Difficult Gospel

Rowan Williams is widely recognized as a creative and powerful theologian, but his theological writings are frequently complex and difficult. This book provides a clear and simple guide to all the main themes of his theology, and shows how they are related to his reading of the Bible, his careful and wide-ranging engagement with the Christian tradition, and his grappling with contemporary culture. It shows how the Archbishop's ideas about peace or about popular culture, about sexuality or about evangelism, relate to his understanding of the nature of the life of God, and the challenging good news of Jesus Christ. This book is designed especially for those who have no formal training in theology or academic expertise, but are interested in finding out more about what Rowan Williams stands for.

The world to which the Gospel of Mark introduces its reader is a world of conflicts and suspense, enigmas and secrets, questions and overturning of evidence, irony and surprise. Its principal actor, Jesus, is perplexing in the extreme. He is evidently so for the religious authorities who oppose him, but also for his disciples, who shift from incomprehension to opposition and flight. Questions of meaning, life and death, good and evil are continually broached. This narrative is a subtle invitation to enter into a new world, that of the coming Reign of God, in which the first are last and whoever wants to save his life must lose it. This commentary on the Gospel of Mark has been enthusiastically reviewed in the French edition as one of the best current commentaries on Mark. As a narrative critical commentary, it favors an interpretation of the Gospel that tries to grasp the dynamic of the text taken as a whole. Even if the technical vocabulary of narrative analysis is not used, and the main results of the historical-critical criticism, particularly those of redaction criticism, are not neglected, as the notes will reveal, it is narrative criticism that guides the proceedings.

Editors Mark Harding and Alanna Nobbs have here brought together the internationally recognized scholarly excellence of Macquarie University faculty and associates to provide a major contribution to the study of the content and environment of the New Testament Gospels. Few books in current New Testament scholarship seriously tackle its social setting and textual tradition beyond a chapter or two. The Content and Setting of the Gospel Tradition integrates the texts with the literary, social, and historical context in which they were written.

Discovered in Egypt in 1945 as part of the Nag Hammadi Library, the Gospel of Thomas was long considered irrelevant to the study of Jesus' teachings. Stevan Davies' influential The Gospel of Thomas and Christian Wisdom overturned this view, and enabled the Gospel of Thomas to be taken seriously as a source for the earliest Christianity. This Bardic Press edition brings a classic work of accessible scholarshp back into print. A entirely new forty page introduction discusses recent developments in scholarship, looks at Thomas' independence from the New Testament gospels, discusses the role of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel Thomas, and offers a variety of valuable insights. A fascinating additional essay speculates that Thomas may have been used as an oracle text in a similar way to the I Ching.

The similarities and difference of arrangement and order of episodes in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke have always been one of the major critera for resolving the Synoptic Problem. How important, and how reliable are arguments based on such considerations, and where might they lead? Here Neville reviews these issues in detail, explaining the significance of his conclusions for understanding the literary relationships among the three Synoptics gospels, and particularly for the competing theories of Markan priority (the standard two-source hypothesis) and Markan posteriority (the Griesbach hypothesis).

My book presents the four gospels from the perspective of another eyewitness- a man named Eleazar. Eleazar is the Aramaic name for Lazarus who is an historical character in the Gospel of John. I believe, along with a minority of New Testament Scholars, that Lazarus was the principle author of that gospel. As such, he was certainly an eyewitness to Jesus' ministry in Judea and perhaps even Galilee. I tried to write this book by keeping that narrator , Eleazar in the background because I don't want it to read primarily as a first person novel. Actually, I do and I don't. I say that because it is a lot more than an historical novel. At times, it certainly reads like a novel but the scholarly element is always present. I do this be quoting most of the passages from the the four gospels and portions of Acts. All the quotes are in italics so the reader is sure they are from the New Testament. There are also numerous footnotes which are used to explain said passages. Eleazar is basically my sounding board as he reacts to the gospel story. He is actually myself and the reader as we struggle to understand the gospel message and its challenges. My aim in my ministry is to get people to read the Bible, particularly the gospels. This book gives them the opportunity to do that but in a more relaxed and convenient way. My book is not just for Catholics but everyone, regardless of their denomination. I respect all protestant denominations and have learned a great deal from many of them. My approach is that of a scripture scholar where-in I do not espouse a particular doctrine but merely let the words of scripture speak for themselves.