesus'transfiguration.

This collection of essays is presented in honour of John C. Hurd on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of New Testament at Trinity College, Toronto, and in recognition of a distinguished career in the fields of Pauline studies and computing in the humanities. Given Professor Hurd's interest in Christian origins and methodology, it is appropriate that the contributors to this volume deal with the origin and development of various aspects of Judaism and Christianity. In particular they highlight how a greater attentiveness to method has resulted in a reshaping of our understanding of Christianity or Judaism. The volume is divided into three parts:'New Understandings of Paul','New Understandings of the New Testament', and'New Understandings of the Relationship between Judaism and Christianity'. Contributors include Walter Aufrecht, Karl Donfried, Robert Grant, John Kloppenborg, Gerd Ludemann and Wayne McCready.