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In this article, the author responds to the criticism by Iverson for the article titled "Oral Fixation and New Testament Studies" on the origin and use of texts in early Christian circles. Topics discussed include discipline and movement, interplay of texts and orality in Greco-Roman Period, minority and social diversity.

This study surveys the numerous and diverse powers and authorities to which the gospel is addressed in Luke-Acts, including major Jewish institutions and officials, Herodian rulers, Roman military officers, Greco-Roman officials, diverse officials, and pagan cults and supernatural powers. Well over half the references to authorities in Luke-Acts occur nowhere else in the New Testament. The frequent and diverse references to powers defend Christianity in a preliminary and obvious way from charges of political sedition. In a broader and more important way, however, they redefine power itself according to the standard of the gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a widespread assumption in Acts' scholarship that the Ethiopian eunuch is an elite official who reflects Luke's larger interest in high-status individuals. Such an assumption, however, overlooks the inextricable connection between status, gender and ethnicity in the Greco-Roman world, and how the eunuch's repeated designation as ‘the eunuch’ would have affected his status in particular. This article thus problematises the depiction of the eunuch as an elite convert by contextualising the eunuch's identification as both a ‘eunuch’ (εὐνοῦχος) and an ‘Ethiopian’ (Αἰθίοψ). Overall, the eunuch is an ambiguous figure who embodies the boundary-crossing nature of the gospel itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Deals with the use of the phrase 'thief in the night' in some New Testament passages as an image for the imminent parousia of Christ. Practice of house burglary in the Greco-Roman world; Variations in responses of groups of people to the image of burglar; Socio-rhetorical significance of the phrase.

Analyzes the deliberative rhetorics of New Testament's Galatians influenced by techniques from the Greco-Roman civilization. Description of an argumentative form called `topos' prevalent in ancient apocalyptic works; Elucidation of the Galatians' logical development; Elements of the Galatians' argumentative tone; Saint Paul's formulation of juridical arguments in the Galatians.