Jesus In Context

Gathers key extra-biblical writings that provide the necessary background for Gospel passages in one handy volume.

The Historical Jesus in Context is a landmark collection that places the gospel narratives in their full literary, social, and archaeological context. More than twenty-five internationally recognized experts offer new translations and descriptions of a broad range of texts that shed new light on the Jesus of history, including pagan prayers and private inscriptions, miracle tales and martyrdoms, parables and fables, divorce decrees and imperial propaganda. The translated materials--from Christian, Coptic, and Jewish as well as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian texts--extend beyond single phrases to encompass the full context, thus allowing readers to locate Jesus in a broader cultural setting than is usually made available. This book demonstrates that only by knowing the world in which Jesus lived and taught can we fully understand him, his message, and the spread of the Gospel. Gathering in one place material that was previously available only in disparate sources, this formidable book provides innovative insight into matters no less grand than first-century Jewish and Gentile life, the composition of the Gospels, and Jesus himself.

*Applies new methods to the study of the historical Jesus * Includes illuminating maps

In this small gem of theological reflection, North America's foremost "theologian of the cross" offers a profound and compelling contemplation on the relevance of the church's most fundamental confession. Hall ponders what confessing Jesus as crucified means in today's context, one that is postmodern, pluralistic, multicultural, and in some respects post-Christian. A digest of his monumental trilogy, this book lays out in brief compass the heart of Hall's theology of the cross, contrasting it sharply with the theology of established Christianity, showing how it reframes classical Christology and soteriology, and drawing the implications for what it means to be human, for Christian ethics, and for the church.

What can you do, or think, or believe to make yourself untouchable to Jesus? The answer, according to Gary M. Burge, is nothing. In this insightful, well-researched book, Burge examines Jesus biblical encounters with everyday people and concludes, Nothing in our lives or situations will be an impediment to him all are welcome"

In Christology in Context, Marinus de Jonge presents the varied response to Jesus of Nazareth by his first-century followers. A scholarly yet highly accessible work, this book provides a knowledge base for formal, systematic analysis of New Testament Christology.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Most historical Jesus and Gospel scholars have supposed three hypotheses of unidirectionality: geographically, the more Judaeo-Palestinian, the earlier; modally, the more oral, the earlier; and linguistically, the more Aramaized, the earlier. These are based on the chronological assumption of'the earlier, the more original'. These four long-held hypotheses have been applied as authenticity criteria. However, this book proposes that linguistic milieus of 1st-century Palestine and the Roman Near East were bilingual in Greek and vernacular languages and that the earliest church in Jerusalem was a bilingual Christian community. The study of bilingualism blurs the lines between each of the temporal dichotomies. The bilingual approach undermines unidirectional assumptions prevalent among Gospels and Acts scholarship with regard to the major issues of source criticism, textual criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, the Synoptic Problem, the Historical Jesus, provenances of the Gospels and Acts, the development of Christological titles and the development of early Christianity. There is a need for New Testament studies to rethink the major issues from the perspective of the interdirectionality theory based on bilingualism.