Identity Ethics And Ethos In The New Testament

The book deals with the relation between identity, ethics, and ethos in the New Testament. The focus falls on the way in which the commandments or guidelines presented in the New Testament writings inform the behaviour of the intended recipients. The habitual behaviour (ethos) of the different Christian communities in the New Testament are plotted and linked to their identity. Apart from analytical categories like ethos, ethics, and identity that are clearly defined in the book, efforts are also made to broaden the specific analytical categories related to ethical material. The way in which, for instance, narratives, proverbial expressions, imagery, etc. inform the reader about the ethical demands or ethos is also explored.

La 4e de couverture indique : "In this monograph, Timothy J. Murray studies early Christian practices of financial generosity by examining when, why and how they restricted their generosity. He analyzes the New Testament in its social context, arguing that common cultural ideals of mutual support in a family were adopted by the fictive-family of the early church."

When Paul heard that a Christ-follower in Corinth was in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, the apostle insisted the man be removed immediately from the congregation. This dramatic response is surprising, as Paul responds to other serious situations with much less vehemence. Why did Paul react to the immoral man with such urgency and severity? Using socio-cultural tools, this study explains the importance of group identity and witness for Paul’s ecclesiology. The argument lays a foundation for contemporary readers to appraise contexts where an expulsive response to sin might be appropriate.

Early Christian Ethics in Interaction with Jewish and Greco-Roman Contexts focuses upon the nexus of early Christian Ethics and its contexts as a dynamic process. The ongoing interaction with Jewish, Greco-Roman or early Christian traditions as well as with the social-historical context at large continuously transformed early Christian ethics. The volume proposes a dynamic model for studying culture and its various expressions in a society composed of several ethnic and religious groups. The contributions focus on specific transformations of ethics in key documents of early Christianity, or take a more comparative perspective pointing to similar developments and overlaps as well as particularities within early Christian writings, Hellenistic-Jewish writings, Dead Sea Scrolls and Jewish inscriptions.

A collection of essays in honour of Prof. Michael Holmes. The volume is arranged in two parts focusing on textual criticism and the Apostolic Fathers respectively.

This convenient text utilizes material from the well-received Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics to introduce students to the use of the New Testament for moral formation. This handy and affordable book-by-book survey of the New Testament contains key articles written by leading scholars and targeted to the needs of the classroom. It will serve as an excellent supplementary text in New Testament courses. The stellar list of contributors includes Robert Brawley, Bruce Chilton, Charles Cosgrove, David deSilva, Victor Paul Furnish, and Glen Harold Stassen.

Believers in an increasingly secular world face the challenge of responding to the cultural changes that have taken place in the past generation, as Christians become a "cognitive minority," especially in the West. Some attempt to restore the Christian culture of the past with political activism, and others accommodate to the cultural changes. Christians in a post-Christian world can learn much from believers who lived in the pre-Christian period. The New Testament demonstrates that, in a pluralistic and syncretistic world of religions, Christian identity exists neither through absorption into the culture nor through total withdrawal but through dialogue and critique.

Combining the insights of many leading New Testament scholars writing on the use of social identity theory this new reference work provides a comprehensive handbook to the construction of social identity in the New Testament. Part one examines key methodological issues and the ways in which scholars have viewed and studied social identity, including different theoretical approaches, and core areas or topics which may be used in the study of social identity, such as food, social memory, and ancient media culture. Part two presents worked examples and in-depth textual studies covering core passages from each of the New Testament books, as they relate to the construction of social identity. Adopting a case-study approach, in line with sociological methods the volume builds a picture of how identity was structured in the earliest Christ-movement. Contributors include; Philip Esler, Warren Carter, Paul Middleton, Rafael Rodriquez, and Robert Brawley.