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418 results in Biblical studies - New testament

Page 1 of 21

Paul's Letter Openings
  • An Analysis of High-register Language
  • Gillian Asquith
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2026
    Print publication:
    28 February 2026
  • Interest in the relationship between Paul's letter openings and Koine Greek letter-writing conventions has been steady for over a century, but little new data has emerged in recent years. In this study, Gillian Asquith offers a fresh perspective on Paul's epistolary practice by adopting a multidisciplinary method that synthesises sociolinguistics and lexicography. Comparing the language of Paul's letter openings with the register of language in documentary papyri, she demonstrates that high-register language in Koine Greek epistolary formulae contributes to warm and friendly relations between correspondents. Asquith argues that Paul creatively modifies epistolary norms by using unexpected, high-register language in the remembrance motif and litotic disclosure formula. Such usage, she posits, emphatically reassures Paul's recipients of his pastoral concern for them and heightens the persuasive force of his letters. Asquith's nuanced analysis contributes valuable new data to long-running debates around Paul's practice of prayer and the structure of his letters.

The Epistles of John
  • Origins, Authorship, Purpose
  • Hugo Mendez
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • For centuries, Christians believed that the biblical letters of 1, 2, and 3 John were penned by a disciple of Jesus. Today, scholars speculate that the three are artifacts of a lost 'Johannine Community.' In this groundbreaking study, however, Hugo Méndez challenges both paradigms, meticulously laying out the evidence that the Epistles are, instead, a series of falsely authored works. The texts position themselves as works by a single author. In reality, they were penned by three different writers in a chain of imitation, creative adaptation, and invention. Through incisive, close readings of the Epistles, Méndez clarifies their meaning and purpose, demystifying their most challenging sections. And by placing these works in dialogue with Greco-Roman pseudo-historical writing, he uncovers surprising links between Classical and early Christian literature. Bold, comprehensive, and deeply original, this book dismantles older scholarly views while proposing new and exciting approaches to these enigmatic texts.

Early Christianity and the Challenge of Writing History
  • Insights from Retrospective Approaches
  • Markus Vinzent
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2026
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • What is the biggest challenge for the writing of early Christian history? As Markus Vinzent suggests in this study, it is not the interpretation of material evidence. Rather, it is the interpreter herself or himself. Unlike most historical studies, which aim at keeping to sources, facts, and close readings of texts as objectively as possible, Vinzent here offers a new approach: autobiographical historiography and personal methodological reflection, including test cases that advocate transparency, courage, and willingness to be challenged. He takes the reader on a journey through the notions of 'space', 'space in-between', 'the argument from silence', 'cognitive historiography' and 'evolution', 'time', 'scholarship', 'evidence/fact', 'tradition' and 'future'. Proposing a contemporary, post-postmodern reading of history that goes far beyond the field of Early Christianity, Vinzent's anachronological study interrogates traditional historical approaches and challenges both conservative and progressive scholars and students to contradict, engage with, and argue over established interpretations of events.

Augustine's Theology of Justification by Faith
  • Christopher R. Mooney
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • Other than Paul, no writer has had greater influence on the theology of justification than Augustine. This landmark study fills an astonishing lacuna in scholarship, offering the first comprehensive study of Augustine's theology of justification. Bringing an innovative approach to the topic, Christopher Mooney follows Augustine's own insistence that justification in Scripture is impossible to define apart from a precise understanding of faith. He argues that Augustine came to distinguish three distinct senses of faith, which are motivated by fear, hope, or love. These three types of faith result in very different accounts of justification. To demonstrate this insight, Mooney offers a developmental reading of Augustine, from his earliest to his latest writings, with special focus on the nature of justification, faith, hope, baptism, Augustine's reading of Paul, the Pelagian controversy, and Christology. Clear and engaging, Mooney's study of Augustine also illuminates numerous related issues, such as his theology of grace, the virtues, biblical exegesis, and the sacraments.

Christology and Ethics in Galatians
  • Love and the Shared Self
  • Logan Williams
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • Pauline scholars have misconstrued key features of Paul's portrayal of love by arguing that Paul idealises self-sacrifice and 'altruism'. In antiquity, ideal loving behaviour was intended to construct a relationship of shared selves with shared interests; by contrast, modern ethics has rejected this notion of love and selfhood. In this study, Logan Williams explores Paul's Christology and ethics beyond the egoism-altruism dichotomy. He provides a fresh evaluation of self-giving language in Greek literature and shows that 'gave himself' is not a fixed phrase for self-sacrifice. In Galatians, for example, self-giving languages depict Jesus' love as an act of self-gifting. By re-evaluating the apostle's description of Christ's loving action, Williams demonstrates that Paul portrays Jesus' loving action as his positive participation in the condition of others. He also interrogates the ethics in Galatians and shows that Paul's love-ethics encourage the Galatians not to sacrifice themselves for others but to share themselves with others.

The Narrative Conflict of Traditions in the Late Antique World
  • Cyril versus Julian
  • Brad Boswell
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 November 2025
  • Intellectual conflict between Early Christians and pagans was not uncommon during the first centuries of the Christian era, as is amply reflected in writings from this period. In this study, Brad Boswell deepens our understanding of the nature and aims of such conflict through a study of two key texts: Against the Galileans, by Roman Emperor Julian 'the Apostate,' and Against Julian, by bishop Cyril of Alexandria written nearly a century later. Drawing from Alasdair MacIntyre's  philosophy of conflict between traditions, he explores how both texts were an exercise in 'narrative conflict' whose aim was to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of their respective traditions' narrative. Acknowledging the shared cultural formation between a pagan like Julian and a Christian like Cyril, Boswell challenges interpretive models emphasizing the points of commonality between the traditions. He offers a fresh approach to Julian's anti-Christian writings, provides the foundational  analysis of Cyril's little-studied treatise, and invites reconsideration of the emerging Christian tradition within its intellectual contexts.

2 Peter
  • A. Chadwick Thornhill
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • This commentary on the second epistle of Peter offers a fresh examination of a key New Testament text. Relying on newly available research, A. Chadwick Thornhill brings a multi-pronged approach to his study through his use of a range of methods including narrative theology, and historical, social, cultural, literary, rhetorical, discourse, and linguistic analysis. Thornhill challenges existing paradigms pertaining to the composition of 2 Peter, asks new questions regarding authorship and genre, and revisits the identification of the text as a pseudonymous testament, as it has most recently been understood. His study enables new insights into the letter's message as it would have been understood in its ancient context. Written in an accessible style, Thornhill's commentary concludes by offering reflections on 2 Peter's contributions to the theology of the New Testament and its relevance for the late modern world.

The Secret Book of John
  • M. David Litwa
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2025
    Print publication:
    31 October 2025
  • In this volume, David Litwa offers a fresh introduction to the 'gnostic Bible,' arguably the most significant and widely read of all gnostic Christian texts ever written. Providing a fresh introduction to a particular version of the Secret Book of John, namely the shorter version that is found in Nag Hammadi Codex III, his study includes a new translation of this text and an extensive commentary in which he introduces the notable features of this codex and interrogates whether the Secret Book emerged from an actual gnostic community. Litwa also posits solutions to many questions related to this text, notably: its date and find spot, its relationship to the treatise known and summarized by Irenaeus in the late second century, its interpretation and re-creation of the book of Genesis for Christian readers, its novel interpretation of Greco-Roman philosophy, its foundations in apostolic authority, and the reception of the Secret Book of John in late antiquity, well into the fifth century CE.

The Gospel of Truth
  • Francis Watson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • The Gospel of Truth is an early Christian homily in which an anonymous and independent-minded teacher communicates his understanding of the core Christian message to his own immediate circle and a wider audience elsewhere. For this author, the gospel is the good news that in the person of Jesus, the divine Father has made himself known to his elect, calling them out of a nightmare-like existence in ignorance and illusion into the knowledge of himself. In this volume, Francis Watson provides a new and accessible translation of this text, along with a thorough analysis of it, both in its own terms and in its reception by later readers. He argues that its closest affinities lie with New Testament texts such as the Gospel of John and the Pauline letters. Watson also demonstrates how The Gospel of Truth is a work of literary quality and theological originality and why it deserves the attention of all students and scholars of early Christianity.

The Life of Jesus in the Writings of Origen of Alexandria
  • Samuel B. Johnson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • Origen of Alexandria stands at the headwaters of the entire history of Gospel reading. In this study of the earliest extant Gospel commentaries, Samuel Johnson explores questions, often associated with modern Gospel criticism, that were already formative of the first moments of the Christian interpretative tradition. Origen's approach to the Gospels in fact arose from straightforward historical and literary critical judgments: the Gospel narratives interweave things that happened with things that did not. Origen discerned that the Gospels depict events in Jesus's life not merely as matters of historical fact, but also figuratively. He did not just interpret the Gospels allegorically. Johnson demonstrates that Origen believed the Gospel writers themselves were figurative readers of the life of Jesus. Origen thus found no contradiction between discerning the truth of the Christian Gospels and facing the critical challenges of their literary form and formation. Johnson's study shows how they constitute a single unified vision.

The Theology of the Gospel of John
  • Alicia D. Myers
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025
  • In this volume, Alicia Myers applies a narrative approach to the theology of the Gospel of John, which presents Jesus's coming as the climactic and transformative revelation of God in the world. Placing her study in the context of past and current approaches to John's theology, she explores theological themes with an eye toward the rhetorical categories and aims of the Gospel. These themes include: John's use of Scripture in its presentation of God, Jesus's characterization as the unique one who reveals God's will, the presentation of the world in need of rescue through purification and exorcism, and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit among the community of believers. Myers argues that John reframes other Gospel traditions and provided important fodder for early Christians debates. Contemporary readers inherit John's complicated legacy, including its apocalyptic view of liberation that relies on and undermines Jewish perspectives that do not recognize Jesus as God's Son and Christ.

The Theology of the Letter to the Galatians
  • Bruce Longenecker
  • Published online:
    07 August 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025
  • In his letter to the Galatians, Paul sets out an astute vision of what God has done in Christ against the backdrop of a world out-of-joint, a world engulfed in identity-distorting domination systems. Theologically profound and prophetically challenging, Galatians showcases God's initiative to empower liberation from those systems and their relational toxicity. For Paul, the union of Christ with his followers fosters flourishing forms of relational life that testify to the sovereign power of God over all competing forces. In The Theology of Galatians, respected New Testament scholar Bruce Longenecker cuts through the complexity of a notoriously opaque text, disentangling and interpreting Paul's discourse to reveal its multifaceted cosmology, its comprehensive coherence, and its penetrating analysis humanity and the divine. Offering a new interpretation of Galatians, his volume synthesizes the best of four main interpretative alternatives, finding new solutions to scholarly gridlock.

The Apocalypse of the Birds
  • 1 Enoch and the Jewish Revolt against Rome
  • Elena L. Dugan
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2023
  • This book identifies a new apocalyptic work-the Apocalypse of the Birds-contained in the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85-90), and argues that it is born of the chaotic Jewish-Christian world of the first-century CE. Through close analysis of texts and manuscripts in Ge'ez, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, alongside historical and numismatic evidence, the book situates the Apocalypse of the Birds alongside literature and historiography of the first-century CE. It argues that the Apocalypse of the Birds belongs to the heady early days of the First Jewish Revolt, and represents crucial evidence for the early optimism of the revolutionaries, the dynamic and progressive evolution of the Animal Apocalyptic tradition, and the blurred and porous boundaries between Jew and Jesus-follower in the first-century CE.

Luke's Unique Parables
  • Genesis Narratives and Interpretations of Jesus
  • Calum Carmichael
  • Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    06 March 2025
  • Calum Carmichael presents a new perspective on how parables unique to Luke's Gospel were composed. These parables took up moral issues that arose out of conflicts among figures such as Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Judah and Tamar as portrayed in Genesis narratives. Providing literary and linguistic analyses, Carmichael demonstrates how Luke, like many of his contemporaries, absorbed the narrative legacy of the Hebrew Bible and used it to express ideas about Jesus. The Joseph story was of particular interest to Luke because Joseph's role during the Egyptian famine resulted in the rescue of his family, thereby giving the Israelite nation a future. Carmichael's radically different approach identifies the influence of ancestral wrongdoing on how Luke portrayed Jesus' moral teaching.

The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Narrative
  • Edited by Keith Bodner
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Narrative offers an overview and a concise introduction to an exciting field within literary interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. Analysis of biblical narrative has enjoyed a resurgence in recent decades, and this volume features essays that explore many of the artistic techniques that readers encounter in an array of texts. Specially commissioned for this volume, the chapters analyze various scenes in Genesis, Exodus and the wilderness wanderings, Israel's experience in the land and royal experiment in Kings and Chronicles, along with short stories like Ruth, Jonah, Esther, and Daniel. New Testament essays examine each of the four gospels, the book of Acts, stories from the letters of Paul, and reading for the plot in the book of Revelation. Designed for use in undergraduate and graduate courses, this Companion will serve as an excellent resource for instructors and students interested in understanding and interpreting biblical narrative.

Jesus and the Visibility of God
  • Sight and Belief in the Fourth Gospel
  • Luke Irwin
  • Published online:
    18 January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • Although scholars have debated the link between empirical senses and belief in the Gospel of John, few have queried their own presuppositions about the invisibility of God. In this study, Luke Irwin establishes the value of God's physical incarnation for belief, arguing that the theological nature of belief derives from a God who makes himself physically visible in the world. Irwin builds on recent work on divine embodiment in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and illuminates the Jewish context for John's Gospel. He also explains John's understanding of 'seeing' as a positive component of belief-formation and resolves the Johannine relationship between 'seeing' and 'believing'. Showing how God is the ultimate target of belief, Irwin argues that unless God becomes physically visible in Jesus, belief cannot be attained.

Human Salvation in Early Christianity
  • Exploring the Theology of Physicalist Soteriology
  • Ellen Scully
  • Published online:
    09 January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • Human salvation has been at the heart of Christian theological debate ever since the earliest centuries of Christianity. In this period, some Christians argued that because all of humanity falls in Adam, the incarnation of Christ, who is the second Adam, must also have a universal effect. Ellen Scully here presents the first historical study of Early Christian theology regarding physicalist soteriology, a logic by which Christ's incarnation has universal effects independent of individual belief or consent. Analyzing the writings of Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and Maximus the Confessor, she offers an overview of the historical rise and fall of the theological logic of physicalist soteriology. Scully also provides an analysis of how Early Christian theological debates concerning ascetism and ensoulment models have caused Christian narratives of salvation history to become individualistic, and suggests how a contemporary study of physicalist soteriology can help reverse this trend.

The Letters of Paul in their Roman Literary Context
  • Reassessing Apostolic Authorship
  • Nina E. Livesey
  • Published online:
    05 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • Since the late-nineteenth century, scholars have all but concluded that the Apostle Paul authored six authentic community letters (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonian) and one individual letter to Philemon. In this book, by contrast, Nina E. Livesey argues that this long-held interpretation has been inadequately substantiated and theorized. In her groundbreaking study, Livesey reassesses the authentic perspective and, based on her research, reclassifies the letters as pseudonymous and letters-in-form-only. Like Seneca with his Moral Epistles, authors of Pauline letters extensively exploited the letter genre for its many rhetorical benefits to promote disciplinary teachings. Based on the types of issues addressed and the earliest known evidence of a collection, Livesey dates the letters' emergence to the mid-second century and the Roman school of Marcion. Her study significantly revises the understanding of Christian letters and conceptions of early Christianity, as it likewise reflects the benefit of cross-disciplinarity.

The Making of the Synoptic Gospels
  • Exploring the Ancient Sources
  • Paul A. Rainbow
  • Published online:
    21 November 2024
    Print publication:
    28 November 2024
  • Why are the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke so similar, yet different? Modern scholars have developed four main approaches to the synoptic problem: That the evangelists tapped into testimonies about Jesus, or drew from many written fragments, or used a common exemplar, or modified each other's work. The first three approaches find solid support in antiquity, yet ironically, the fourth approach dominates gospel scholarship, without producing any consensus. In this study, Paul A. Rainbow reclaims the discarded proto-gospel hypothesis of the earliest modern critics, based on a fresh reading of traditions recorded by Papias in the early second century CE. He challenges the Utilization hypotheses – that the synoptists adapted the work of each other, in various theoretical configurations – by offering an historically nuanced hypothesis of a proto-gospel, which the three evangelists independently translated into Greek from Hebrew and enriched with oral testimonies and written fragments available to them.

The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus
  • Edited by Markus Bockmuehl
  • Published online:
    15 November 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024
  • The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus serves as the most up to date guide and resource for understanding Jesus' multifaceted legacy, enduring impact over time and space, and relevance in today's world. Integrating textual, historical, theological, and cultural perspectives, the essays, specially commissioned for this volume, also offer a fresh and diverse overview of Jesus' significance in contemporary global contexts. Key features include insights into Jesus' life and teachings, his role in different religious traditions, and his influence on art, music, and global cultures. The volume also addresses contemporary issues of poverty, race, and power dynamics, making it especially relevant for today's readers. The Companion offers a diversity of perspectives from which to approach the unique identity and importance of Jesus beyond the 2020s, whether in relation to Christianity's cultural and existential crises in the Americas, its precipitous decline in Western Europe, or its unprecedented growth and proliferation in Africa and Asia.

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