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Bailey's extensive work within Middle Eastern peasant culture has helped him in his attempt to determine the cultural assumptions that the tellers of the parables must have made about his audience. The same values that informed the parables in Jesus' time, Bailey suggests, can be discovered today in isolated peasant communities in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. By plumbing the world views of these cultures, it is possible to discern, for example what it meant 2,000 years ago for a friend to come calling at midnight, or for a son to ask for his inheritance prior to his father's death. Through a combination of literary and cultural analyses, these studies make a number of profound advances in the interpretation of Jesus' parables.

In Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, this Pentecostal scholar has redefined the terms of the discussion about the Holy Spirit in a way that transcends today's paradigm of 'charismatic' or 'non-charismatic' orientation. His words are a strong reminder of what God, through his Holy Spirit, intends the church to be. . . . His work is an attempt to point us back to the Bible and reinvigorate our own vision of how the Spirit mobilizes the community of believers in the local church.

This highly original commentary seeks to make the Letter of James clear and applicable to Christian living today. Interacting with the latest views on James but keeping academic references to a minimum, Douglas Moo first introduces the Letter of James in its historical context and then provides verse-by-verse comments that explain the message of James both to its' first readers and to today's church.