Bücher der Reihe Studies in Biblical Literature

Throughout history, the Fourth Gospel has been an enigma to its readers, and most notably in the way that it shapes its characters. Although traditional approaches to gospel characterization have often confined its characters to the pages of the text, The Voices of the Fourth Gospel presents a fresh, interdisciplinary approach that reveals the characterizations of the Fourth Gospel as vibrant, literary products based on eyewitness testimony of their encounters with Jesus of Nazareth. As such, the characters of the Fourth Gospel emerge as unique "voices" that speak to both the realities of their narrative world and the context of the emerging Christian community in Ephesus at the end of the first century. Based on the Fourth Gospel¿s chronological and geographical distinctions, The Voices of the Fourth Gospel challenges its readers to hear the voices of each character from the historical memory of the Johannine church through five character case-studies: (1) the Disciple whom Jesus Loved, (2) Jesus of Nazareth, (3) John the Baptist, (4) Nicodemus, and (5) the Samaritan woman. Written for scholars, pastors, and serious students of Scripture, The Voices of the Fourth Gospel is an ideal source for readers who seek to better understand the Fourth Gospel from within its own cultural world.

The definition of silence is essential to the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 14:34¿35. What did Paul mean when he silenced women in church? In Paul, Women, and the Meaning of Silence, author Alex S. Carr compares the Greek verb Paul used for silence with other ancient Greek sources containing the same term. Through this comparison, he demonstrates consistency within 1 Corinthians and the other Pauline letters. Through comparison with other passages in the New Testament, Carr also demonstrates that these passages do not contradict the type of silence in 1 Corinthians 14.Paul, Women, and the Meaning of Silence further considers cultural and historical contextual issues, including women¿s education and speech in the Greco-Roman world. This book will assist Bible scholars, pastors, and theological students in navigating some of key interpretive issues in 1 Corinthians. Scholars seeking to locate primary source material will especially profit. Pastors will find an explanation of various views as they preach and teach on the subject. The book is one of the most extensive discussions of this challenging New Testament passage on women in the church. "In what is possibly the most thorough examination of 1 Corinthians 14:34¿35 to date, Alex Carr offers an insightful discussion of the history of research, literary context, historical context, and theological context of this debated text. His knowledge of the topic is vast, his arguments cogent, and his conclusion persuasive. Carr¿s research will topple several of the popular theories and become the work with which all future scholarship simply must engage."¿Charles L. Quarles, Research Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology; Charles Page Chair of Biblical Theology, Southeastern Seminary "After decades of debate and libraries of books on the ministry of women, Alex Carr¿s study shows there are new insights still to be had from examining the biblical texts afresh. Paul, Women, and the Meaning of Silence demonstrates that lexical, literary, historical, and theological factors weigh against Paul¿s command in 1 Corinthians 14:34 demanding ¿absolute silence¿ of women. Instead, Carr shows that Paul¿s command enjoins women to temporary silence during a specific time in the church gathering, namely, during the weighing of prophecies. His findings support the authenticity of the text and shed light on the contribution and participation of women in the first century church and today."¿Claire S. Smith, Author of Pauline Communities as ¿Scholastic Communities¿: A Study of the Vocabulary of ¿Teaching¿ in 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (2012) "1 Corinthians 14:34¿35 at first glance appears to silence all women in church, yet 11:5 permits them to pray and prophesy if their heads are covered. A plethora of approaches has developed both to affirm and deny that this is an irreconcilable contradiction. But Alex Carr deftly guides his readers through the maze of options that scholars have developed, showing there is no contradiction at all. A welcome addition to a crowded field of studies."¿Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of New Testament, Denver Seminary

The concept of subordination plays a prominent role in the paranesis of 1 Peter, and it appears too in the context of Christ's victory over the cosmic powers.

Formative Feasting will be of special interest to researchers, students, and church leaders interested in moral formation and the Bible, as well as those interested in feasting and eating in Scripture.

Across the Psalter, the movement "from laments of individuals to praises of nations," among other movements, are not in linear but progressive parallel patterns and cross over the fivefold doxological division.

This book takes a narrative-critical approach to the meaning and function of debate in the Gospel of Mary.

Ccompares the moral system in the Epistle of James with other Greco-Roman and Judaic texts. In this analysis, the author's systemic comparison of texts reveals how the author's vision of a distinctive way of community life was both part of and distinct from the moral and religious systems among which it emerged.

This book argues that invocations of YHWH have a number of functions in 1 Kings 1-2, with the function of characters' invocations being particularly dependent on the identities of the characters, their relationships, and the narrative contexts in which they participate.

This book breaks fresh ground in the interpretation of the Apocalypse with an interdisciplinary methodology called aural-performance criticism that assesses how the first-century audience would have heard the Apocalypse.

This landmark study of the literary relationship between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels presents compelling evidence for the existence of a written pre-canonical Alpha gospel that contained almost all of the main episodes in the adult life of Jesus and which became the written source for the core biography of Jesus in all four gospels.

The central aim of Water as an Image of the Spirit in the Johannine Literature is to propose two sets of indicators that can be used to assess the symbolic reference of water imagery in the Johannine literature. The validity of these indicators is demonstrated by applying them to six disputed water passages.

This book pays special attention to the hermeneutical location where the fig-tree story appears in Mark 11.

Reading Green: Tactical Considerations for Reading the Bible Ecologically operates on the premise that the Bible itself does not directly address the current ecological crisis and that expecting it to do so is anachronistic, for there was no ecological crisis on the agendas of biblical authors as they penned their works.

This book investigates the Matthean use of bread and the breaking of bread in light of cognitive conceptual metaphor, which are not only intertwined within Matthew's narrative plots but also function to represent Matthew's communal identity and ideological vision.

This book shifts the focus of biblical stories about David from historicity to popular culture, suggesting their origins in popular heroic literature of the later monarchy and Persian period and comparing them with Homeric and Arthurian heroic literature. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

Canaan to Corinth

Ancient Near Eastern Literature and the Hebrew Scriptures About the Fatherhood of God discusses some of the main «father-god» concepts of the people of the Ancient Near East, then examines the eighteen occurrences of God¿s fatherhood specifically mentioned in Hebrew Scripture. From these sources, the book develops a theology of God¿s fatherhood that honors both ancient and modern scrutiny. Although many studies have explored the subject of the fatherhood of God ¿ mostly from the perspective of nonbiblical disciplines, and through the lens of Greco-Roman mythology ¿ this book takes into account the wealth of material from the ancient Near East, the birthplace of the Hebrew Scriptures.