In this challenging book, rising New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole contradicts a commonly held view among biblical scholars -- that the Gospel of John is the only Gospel to give evidence for Jesus' heavenly identity and preexistence. The Preexistent Son demonstrates that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were also well aware that the Son of God existed with the Father prior to his earthly ministry. Gathercole supports his argument by considering the "I have come" sayings of Jesus and strikingly similar angelic sayings discovered in Second Temple and Rabbinic literature. Further, he considers related topics such as Wisdom Christology and the titles applied to Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Gathercole's carefully researched work should spark debate among Synoptic scholars and extend the understanding of anyone interested in this New Testament question.
F.F. Bruce's study of the Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians constitute a single volume in The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Prepared by some of the world's leading scholars, the series provides an exposition of the New Testament books that is thorough and scholarly while faithful to the infallible Word of God.
We cannot escape the truth, writes Gerald Hawthorne, that Jesus was completely "one of us." Yet Jesus taught with amazing authority, spoke God's word with extraordinary power, healed people who were sick, raised people who were dead, opened the eyes of the blind and did other miraculous things seemingly beyond the ability of humans."How?" Hawthorne asks."Was it by means of his divine nature that he did all this, for certainly he was fully God as well as fully human?" "No," is his resounding answer. Through a careful study of the New Testament, Dr. Hawthorne argues that Jesus did not act from the prerogatives of one who shared the nature of God. Rather, he did what he did through the Holy Spirit, upon whom he depended for power and authority. Essential to this view is the affirmation that Jesus was indeed fully human. In the pages of The Presence and the Power, the author shows the role of the Spirit in Jesus' conception and birth, in his boyhood and youth, in his baptism and temptation and ministry, and in his death and resurrection. Hawthorne brings his discussion to a dimax by setting forth his own understanding of the mystery of the interworking of the human and divine in Jesus. This all serves to usher the reader into the final chapter, role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. This conduding chapter makes the truths of the book very clear as to their life-application for any and all of Jesus' followers.
This volume collects the best articles on the Pauline writings from the first fifty issues of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. The range of the volume reflects the breadth of the journal itself. Here the reader will find ground-breaking studies which introduce new critical questions and move into fresh areas of enquiry, surveys of the state of play in this particular topic of New Testament studies, and articles which engage with each other in specific debates. For students this book offers an invaluable critical introduction to Pauline studies. More advanced students and scholars can use it to find background material or to gain an overview of the research in this area of scholarship. This builds on the reputation of JSNT as a conduit for first-class research and a major influence within the scholarly community.
"In this study on the influence of the Jewish wisdom tradition on the shaping of early Christology traces parallels between the function of Wisdom in various writings of Second Temple literature and the ministry of the earthly Jesus according to Matt 23:37-39 par., which portray Jesus as a representative of God like Wisdom." --
It is clear that according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus came to “save his people from their sins” (1:21), to “give his life as a ransom for many” (20:28), to have his blood “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28). But if salvation as promised in 1:21 is achieved only through Jesus’ death, asks Mothy Varkey, are the twenty-five preceding chapters merely preamble? Varkey argues, to the contrary, that the key theme of salvation in the Gospel is presented by Matthew as being in continuity with God’s saving acts in the history of the Jewish people. Further, Varkey insists that, as a consequence of this theology of continuity, Jesus’ death on the cross represents just one of the many ways in which the Gospel presents God’s salvific deeds. The death of Jesus, while unique due to his ontological status as Son of God, should not be distinguished too sharply from his saving acts during his earthly ministry, which took the form of salvific teaching of the Torah, healings, exorcisms, and forgiving of sins. The result is a narrative emphasizing the continuity of salvation throughout Jesus life, reaching into Israel’s past, and beyond into the work of the disciples.
Conjoining diverse methodological and ideological approaches with a focus on specific texts, this inaugural volume to the new series presents ground-breaking insights on the Gospel of Matthew. The eleven essays address women's social roles and literary representations, earthly and heavenly fathers, purity regulations and household configurations, Jesus and Wisdom, professional and lay reactions to women's service, the Canaanite women and the women at the tomb, and the interrelation of Matthew's female characters and contemporary struggles for justice. Throughout, the articles expose the politics of gender and sexuality imbedded in the narrative, and often in the scholarship, of the Gospel.This volume includes contributions by Janice Capel Anderson, Celia Deutsch, Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, Amy-Jill Levine, Thomas R.W. Longstaff, Gail R. O'Day, Caroline Osiek, Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt, Anthony J. Saldarini, Julian Sheffield and Elaine M. Wainwright.