New Testaments Books

Book SynopsisAn die Seite des Corpus der Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) stellte Adolf von Harnack die Monographienreihe der Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (TU), die er bereits 1882 begründet hatte und die nunmehr als »Archiv für die ... Ausgabe der älteren christlichen Schriftsteller« diente. In ihr werden vor allem die alten Übersetzungen der im Corpus erscheinenden Schriften teils im Original, teils in deutscher oder einer anderen modernen Sprache gedruckt. Daneben steht die Reihe auch für Voruntersuchungen zu den Editionen und für begleitende Abhandlungen offen.

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Book SynopsisLuke/Acts and the End of History investigates how understandings of history in diverse texts of the Graeco-Roman period illuminate Lukan eschatology. In addition to Luke/Acts, it considers ten comparison texts as detailed case studies throughout the monograph: Polybius's Histories, Diodorus Siculus's Library of History, Virgil's Aeneid, Valerius Maximus's Memorable Doings and Sayings, Tacitus’s Histories, 2 Maccabees, the Qumran War Scroll, Josephus's Jewish War, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. The study makes a contribution both in its method and in the questions it asks. By placing Luke/Acts alongside a broad range of texts from Luke's wider cultural setting, it overcomes two methodological shortfalls frequently evident in recent research: limiting comparisons of key themes to texts of similar genre, and separating non-Jewish from Jewish parallels. Further, by posing fresh questions designed to reveal writers' underlying conceptions of history—such as beliefs about the shape and end of history or divine and human agency in history—this monograph challenges the enduring tendency to underestimate the centrality of eschatology for Luke's account. Influential post-war scholarship reflected powerful concerns about "salvation history" arising from its particular historical setting, and criticised Luke for focusing on history instead of eschatology due to the parousia’s delay. Though some elements of this thesis have been challenged, Luke continues to be associated with concerns about the delayed parousia, affecting contemporary interpretation. By contrast, this study suggests that viewing Luke/Acts within a broader range of texts from Luke's literary context highlights his underlying teleological conception of history. It demonstrates not only that Luke retains a sense of eschatological urgency seen in other New Testament texts, but a structuring of history more akin to the literature of late Second Temple Judaism than the non-Jewish Graeco-Roman historiographies with which Luke/Acts is more commonly compared. The results clarify not only Lukan eschatology, but related concerns or effects of his eschatology, such as Luke’s politics and approach to suffering. This monograph thereby offers an important corrective to readings of Luke/Acts based on established exegetical habits, and will help to inform interpretation for scholars and students of Luke/Acts as well as classicists and theologians interested in these key questions.

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Book Synopsis This book is the first of two volumes that aim to produce something not previously attempted: a synthetic history of Muslim responses to the Bible, stretching from the rise of Islam to the present day. It combines scholarship with a genuine narrative, so as to tell the story of Muslim engagement with the Bible. Covering Sunnī, Imāmī Shī'ī and Ismā'īlī perspectives, this study will offer a scholarly overview of three areas of Muslim response, namely ideas of corruption, use of the Biblical text, and abrogation of the text. For each period of history, the important figures and dominant trends, along with exceptions, are identified. The interplay between using and criticising the Bible is explored, as well as how the respective emphasis on these two approaches rises and falls in different periods and locations. The study critically engages with existing scholarship, scrutinizing received views on the subject, and shedding light on an important area of interfaith concern.

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Book SynopsisThe present volume is based on a conference held in October 2019 at the Faculty of Theology of Humboldt University Berlin as part of a common project of the Australian Catholic University, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Humboldt University Berlin. The aim is to discuss the relationships of “Jews” and “Christians” in the first two centuries CE against the background of recent debates which have called into question the image of “parting ways” for a description of the relationships of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. One objection raised against this metaphor is that it accentuates differences at the expense of commonalities. Another critique is that this image looks from a later perspective at historical developments which can hardly be grasped with such a metaphor. It is more likely that distinctions between Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians, Christian Jews etc. are more blurred than the image of “parting ways” allows. In light of these considerations the contributions in this volume discuss the cogency of the “parting of the ways”-model with a look at prominent early Christian writers and places and suggest more appropriate metaphors to describe the relationships of Jews and Christians in the early period.

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Book SynopsisIn Family 13 in Saint John’s Gospel, Jac Perrin innovatively applies phylogenetic software to shed new light on Family 13 membership. To date, the relocation of the Pericope Adulterae from its traditional location in John 7:53 has been the sole criterion of Family 13 filiality. This book demonstrates the inadequacy of this criterion, and proposes new criteria in its stead. Nineteen potential Family 13 witnesses are analyzed by means of a sampling process developed by David Parker, identifying eight witnesses inappropriately nominated as Family 13 members. This analysis is corroborated by a complete computer assisted collation of all variant readings in all known Family 13 witnesses. Lastly, the volume offers a comprehensive stemma representing the entire Johannine corpus of ten confirmed Family witnesses in constellation.Trade Review'This study is ground-breaking, and it furthers the understanding of the key features of this important family of New Testament minuscule manuscripts.' - Paul Foster, in: The Expository Times 2019

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Book SynopsisSortilege—the making of decisions by casting lots—was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.Trade Review"The present volume with contributions from well-established scholars of the field is a timely addition to the scholarship of sortition in late antiquity and middle ages and a valuable instrument for further research." - Florin Filimon, University of Münster, in: The Byzantine Review 2019.009 "The volume offers several important correctives to prevailing scholarly biases about sortes, especially their relationship to late antique Christianity (...) the editors ought to be congratulated for producing an excellent volume that will certainly serve as an essential guide for future scholarship on late antique sortilege and its practitioners." - Joseph E. Sanzo, University of Warwick, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review, September 2019 "En conclusion, ce volume collectif présente habilement les différentes facettes de la divination par le sort." - Fabio Spadini, in: Kernos 32, 2019 "This volume offers a necessary and helpful roadmap for the study of sortilege in late antiquity. (...) It compiles ancient lot texts and bibliography and addresses the subfield’s status quaestionis from various angles." - Carson Bay, in: Review of Biblical Literature 12, 2020Table of ContentsPreface List of Figures Abbreviations Notes on Contributors Introduction 1 The Literature of Lot Divination  AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn 2 The Instruments of Lot Divination  William E. Klingshirn 3 Fateful Spasms: Palmomancy and Late Antique Lot Divination  Salvatore Costanza 4 Hermēneiai in Manuscripts of John’s Gospel: an Aid to Bibliomancy  Kevin Wilkinson 5 Hermeneutics and Magic: a Unique Syriac Biblical Manuscript as an Oracle of Interpretation  Jeff W. Childers 6 Secondhand Homer  Michael Meerson 7 Sortes Biblicae Judaicae  Pieter W. van der Horst 8 The Sortes Barberinianae within the Tradition of Oracular Texts  Randall Stewart 9 Oxyrhynchus and Oracles in Late Antiquity  Alexander Kocar 10 Sortes, Scribality, and Syncretism: Ritual Experts and the Great Tradition in Byzantine Egypt  David Frankfurter 11 Sortilege between Divine Ordeals and “Secular” Justice: Aspects of Jurisdiction in (Ritual) Texts from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt  Franziska Naether 12 Freakonomika: Oracle as Economic Indicator in Roman Egypt  David M. Ratzan 13 “I Do Not Wish to Be Rich”: The ‘Barbarian’ Christian Tatian Responds to Sortes  Laura Salah Nasrallah 14 “Only Do Not Be of Two Minds”: Doubt in Christian Lot Divination  AnneMarie Luijendijk Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Paul and Scripture, an international group of scholars discuss a range of topics related to the Apostle Paul and his relationship(s) with Jewish Scripture. The essays represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints, with some devoted to methodological issues, others to general patterns in Paul’s uses of Scripture, and still others to specific letters or passages within the traditional Pauline canon (inclusive of the disputed letters). The end result is an overview of the various ways in which Paul the Apostle weaves into his writings the authority, content, and even wording of Jewish Scriptures.Table of ContentsPreface Abbreviations List of Contributors 1 Introduction to Paul and Scripture  Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Land Part 1: General Essays 2 Paul and His Use of Scripture: Further Considerations  Stanley E. Porter 3 Paul’s Use of νόμος: Torah, Law, or Custom?  Ryder A. Wishart 4 The Reception of 1 and 2 Maccabees in the Letters of Paul  Gerbern S. Oegema Part 2: Romans 5 Paul’s Use of Scripture in Romans  Colin G. Kruse 6 Obedience in Covenant and in Christ: Paul’s Theodicean Solution  Tom Holmén 7 The Centrality of Jewish Scripture in Paul’s Theology: Romans 3 as a Case in Point  Jey J. Kanagaraj Part 3: The Corinthian Letters 8 From the Perspective of the Writer or the Perspective of the Reader: Coming to Grips with a Starting Point for Analyzing the Use of Scripture in 1 Corinthians  H. H. Drake Williams, III 9 Paul’s View of Αδιάφορα in 1 Corinthians 8–10  Panayotis Coutsoumpos 10 Raised on the Third Day According to the Scriptures: Hosea 6:2 in Jewish Tradition  John Granger Cook 11 Paul on Apokatastasis: 1 Cor 15:24–28 and the Use of Scripture  Ilaria Ramelli 12 The Rhetoric of “Consolation” in 2 Corinthians 1:3–11/7:4–13 in the Context of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman Consolatory Literature  James R. Harrison 13 It’s Not Like Moses Veiled so that the Israelites Didn’t Stare: A Hypothesis Regarding Paul’s Understanding of Exodus 34  Christopher D. Land 14 The Centrality of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 8–9  Craig L. Blomberg Part 4: Other Pauline Letters 15 The Sinai-Mεσίτης Tradition in Galatians 3:19–20  Linda L. Belleville 16 The Use of Job 13:16 in Phil 1:19: Direct Quotation or Allusion?  Lau Chi Hing 17 Reception of the Old Testament in First Thessalonians and in Philippians?  Markus Öhler 18 The Pastoral Epistles and the Scriptures of Israel  Arland J. Hultgren Index of Ancient Sources Index of Modern Authors

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Book SynopsisIn the collection entitled Deciphering the Worlds of Hebrews Gabriella Gelardini gathers fifteen essays written in the last fifteen years, twelve of which are in English and three in German. Arranged in three parts (the world of, behind, and in front of Hebrews’s text), her articles deal with such topics as structure and intertext, sin and faith, atonement and cult, as well as space and resistance. She reads Hebrews no longer as the enigmatic and homeless outsider within the New Testament corpus, as the “Melchizedekian being without genealogy”; rather, she reads Hebrews as one whose origin has finally been rediscovered, namely in Second Temple Judaism.Trade Review“She [Gelardini] ably summarizes and engages with broader currents such as the linguistic turn or spatiality, with wider ancient contexts such as discussions of synagogue practice or Roman fides and brings these to bear in the detail of her exegetical or structural discussions of the text of Hebrews. While some details may not persuade […] her wider project of attending to the detail of what it means to locate Hebrews within Second Temple Judaism is both important and convincing. ” – Nicholas J. Moore, Durham University, in: Journal for the Study of the New Testament Booklist 2022 44.5, August 2022.Table of ContentsContents Introduction  1 Hebrews Scholarship in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries  2 Hebrews Scholarship in the Twenty-First Century  3 Arrangement and Content of This Collection Part 1: The World of Hebrews’s Text 1 “As if by Paul?” Some Remarks on the Textual Strategy of Anonymity in Hebrews  1 Introduction—Hebrews: Pauline or not Pauline, or “Somehow” Connected to a Pauline Environment  2 Anonymity as a Literary Strategy  3 Habakkuk 2:4 in Hebrews and Paul  4 Jesus as Mercy Seat (ἱλαστήριον) in Heb 9:5 and in Rom 3:25?  5 Once for All (ἐφάπαξ) in Hebrews and Paul  6 Brief Conclusion 2 From “Linguistic Turn” and Hebrews Scholarship to Anadiplosis Iterata: The Enigma of a Structure  1 History of Ideas  2 Hebrews Scholarship in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries  3 Structural Analysis: A New Proposal 3 Hebrews, Homiletics, and Liturgical Scripture Interpretation  1 The Ancient Synagogue and its Liturgy  2 The Ancient Synagogue Homily  3 The Two Readings Underlying Hebrews, or its Two Central Scriptural Quotations  4 Hebrews, an Ancient Synagogue Homily and its Remaining Scriptural Quotations  5 Hebrews in the Context of Ancient Synagogue Liturgy 4 Hebrews, an Ancient Synagogue Homily for Tisha be-Av: Its Function, Its Basis, Its Theological Interpretation  1 Introduction  2 The Ancient Synagogue Homily in Its Liturgical Context  3 Hebrews, an Ancient Synagogue Homily for Tisha be-Av  4 Conclusion 5 Rhetorical Criticism in Hebrews Scholarship: Avenues and Aporias  1 A Brief History  2 Exemplary and Theoretical Analysis  3 Summary and Prospects Part 2: The World behind Hebrews’s Text 6 Frei von Blut und Fleisch, Sündenbewusstsein und Todesfurcht: Die Hoffnung auf einen vollkommenen Menschen im Hebräer  1 Einleitung  2 Der kosmische Horizont des Menschenbilds im Hebräer  3 Jesus Christus ist der Mensch—die “christologische” Anthropologie  4 Blut und Fleisch, Seele und Geist, Tod und Leben  5 Geheiligtes Menschsein muss noch im Glauben der Erprobung im Leiden standhalten  6 Versuch einer historischen Kontextualisierung  7 Schluss 7 Charting “Outside the Camp” with Edward W. Soja: Critical Spatiality and Hebrews 13  1 Introduction  2 Hebrews 13 in Scholarship: Riddles about a Key Space  3 Critical Spatiality: An Apt Methodology  4 The Text of Hebrews 13: Overlapping Maps  5 The Primary Intertext of Hebrews 13: Exodus 32–33  6 How the Primary Intertext, Exodus 32–33, Reinterprets Hebrews 13 Spatially  7 Conclusion and Outlook 8 Useless Foods: Communal Meals in Hebrews  1 Introduction  2 The Epistle to the Hebrews and Communal Meals  3 Context, Structure and Content  4 Research History and Central Intertext  5 How the Intertext Exod 32–34 Interprets Heb 13  6 Conclusion 9 Von Bundesbruch zu Bundeserneuerung: Das sühnende Opfer im Hebräer  1 Das Opfer im Neuen Testament und im Hebräer  2 Der kultisch-liturgische Kontext des Hebräers  3 Der theologische Kontext des Hebräers  4 Die kultischen Inhalte des Hebräers  5 Der sühnende Opferkult des Jom Kippur  6 Der sühnende Opferkult im Hebräer  7 Der historische Kontext des Hebräers 10 The Inauguration of Yom Kippur according to the LXX and Its Cessation or Perpetuation according to Hebrews: A Systematic Comparison  1 Introduction  2 Hebrews Scholarship  3 Systematic Comparison of Cultic Elements  4 Conclusion Part 3: The World in Front of Hebrews’s Text 11 Faith in Hebrews and Its Relationship to Soteriology: An Interpretation in the Context of the Concept of Fides in Roman Culture  1 Fides quaerens intellectum?  2 Bicultural Interaction, Not Syncretism  3 Fides and πίστις  4 The Cloud of Witnesses 12 Existence beyond Borders: Hebrews and Critical Spatiality  1 The Turn to Critical Spatiality  2 Mapping the Ancient World with Hebrews  3 “Outside the Camp”: A “Counter Space” in Hebrews 13 13 “Wir haben hier keine bleibende Stadt” (Hebr 13,14): Kritische Raum- und Machtdiskurse im Hebräer  1 Die Wende zur Raumsoziologie (“Critical Spatiality”)  2 Eine Landkarte der Alten Welt: Nach dem Neuen Testament und dem Hebräerbrief  3 “Ausserhalb des Lagers”—Ein “Gegenort” in Hebräer 13 14 The Unshakeable Kingdom in Heaven: Notes on Eschatology in Hebrews  1 Introduction—Eschatology and Apocalypticism  2 Hellenistic and Apocalyptic Eschatology in the Epistle to the Hebrews  3 The Unshakeable Kingdom of Heaven 15 Ethics in Hebrews  1 Introduction  2 Descriptions of Hebrews’s Ethics  3 Ethical-Hermeneutical Evaluations of Hebrews  4 Conclusion Index of Ancient Sources Index of Modern Authors Index of Subjects

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