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In this collection of essays, Australian ancient historian and biblical scholar, James R. Harrison, compares aspects of today’s cult of celebrity, fuelled by various media, to the quest for glory in Roman antiquity. This was a quest characterised by the constant self-advertisement of the Roman nobility, who were so keen not only to equal the glory of their ancestors, but to surpass it. Against the backdrop of this well-attested quest for ancestral and personal glory, Harrison examines how the “shame of the cross overturns the deeply entrenched Graeco-Roman culture of esteem and, in a surprising case of social levelling, establishes humility as its crowning virtue for the great man and his dependents” (vi). This leads to the question of how this “cultural collision, still reverberating today, affected the civic ethics of Paul’s converts, their communal ethos and paradigms of group identity, their pedagogical curriculum, and their understanding of honour and dishonour?” (vi). In addition to the introductory and concluding chapters, Harrison has added three new studies (chapters 2, 3, and 6) for this collection. Five previous studies have been updated to emphasise their contribution to an understanding of how the cross of Christ effected moral transformation in the face of the self-assertive values espoused by the luminaries of the ancient celebrity circuit (vi).

(2021). The Eucharist—Its Origins and Context. Vols II and III, edited by David Hellholm and Dieter Sanger. Journal of Early Christian History. Ahead of Print.

This article surveys subjects and questions in New Testament scholarship in the context of which scholars refer to the translocal links among early Christian communities and the people who embody t...

Danna Nolan Fewell (editor). The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative. Christoph Stenschke Stephan Anthony Cummins & Jens Zimmermann (editors), Acts of Interpretation: Scripture, Theology and Culture. Pieter van der Zwan Hemchand Gossai (editor), Postcolonial Commentary and the Old Testament. Pieter van der Zwan

This article traces some of the trajectories of the Deuteronomic announcement of a ‘prophet like Moses’. After examining its meaning in the immediate context, the article first traces references to this figure in early Jewish sources. It then examines how Jesus is portrayed as the prophet of Deuteronomy 18 in the Gospels. What is meant when people ask whether Jesus could be the prophet? Would he himself identify with this figure through word and deed? What implications would such an identification have had for his contemporaries? Why does this designation only appear rarely outside of the Gospels? A further trajectory is the quotation of Deuteronomy 18:15,19 in Acts 3:22–23. What is meant by Peter’s identification of Jesus as the prophet like Moses? What does Peter link with the acceptance and rejection of this prophet? How has Luke altered the text of Deuteronomy in the application of this prediction to Jesus? The article closes with a summary and suggests implications for the understanding of early Christian rhetoric, of Israel’s response and of prophets in today’s church and society. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article is placed within the discipline of biblical studies and Jewish studies (for the reception history in early Judaism). An in-depth study of the reception of the Deuteronomic prophet like Moses in Acts 3, where the prediction is explicitly quoted and declared to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, reveals how this reference functions for the Christology of Acts, its proclamation of the Gospel and its understanding of Israel. Those revering Moses must now listen to Jesus. To reject Jesus means to forfeit one’s membership in the people of God. This challenges studies which do not pay sufficient attention to this claim.

Sneed, Mark R. (ed.), Was There a Wisdom Tradition: New Perspectives in Israelite Wisdom Studies. 325 + xi pages. Paperback. ISBN 978-1-6283-7099-7; R623.00. Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015. Mirjam Zimmermann, Ruben Zimmermann (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Bibeldidaktik. UTB (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). Xviii + 748 S., kartoniert. ISBN 978-3-8252-3996-1. 40 Euro Johanna Stiebert. First-Degree Incest and the Hebrew Bible. Sex in the Family. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. 228 pages, hard cover, price £59.90. ISBN 978-0-5676-0033-2.

(2018). Peter between Jerusalem and Antioch: Peter, James and the Gentiles, by Jack J. Gibson. Journal of Early Christian History: Vol. 8, Retrieving the Voices of Female Sages in the New Testament and Early Christianity, pp. 112-116.

James, Joshua T. 2017. The Storied Ethics of the Thanksgiving Psalms (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 658). London – New York, NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. 161 Pages. Hardcover. ISBN 978-0-5676-7521-7. John Goldingay. Reading Jesus’s Bible: How the New Testament Helps Us Understand the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. 262 pages, soft cover, $ 24.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-7364-4. Mirjam Zimmermann, Ruben Zimmermann (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Bibeldidaktik. UTB (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). Xviii + 748 S., kartoniert. ISBN 978-3-8252-3996-1. 40 Euro

(2019). Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 16, Lectionary–Lots. Journal of Early Christian History: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 97-99.

(2019). Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 14, Jesus–Kairos, edited by Christine Helmer, Steven L. McKenzie, Thomas Romer, Jens Schroter, Barry Dov Walfish and Eric Ziolkowski. Journal of Early Christian History: Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 94-96.

Wolfgang Schütte, Israels Exil in Juda: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung der Schriftprophetie Benjamin Kilchör William S. Morrow. An Introduction to Biblical Law Christoph Stenschke James, Joshua T. The Storied Ethics of the Thanksgiving Psalms Beat Weber

(2017). Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. Vol. 13, Integrity–Jesuit Order. Journal of Early Christian History: Vol. 7, Festschrift for J. L. P. (Hansie) Wolmarans: Part 1, pp. 116-120.