A Marginal Scribe

A Marginal Scribe collects eight studies written over a period of two decades, all of which use social-scientific criticism to interpret the Gospel of Matthew. It prefaces them, first, with a new chapter on the struggle between historians and social scientists since the Enlightenment and its parallel in New Testament studies, which culminated in the emergence of social-scientific criticism; and, second, with a new chapter on recent social-scientific interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. The eight, more specialized studies cover a variety of themes and use a variety of models but concentrate and are held together by those that illumine social ranking and marginality. The book closes with a chapter that ties together these studies.

THE SCRIBE AND THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is a comprehensive exploration of the critical role played by scribes in the transmission of the New Testament text throughout history. This book provides a fascinating and informative overview of the evolution of scribal practices and their impact on the New Testament text, revealing how scribal tendencies have led to the creation of variant readings. The book delves into the significance of studying scribal activities in textual criticism, explaining how understanding scribal errors can help scholars determine the original text of the New Testament. The book provides examples of the most common types of scribal errors and offers strategies for identifying and correcting them. With clear and accessible language, the book explains the historical and cultural context of scribal practices in the New Testament era. It highlights the importance of recognizing the impact of scribal activities on the transmission of the New Testament text and its continuing relevance to contemporary scholarship. THE SCRIBE AND THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT is an essential resource for anyone interested in textual criticism, the history of the New Testament, or the cultural context of the ancient world. It is an invaluable guide for scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the New Testament and its transmission through history.

In Scribes Writing Scripture, Justus Theodore Ghormley describes how the ancient Judean scribes who expanded the Book of Jeremiah through duplication functioned as textual diviners akin to the divining scribal scholars of the ancient Near East.

This fresh look at the Gospel of Matthew highlights the unique contribution that Matthew's rich and multilayered portrait of Jesus makes to understanding the connection between the Old and New Testaments. Patrick Schreiner argues that Matthew obeyed the Great Commission by acting as scribe to his teacher Jesus in order to share Jesus's life and work with the world, thereby making disciples of future generations. The First Gospel presents Jesus's life as the fulfillment of the Old Testament story of Israel and shows how Jesus brings new life in the New Testament.

Ruth Christa Mathieson’s unique reading of Matthew’s parable of the royal wedding feast (Matt 22:1–14), which concludes with the king’s demand that one of the guests be bound and cast out into the outer darkness, focuses on the means of the underdressed guest’s expulsion. Using sociorhetorical interpretation, Mathieson draws the parable into conversation with early Jewish narratives of the angel Raphael binding hands and feet (1 Enoch; Tobit) and the protocol for expelling individuals from the community in Matt 18. She asserts that readers are invited to consider if the person who is bound and cast out is a danger to the little ones of the community of faith unless removed and restrained.

The Sibylla Tiburtina is a Latin prophecy attributed to a prophetess from classical antiquity. It concludes with an account of the End of History, involving the coming of the Antichrist and his battle with a Last World Emperor. Approximately 100 manuscripts, written between the mid-11th and the 16th centuries, survive which testify to the Tiburtina's immense popularity in the medieval West; as such the Tiburtina is a key text for understanding medieval apocalypticism and occupies an important place in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. However, studies of the manuscripts and the history of the text have been largely neglected, in comparison with other similar works, so little is currently known about who copied and read the prophecy. Dr Holdenried's research fills this gap. This study is based on an examination of all surviving manuscripts and includes an analysis of the textual material which accompanies the Tiburtina, a survey of titles and annotations, as well as research on variant texts (including several hitherto unknown). Modern historiography regards the Tiburtina solely as a vehicle for expressing contemporary political concerns triggered by crises thought to herald the End of the World. This book provides a much more varied picture and offers a new approach to the Tiburtina by placing it, for the first time, in the context of medieval traditions which saw Sibylline prophecy as independent, non-Christian evidence of Christ's life and as confirmation of His divinity. As is shown, these traditions had a major impact on the reception of the Tiburtina. The book concludes with a repertory of the manuscripts, together with brief outlines of individual textual traditions as represented in groups of manuscripts, which will constitute a valuable reference source for other scholars.

The VADE MECUM IN TRIBULACIONE was meant as an eschatological manual for the thirteen catastrophic years between its composition in December 1356 and the Thousand-Year Reign of Christ expected to begin in 1370. This manual, permeated by passion for clerical reform, was intended to give righteous Christians practical and spiritual advice on how to survive this period of tribulation. Likewise, it aimed to inform them about what to expect from the envoys of Satan, the Western and the Eastern Antichrists, but also from Christ’s warriors, the papal restorer and his secular assistant, the French-Roman Emperor. Moreover, it offered a brief outline of Christ’s Thousand-Year Reign and of Armageddon. The VADE MECUM was written by John of Rupescissa OFM (c. 1310-1366), the most prolific apocalyptic author of the Middle Ages, as the central work of in all three manuals designed to prepare Christendom for the impending crises. As a completely new text type and summary of the late Rupescissa’s doctrines, this eschatological manual fascinated numerous readers in the Late Middle Ages, who copied, reworked and translated it and made it thus a pivotal text of medieval apocalypticism: ten versions of the Latin VADE MECUM in more than forty manuscripts have come down to us. Rupescissa’s eschatological manual is his last known and most widely distributed work; the present study provides an annotated critical edition equipped with an English translation. It inducts in the manual’s contents, places them in the context of Rupescissa’s work and medieval prophetic literature, investigates important aspects of its reception and clarifies the relationships between its different versions. Furthermore, it ends with a critical edition of the VENI MECUM IN TRIBULACIONE, the most influential compendious version of the VADE MECUM. Thus this book offers an indispensable fundamental contribution to the flourishing studies of Rupescissa and medieval apocalypticism.

Well known for his scholarly works on the text of the Greek New Testament, J. Harold Greenlee is here honored by a group of friends and colleagues.