Bücher der Reihe Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

It has often been suggested that Luke's two volumes were written as an apology for Christianity, to demonstrate to the Roman authorities that the new faith was not a dangerous and subversive innovation. From an investigation of Luke - Acts, particularly the trials of Jesus and Paul.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the basic structures of Matthew's and Paul's ethics, rather than to deal in detail with their teaching on specific moral issues. Dr Mohrlang discusses their perspectives and gives special attention to the question of ethical motivation.

St Paul and his contemporaries - so runs a commonly accepted scholarly opinion - inhabited a world believed to be dominated by hostile superhuman powers, of whom Jews and Gentiles alike liked in fear. Dr Carr concludes that the notion of mighty forces of evil ranged against man was not part of the earliest Christian understanding of the world and the gospel.

The New Testament narratives reporting the resuscitation of dead persons by Jesus and Peter are discussed in detail in this monograph, and their theology is examined. His analysis leads the author to the hypothesis that neither Jesus nor Peter in fact brought the dead to life.

This study first examines the concept of the Son of man against its Jewish background and then details the most important Son of man sayings attributed to Jesus in the first three Gospels. The book concludes that some of the sayings originated not in the creative thought of early Christians but in the preaching of Jesus himself.

Dr McDonald studies the fundamental structures and procedures of Christian communication. He explores what lies behind each of them as well as the way they are used by Jesus and the early Church. Both kerygmatic and didactic features are found in all of these structures.

This book offers a thesis about the interests underlying the Epistle. Dr Hughes argues that the major concern of the author has been to achieve a theological understanding of the relationship between the now out-moded forms and institutions of Old Testament worship and those of the distinctively new (yet not unrelated) Christian faith in which he now finds himself.

Dr Pryke tests syntactically unusual features from the text of St Mark's Gospel to see if they are mainly source material or redactional. Appendixes include further analyse and a complete redactional Greek text. Dr Pryke's methods and conclusions will be of great interest to those concerned with linguistic studies of New Testament texts.

A study of the communal worship and private prayers of the early Christian Church, in particular the intercessory prayer passages in Paul's seven epistles. Professor Wiles is concerned to discover what these prayers reveal about Paul's ministry and his apostolic strategy.

An important contribution to our understanding of Marcan irony, and combines a literary-critical approach with insights gained from the sociology of knowledge.

A study of the authenticity and interpretation of the last twelve verses of St Mark's Gospel, which have been omitted or queried in most modern translations. Professor Farmer traces the history of the text tradition, reviews the textual and patristic evidence and examines the most plausible solutions that have been canvassed.

This book attempts to make a contribution to the New Testament doctrine of the Spirit, with special reference to the paraclete problem. Dr Johnston begins with the use of the word 'spirit' in the Gospel of John and treats it as primarily 'impersonal'. It denotes divine power or energy. God acts by his spirit, both to create and to redeem.

An investigation into to what extent textual variants in the New Testament were caused by dogmatic interference with the text.

This book examines the historical data related to the suffering imposed on Christians and evaluates Matthew's portrayal of the persecutions.

John D. Moores engages with the most significant riddles displayed in the complex argumentation of Romans 1-8. Viewing Paul as he does against the background of semiology (especially the theory of Umberto Eco), his 1995 book combines literary theory and classical logic to put an entirely new complexion on Paul's rationality.

Jesus and Israel's Traditions of Judgement and Restoration examines the eschatology of Jesus by evaluating his appropriation of sacred traditions related to Israel's restoration. It addresses the way in which Jesus' future expectations impinged upon his understanding of key features of Jewish society. Scholars have long debated the degree to which Jesus' eschatology can be said to have been realized. This 2002 book considers Jesus' expectations regarding key constitutional features of the eschaton: the shape of the people of God, purity, Land and Temple. Bryan shows that Jesus' anticipation of coming national judgement led him to use Israel's sacred traditions in ways that differed significantly from their use by his contemporaries. This did not lead Jesus to the conviction that Israel's restoration had been delayed. Instead he employed Israel's traditions to support a different understanding of restoration and a belief that the time of restoration had arrived.

Mathews explores John's language of wealth in the book of Revelation, arguing that his rejection of affluence was shaped by ideas in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. It will interest those researching wealth and poverty in early Christian communities and students of Johannine theology and Jewish apocalyptic literature.

This book examines Paul's response to the financial help he received from the Philippians whilst he was a prisoner in Rome. The first study to look at this difficult text in the context of Greek and Roman practices of gift exchange, it sheds valuable new light on Paul's attitude to Christian giving and on his financial dealings with his churches.

This book makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate about the authorship of the Pastoral letters. Arguing the conventional opinion - that the Pastorals were written by a disciple of Paul's - Dr Miller suggests that the letters are composite documents based upon brief, but genuine, Pauline notes written to Timothy and Titus.

The interesting and original thesis of this book is that Luke's overriding concern seems to have been to show that Paul - the hero of his work - was a man of high social status and moral virtue when in point of fact he probably was not.

Dr Collange provides solutions to these problems on a detailed study of 2,14 - 7,4. He argues that the obscurities of the Epistle can be explained by the particular circumstances of its composition; Paul's use of more primitive Christian materials gives us a measure of his own originality and genius. This book should be of interest to all New Testament scholars.

Guerra illuminates one of the most significant writings in western religious history, and shows how classical Greek and hellenistic philosophical/ethical traditions have informed Romans - especially the protreptic genre, or the class of writing in antiquity which advocates the adoption of a particular way of life.

n this widely-acclaimed study, Dr Esler extensively uses sociology and anthropology to examine the author of Luke Acts' theology as a response to social and political pressures upon the ancient Christian community. This study will interest those concerned with prevalent developments in New Testament scholarship.

This book, first published in 1997, examines the influence of angelology on the christology of the Apocalypse of John. It argues that in the Apocalypse Jesus has the form and the function of an angel, but is also clearly portrayed as divine. This dual representation upholds monotheism while providing a means for Jesus to be present in visible form to his Church.

This study puts forward the ingenious thesis that Luke left Acts unfinished at his death, and that the work of his posthumous editors has led to the existence of the two versions of Acts which appear in our manuscripts.

Luke is considered the first historian of Christianity, but his reliability is vigorously disputed among scholars. Daniel Marguerat avoids this true/false quagmire by setting his evaluation of Luke's talent as a historian firmly within the framework of ancient historiography, the rules of ancient historians and narrative criticism.

Women in the Ministry of Jesus is a study of both of Jesus' attitudes towards women as reflected in his words and deeds, and of the women who were part of his ministry, or who interacted with him according to the Gospel accounts.

We are used to the idea of people believing in Christ, but did the early church consider that Jesus also had faith in God? This book evaluates the evidence for the early church's interest in Jesus as a man of faith, and traces its development through the first four Christian centuries.

This book offers a new contribution to an important debate by comprehensively addressing alternative hypotheses regarding the origin of divine Christology, the evidence of widespread agreement among the earliest Christians concerning the divinity of Christ, and issues related to whether Jesus' intention was falsified.

The book will be of interest to all scholars and students within the fields of biblical studies and theology. It offers a fresh and satisfying solution to the notorious crux of Romans 7 - the identity of the 'I' - and contributes to our understanding of both the apostle Paul's thought and of Christian theology.