Search results for ""JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck)""

This collection of essays by Joel B. Green draws together studies on Luke's theology over a thirty-year period - from the early days when many scholars questioned whether one might refer to Luke as a "theologian," to contemporary studies pursuing a variety of approaches to discerning Luke's message. These essays contribute to our understanding of the theological and narrative unity of Luke-Acts by pursuing a variety of topics (e.g., salvation, wealth and poverty, baptism, resurrection, and conversion) and more focused examinations of selected Lukan texts, such as the birth narrative, Jesus's crucifixion, Jesus's ascension, the Pentecost episode, and the stories of Cornelius and Lydia.

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Ancient and modern scholars have written many thousands of pages on resurrection in the New Testament. Fewer have examined the theme in both pagan and Jewish texts, however, and the topic remains inherently fascinating. John Granger Cook argues for two primary hypotheses: First, there is no fundamental difference between Paul's conception of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels; and second, the resurrection and translation stories of Greco-Roman antiquity probably help explain the willingness of Mediterranean people to gradually accept the Gospel of a crucified and risen savior. The use of ἐγείρω (egeirō, wake/rise) and ἀνίστημι (anistēmi, rise) and the bodily nature of resurrection in ancient Judaism and paganism warrant the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis is more speculative, but the Christian apologists' comparisons of pagan narratives with those of the New Testament renders it feasible.

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In this study, Scott C. Ryan situates Paul's letter to the Romans as one voice among a number of Jewish voices that frame God as a divine warrior. He first investigates motifs related to divine conflict in Exodus 14-15, Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel 7-12, along with 1 Enoch, Psalms of Solomon, Wisdom of Solomon, the War Scroll, and 4 Ezra. The author then places Romans in dialogue with the works of Paul's predecessors and near contemporaries. When Romans and these Jewish texts are placed alongside one another, Paul emerges as a writer who participates in Jewish divine conflict traditions. The apostle maintains Israel's eschatological hope in a warring deity even as he modifies that image in light of God's action in the Christ-event.

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The eighteen articles collected in this volume are the results of the international workshop, "Teaching Morality in Antiquity: Wisdom Texts, Oral Traditions, and Images," held at the Bibliotheca Albertina of the University of Leipzig between November 29th and December 1st, 2016 with the financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. During the workshop, fruitful discussions on diverse issues related to the theme "wisdom texts and morality" developed regarding biblical wisdom texts and their parallels from the ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, and the ancient Levant - more specifically: moral messages and rhetoric in wisdom texts; the dissemination of wisdom teachings; teachings about the divine realm as the core of moral principles or human social order; visualization of divine authority; questions of theodicy; and modern analyses of ancient morality through the eyes of cognitive science.

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Contributions from members of the German Association for Comparative Law will be among the papers presented at this summer's twentieth International Congress of Comparative Law, to be held for the first time in Asia at Fukuoka, Japan, in July. In a strong range of topics, one focus during the six-day congress will be on questions of multiculturalism and language that concern both comparative law methodology and other legal fields such as family law. Further dealt with will be matters particularly relevant to consumer protection, ranging from choice of court agreements to price control in contracts, duty of information, the regulation of crowd-funding, as well as leisure and travel contracts. Another focus will be on digitalisation's far-reaching economic, societal and legal implications, with questions of data protection in the realm of comparative law accentuated by contributions on the right to be forgotten or current national legal orders. Overall, the volume will reflect the present state of discussions within German jurisprudence. With contributions by:Christina Breunig, Moritz Brinkmann, Johanna Croon-Gestefeld, Anatol Dutta, Katharina Erler, Matthias Fervers, Stefan Grundmann, Beate Gsell, Dirk Hanschel, Wolfgang Hau, Leonhard Hübner, Luca Kaller, Jürgen Kühling, Sebastian Mock, Joachim Münch, David Rüther, Anne Sanders, Bianca Scraback, Stefanie Schmahl, Martin Schmidt-Kessel, Boris Schinkels, Andreas Spickhoff, Klaus Tonner; Jan Thiessen, Tobias H. Tröger, Lars Viellechner, Marc-Philippe Weller, Matthias Weller, Bettina Weisser

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In this study, Justin Buol analyzes the writings connected with the deaths of Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Pothinus of Lyons in light of earlier accounts of the noble deaths of military, political, and religious leaders from Greco-Roman literature and the Bible, which record benefits accruing to a group on account of its leader's death. The author argues that the accounts of these three bishops' martyrdoms draw upon those prior models in order to portray the bishops as dying to unite, protect, and strengthen the Church, oppose false teaching and apostasy, and solidify the teaching role of the episcopal office. Finally, by providing a foundation for Irenaeus to argue for apostolic succession, these second-century bishop martyrs also help form a lasting contribution to the growth of episcopal power.

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The International Yearbook for Hermeneutics represents one of the prominent currents in contemporary philosophy as well as in bordering disciplines. It gathers studies on questions concerning understanding and interpretation in all relevant fields, including philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, theory of science as well as literary and cultural studies. The Yearbook includes contributions to current debates and on the history of ideas from antiquity to the present. This volume focusses on "Logos."

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Space in the Hebrew Bible is increasingly studied from the perspective of critical spatiality, emphasizing the social and cultural dimension of space, how people experience space, and their creativity in constructing space. Zhenshuai Jiang investigates the discourses on space in Gen 1-11 and discusses the connection between social space and spatial narrative. He deals with various questions in different spatial terms, with a detailed textual analysis of Gen 1-11. How is space constructed in Gen 1-11? To what extent and how is this construction influenced by social and cultural elements? The author describes specifically how space in Gen 1-11 is constructed rhetorically, taking into account historical and social circumstances in which the texts were written.

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This collaboration brings into conversation scholars of Jewish and Islamic studies, theologians, and cultural historians to shed new light on the enduring intertwining between the Abrahamic faiths in the Mediterranean and Central Europe since the Middle Ages. Drawing on interdisciplinary expertise, the volume presents a series of case studies reflecting - in either a constructive or a disruptive way - the interactions between the dynamics of transfer and the role of religion in society. The long durée of the book's chronology helps outline the making of religious transfers in the medieval times and their transformations up to the twentieth-century challenges of nationalism and secularism. Considering a variety of distinct implications and reactions to religious transfer, the volume contributes to pinpointing past and present challenges towards religious conceptions, doctrines and narratives in the interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

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This volume is based on presentations delivered at a symposium held in March 2016 at the University of Tokyo. It seeks to reinvigorate the scholarly exchange which can be traced back to the late 19th century between company law academics in Germany, China, Japan and South Korea. Contributions from all four jurisdictions include papers on corporate divisions and valuation of shares and its procedure as well as studies on the civil liability of the company and its directors for false financial statements and the corporate law rules on the squeeze-out of minority shareholders.

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Andrew J. Kelley argues that Mark undergirds his high view of Jesus by characterizing him as a miracle-worker who does not defer to a deity in order to perform miracles. Survey work in the first half of this monograph shows that this is distinct from the many miracle-workers depicted in sources contemporary to the Gospel of Mark. Further emphasizing this distinction is the fact that all other miracle-workers in Mark either defer to the Jewish God or to Jesus to perform miracles. The author shows that these two characteristics of Mark's depiction of miracle working in contrast to other depictions of miracle working in the time period make it likely that Mark is using Jesus' autonomous miracle working to undergird his high, perhaps divine, view of Jesus.

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The tale of the combat between the Storm-god and the Sea that began circulating in the early second millennium BCE was one of the most well-known ancient Near Eastern myths. Its widespread dissemination in distinct versions across disparate locations and time periods - Syria, Egypt, Anatolia, Ugarit, Mesopotamia, and Israel - calls for analysis of all the textual variants in order to determine its earliest form, geo-cultural origin, and transmission history. In undertaking this task, Noga Ayali-Darshan examines works such as the Astarte Papyrus, the Pišaiša Myth, the Songs of Hedammu and Ullikummi, the Baal Cycle, Enūma eliš, and pertinent biblical texts. She interprets these and other related writings philologically according to their provenance and comparatively in the light of parallel texts. The examination of this story appearing in all the ancient Near Eastern cultures also calls for a discussion of the theology, literature, and history of these societies and the way they shaped the local versions of the myth.

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The first inter-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary work of its kind, this book focuses on the importance of visual culture in the study of classical, Roman, and Christian antiquity. It explores the role of the visual in helping to create a vision of the gods and how commitment to the visibility of the divine affected ancient religious practices, rituals, and beliefs. The essays deploy a wide range of disciplines that include archaeology, iconology, cultural studies, visual anthropology, the study of ancient rhetoric, and the cognitive sciences to consider the visual aspects of ancient religion from a variety of angles. The contributors take up the role of the visual in multiple contexts including domestic art, the imperial cult, martyrology, ritual practice, and temples. This groundbreaking book, which includes essays by classicists, Roman historians, archaeologists, biblical scholars, and scholars of ancient Christian iconography, promises to advance the discussion of the importance and role of visual culture in shaping the religions of antiquity in significant new ways.

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Olivia Stewart Lester examines true and false prophecy at the intersections of interpretation, gender, and economics in Revelation, Sibylline Oracles 4-5, and contemporary ancient Mediterranean texts. With respect to gender, these texts construct a discourse of divine violence against prophets, in which masculine divine domination of both male and female prophets reinforces the authenticity of the prophetic message. Regarding economics, John and the Jewish sibyllists resist the economic actions of political groups around them, especially Rome, by imagining an alternate universe with a new prophetic economy. In this economy, God requires restitution from human beings, whose evil behavior incurs debt. The ongoing appeal of prophecy as a rhetorical strategy in Revelation and Sibylline Oracles 4-5, and the ongoing rivalries in which these texts engage, argue for prophecy's continuing significance in a larger ancient Mediterranean religious context.

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Past study of Rom 1:16-3:26 focuses on individual salvation or on social relations and also produces a host of interpretative quandaries. Marcus A. Mininger develops a new approach, which includes but goes beyond these foci, by unearthing the theme of revelation that runs throughout Paul's argument largely unnoticed. More than a proof of sin or of social equality, Paul provides a survey of numerous visible revelations, in which otherwise invisible realities like God's wrath, the power of sin, and God's righteousness are seen through the observable effects they produce in different people. Read this way, the rationale of Paul's argument becomes quite clear, including for "problem texts" like Rom 2 and 3:1-8, as Paul proves that the gospel, not the law, overcomes sin's power and that God's righteousness always exists in contrast to the human condition in this age."[This is] an unusually interesting and original piece of work. [Its] interaction with current literature is impressively thorough and fair; the argumentation, which never loses sight of the text itself, is cogent and comprehensive. [...] All in all, frankly, this is one of the most satisfying dissertations (published or unpublished) that I recall ever reading. I hope it gets the attention it deserves."Moisés Silva, former Mary French Rockefeller Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary"[This book] represents a significant contribution to New Testament research. Dr. Mininger builds a convincing case that close attention to Paul's pervasive concern with revelation in Romans 1-3 holds the key to resolving many of the interpretative difficulties that have long plagued scholarship on these chapters."J. Ross Wagner, Associate Professor of New Testament, Duke University"Here is a stimulating opening in the study of Romans 1-3. This work helps break open Romans 1-3 for fresh reading by its attention to the theme of the history of revelation. It thereby enriches the classical understanding of Romans, oriented to the theme of sin and justification, as well as showing some of the weaknesses in newer sociologically oriented readings. Readers may disagree with some details (I do myself). But they should not miss the overall insights offered by a perspective that focuses on revelation."Vern S. Poythress, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Westminster Theological Seminary

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This volume explores the inherent pluralism of the Reformation and its manifold legacies from an ecumenical and interdisciplinary point of view. The essays shed new light on several key questions: How do we interpret and assess the Reformation as a historical and theological event, as a historiographic category, and as a cultural myth? What are the long-term global consequences of the Reformation period as manifest in the rise of competing confessional cultures and distinct Christian world religions, producing different types of modernities? How did these confessional cultures interact with the development of empires and nation-states, with the emergence of the sciences, as well as with divergent legal cultures and traditions in education and social welfare? What kind of modalities emerged in these confessional cultures for engaging with the humanistic study of the Bible and, later on, Higher Criticism?

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A renewed focus on the role of interpersonal relationships in the cultivation of religious sensibilities is emerging in the study of religion. Matthew Ryan Robinson addresses this question in his study of Friedrich Schleiermacher's notion of "free sociability". In Schleiermacher's ethics, the human person is formed in and consists of intimate, tightly interconnecting relationships with others. Schleiermacher describes this sociability as a natural tendency prompted by experiences of physical and existential limitation that lead one to look to others to complete one's experience. But this experience of incompleteness and orientation to "the completion of humanity" also constitute the fundamental structure of religion in Schleiermacher's theory of religion as orientation to "the universe and the relationship of humanity to it." Thus, Schleiermacher not only presents sociability as basic to human nature, but also as inherently religious - and, potentially, redemptive. What making such a claim means and the implications it raises are central considerations of this study of Schleiermacher's ethics, theory of religion and ecclesiology.

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In this study, Stephen Germany investigates the literary development of the non-priestly narratives in Exod 1-18; 19-24; 32-34; Num 10-16; 20-24; and Josh 1-12. Through a new comparison of the various literary strata in these narratives to priestly texts, the author concludes that a significant portion of the non-priestly narratives in Exodus-Joshua belong to a post-priestly stage of composition. The reconstruction of the remaining pre-priestly narrative in these books supports the theory of an exodus-conquest narrative as one of the literary precursors to the Pentateuch and book of Joshua, challenging both the Documentary Hypothesis and the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis in their various forms.

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This volume comprises the conference proceedings of the international and interdisciplinary meeting held in Leipzig from November 9 to 11, 2015. Scholars from different research areas present masks from Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Greece, mainly from the third to the first millennium BCE. The masks are analyzed from archaeological, iconographical, anthropological, philological, and theological perspectives. In many cases, the masks refer to gods, ancestors, spirits, and are used as a means to communicate between human beings and supernatural powers. Masks belong to the human condition and seem to be the international and intercultural answer to one of the most existential questions of human life. In addition, the volume includes an archaeological catalogue of the masks from Israel/Palestine of the Neolithic Age until the Persian Period.

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In this work, Paul Michael Kurtz examines the historiography of ancient Israel in the German Empire through the prism of religion, as a structuring framework not only for writings on the past but also for the writers of that past themselves. The author investigates what biblical scholars, theologians, orientalists, philologists, and ancient historians considered "religion" and "history" to be, how they understood these conceptual categories, and why they studied them in the manner they did. Focusing on Julius Wellhausen and Hermann Gunkel, his inquiry scrutinizes to what extent, in an age of allegedly neutral historical science, the very enterprise of reconstructing the ancient past was shaped by liberal Protestant structures shared by dominant historians from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes that his Gentile audience should not illegitimately appropriate Jewish customs, especially circumcision. As a way to understand why Paul deems circumcision in this context to be so egregious, being a matter of apostasy rather than simply an adiaphoron, John Anthony Dunne argues that the themes of suffering and persecution point to the coercive nature of the conflict in Galatia. What is at stake for Paul is allegiance to the crucified Christ. Due to the realities inaugurated by the Christ-event and the implications of participating in the Messiah's death and resurrection, suffering for the sake of the cross is to be endured instead of succumbing to the compulsion to be circumcised. Suffering persecution, rather than receiving circumcision, demarcates the true people of God who are set apart in Christ for future blessing and vindication.

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The most important objects in the Hebrew Bible are a wooden box, styled in English "the ark" or "the ark of the covenant", and two statues of winged creatures, "the cherubim", that surmount it. Raanan Eichler attempts to understand these objects using the full gamut of data and tools available to the modern scholar. The study features an abundance of visual comparative material, much of it in colour, with a particularly close examination of the finds from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The author proposes solutions to a number of unsolved puzzles, such as the question of what cherubim looked like, and offers a new explanation of the nature of the ark and the cherubim, rejecting the prevailing scholarly view of them as having constituted an "empty throne" and footstool for the God of Israel. Rather, he argues, they constituted an empty frame, a unique cultic focus that surpassed all known systems in the ancient Near East in the extent of the efforts it represented to prevent an anthropomorphic conception of the deity in a cultic context.

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A well-known characteristic of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls are their assertions that membership in the Qumran movement included present and eschatological fellowship with the angels, but scholars disagree as to the precise meaning of these claims. To gain a better understanding of angelic fellowship at Qumran, Matthew L. Walsh utilizes the early Jewish concept that certain angels were closely associated with Israel. Moreover, these angels, which included guardians and priests, were envisioned within apocalyptic worldviews that assumed that realities on earth corresponded to those of the heavenly realm. A comparison of non-sectarian texts with sectarian compositions reveals that the Qumran movement's lofty assertions of communion with the guardians and priests of heavenly Israel would have made a significant contribution to their identity as the true Israel.

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In this study, Michael J. Morris examines aspects of synoptic gospel demonology; specifically, human responses to demonic evil. It is clear that early Christian demonology can be more fully understood against the background of early Jewish traditions. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, there are two fundamental ways by which protection against demons is sought. The first anti-demonic method is "exorcism," and the second is characterized by its preventative nature and is typically referred to as "apotropaism." Although many contributions have been made on the topic of exorcism in the gospels, less attention has been paid to the presence of apotropaic features in the gospel texts. Therefore, Michael J. Morris offers a timely examination of apotropaic tradition in early Judaism and its significance for demonological material in the synoptic gospels. He shows how the presence of apotropaisms not only shape conversations about early Christian demonology, but also have broader implications for the understanding of evil, eschatology, and the depiction of Jesus in relation to each gospel.

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The essays in this volume provide significant insights into both the Gospel and current Johannine scholarship. The beginning of John's narrative presents interpreters with tantalizing issues. The elusive narrator introduces the witness of the Baptist, then leaves the scene. What is the function of the Isaianic quotation? What is the role of purification in John, the identity of the unnamed disciple, the meaning of the title, "the lamb of God," the "greater things" Jesus promises the disciples will see, the role of the ascending and descending angels, or Jesus' curt response to his mother? Some of the essays ask how scenes in these chapters would have been read in Ephesus: the story of the wedding at Cana, or the story of Jesus' prophetic demonstration in the temple. The latter plays a strategic role in the imagery and theology of the Gospel. These essays also illustrate how, while the Gospel creatively develops and recasts traditional material, it also calls for its readers to actively engage in dialogue with the text.

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In this study, Paavo N. Tucker considers the different models of formation for the Priestly literature of the Pentateuch through an analysis of the Priestly texts in Exodus and how they relate to the Holiness Code in Lev 17-26. The texts in Exodus that are traditionally assigned to the Priestly Grundschrift are not concerned with the priestly matters of Exod 25-Lev 16, but are better understood as relating to the language, theology, and concerns of Lev 17-26, and should be assigned to the same strata of H with Lev 17-26. The same applies to the Priestly narratives beginning in Gen 1. The Priestly literature in Gen 1-Lev 26 form a composition that develops the themes of creation, Sabbath, sanctuary, and covenant to their climactic expression and culmination in the legal promulgation and ethical paraenesis of H in Lev 17-26. The author shows that, rather than being a "Priestly composition" as Erhard Blum argues, it is more fitting to see this literature as an "H composition," which weaves narrative and law together in order to motivate obedience to the laws of Lev 17-26.

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In this study, Andrew Tobolowsky offers a new approach to biblical descriptions of the tribes of Israel as the "sons of Jacob". He reveals how shifting assumptions about early Israelite history and the absence of references to Jacob in most accounts of the tribes make it unlikely that this understanding was part of early tribal discourse. Instead, drawing on extensive similarities between the role Jacob's children plays in the biblical narrative and the role that shared descent from figures such as Hellen and Herakles play in the construction of ancient Greek histories, Andrew Tobolowsky concludes that the "tribal-genealogical" concept was first developed in the late Persian period as a tool for the production of a newly integrated, newly coherent account of a shared ethnic past: the first continuous biblical vision of Israelite history from Adam to the fall of Jerusalem and beyond.

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Genesis 37 is the exposition of the biblical Joseph Story and narrates the basis of Israel's descent into Egypt. From the beginning of critical research into the Pentateuch, literary tensions and contradictions encountered in this chapter, including the question of who sold Joseph to whom, have given rise to several incompatible explanations. At present no solution to its complex problems enjoys agreement. On top of a thorough history of research, Matthew C. Genung provides a fresh literary critical analysis of Genesis 37, treated passage by passage, guided by the literary tensions in the narrative in dialogue with the most important solution models. This method has led to a new explanation of the compositional history of Genesis 37 that contributes to an understanding of the meaning of the actual text, solves its elements of tension and incoherence, and identifies their originating historical milieu. The results impact Joseph Story exegesis and fundamental questions current in Pentateuchal criticism.

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One of the distinctive features of the Fourth Gospel is the emphasis it places on the "name" (ὄνομα) of God. As the earliest Christian texts already exhibit a shift toward Jesus's name as the cultic or divine name, what might have motivated the Evangelist to this recovery of the divine name category? Joshua J. F. Coutts argues that the divine name acquired particular significance through the Evangelist's reading of Isaiah, which, in combination with the polemical experience and pastoral needs of early Christians, formed the impetus for his interest in and emphasis on the divine name.

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Within Lukan scholarship, studies on the theme of Passover have mostly been confined to the pericope of the Last Supper (Luke 22:1-20). Few have ventured outside it and explored the presence, let alone the significance, of the theme in other passages throughout Luke-Acts. Thus, the aim of this study by Dany Christopher is to show where, how, and why Luke appropriates the theme of Passover in his writings. The author proposes that besides the passion narrative, allusions to Passover can be found in three other sets of passages: the infancy narrative, the Parousia discourses in Luke 12 and Luke 17, and the rescue stories of Peter (Acts 12) and Paul (Acts 27). He shows that the theme of Passover plays a major role in how Luke structures his narratives and conveys the message of God's salvation.

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In this work, Attilio Mastrocinque cautions against an approach to Mithraism based on the belief that this mystic cult resembles Christianity. While both Christian and pagan authors testified that Mithraic elements were indeed borrowed, according to Attilio Mastrocinque this was only done by some gnostic Christians. He counters that Roman Empire ideology and religion provide better clues on how to approach the matter, contending too that Virgil proves to be more important than the Avesta in understanding Mithraic iconography. The meaning of the central scene - the Tauroctony - thus becomes clear when the Roman triumph's central act of bull sacrifice is thought of as just that, with Mithras playing the role of victor as author of this success. The episodes depicted on many reliefs relate to a prophecy known to Firmicus Maternus and other Christian polemists, and which foretold the coming of a saviour, i.e. the first emperor, when Saturn returns and Apollo-Mithras will rule.

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In this work, Christina Harker deconstructs the prevailing treatment of the New Testament as anti-imperial by contextualizing both New Testament scholarship and the Galatian experience within imperialist discourses that survived the dissolution of conventional empires in the twentieth century. She critiques simplistic treatments of empire as post-imperial (that is, replicating patterns of imperialist ideology, albeit unwittingly). To solve the problem, a new interpretation of Galatians is proposed that reworks and complicates the portrait of the Galatians themselves, rather than Paul, within what then emerges as a diverse social world peopled by complex individuals with heterogeneous social and cultural identities. The author is thus able to show how New Testament scholars who rehabilitate the Bible and Paul as anti-empire perpetuate the same imperialist modes of interpretation they seek to repudiate.

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This volume is based on presentations delivered at a symposium held in May 2015 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg. It seeks to reinvigorate the scholarly exchange which can be traced back to the late 19th century between company law academics in Germany, China, Japan and South Korea. Contributions from all four jurisdictions include papers on directors' liability and capital maintenance as well as studies of the role of shareholders in public companies and the regulation of groups of companies.

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The contributions in this volume critically engage with Mogens Müller's work on ancient Judaism, the Septuagint, the New Testament gospels, and the reception history of the Bible, covering a variety of topics within the field of biblical rewriting and reception. Rewriting and reception are parts of a continuous process that began within biblical literature itself and have continued in the history of interpretative communities where the Bible has been received and cherished in innumerable ways until today. The present volume aims to further the scholarly debate on important topics within biblical studies. It demonstrates that the notion of reception can be addressed from very different angles and from diverse hermeneutical and methodological viewpoints, all of which offer fresh insights into ancient texts and their afterlife.

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The voice of Francis J. Moloney has been heard in Johannine studies for many decades. This volume gathers shorter journal articles from a publishing career that began in 1975, placing them together with new studies that appear for this first time, and thus complementing Moloney's already well-known commentary and scholarly monographs on the Fourth Gospel. The author's work has encompassed all areas of Johannine scholarship - the world that produced and first received the Fourth Gospel, its theology and Christology, and critical analysis of much-discussed passages. Well known for his extensive use of narrative and reader-response criticism, Francis J. Moloney has in more recent years developed an interpretation of the gospel which suggests that the author(s) of this narrative regarded their work as the "completion" of scripture. This unique collection therefore not only provides the past publications of a significant Johannine scholar, but also reflects the development of Johannine scholarship from 1975 until today.

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Biblical scholars frequently attempt to contextualize the Priestly ritual corpus by comparing it to other ancient Near Eastern ritual traditions. This comparative approach tends to detect a hidden polemic at work in the Priestly Source (P) which was meant to highlight its distinctly monotheistic outlook. Isabel Cranz reframes current understandings of P by comparing Priestly rituals of atonement to their Assyro-Babylonian counterparts. In this way she shows how the Priestly ritual corpus is highly specialized and concerns itself primarily with sanctuary maintenance. Viewing P in this new light in turn helps to demonstrate that the authors of P were not interested in discrediting foreign rituals or pushing a monotheistic agenda. Instead P primarily aimed to confirm the Aaronide priests as the only legitimate priestly group fit for service at the altar. Subsequently if a polemical agenda is present in P it can be shown to be directed against rivals and critics of the Aaronide priesthood, not other rituals of the ancient Near East.

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The Septuagint is an important source for the study of ancient Judaism and, in terms of textual development and theology, is to be embedded in the literature of the last three centuries BCE. At the same time, the Septuagint often is the authoritative reference text of ancient Christian reception of the so-called Old Testament. The essays collected in this volume deal in their first part with the interpretation of the Septuagint, primarily the historical and the prophetic books. Questions of textual criticism and theology are addressed in the two sections on the New Testament (Gospel of Mark, Acts, and Paul) and Patristics (Justin and Jerome, for example). The final section is devoted to the patristic interpretation of Old Testament texts (Gen 2-3; Gen 28:10-22; Jer 10:1-16; Psalms), themes (notion of God; pseudo-prophecy), and figures (Adam, Abraham, Hannah).

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Early Christianity did not originate in a vacuum but in a world of linguistic, social, religious, and cultural richness and diversity. The twenty-two seminal essays in this volume — some previously published, some newly written — represent almost three decades of research by Troy W. Martin to understand how early Christianity developed in the ancient world. The broad-ranging investigations in these essays give attention not only to the linguistic and rhetorical features of early Christian texts, but also to the social, philosophical, physiological, and medical contexts in which these texts were written. The essays provide new understandings of early Christian conceptions of salvation and of the virtues of faith, hope and love that characterized early Christian communities. They include new medical and physiological explanations of early Christian sacraments, pneumatology, and eschatology and furthermore investigate early Christian communal life and practice, including the veiling of women, male/female relationships, and time-keeping. The essays include reception histories that describe their influence on subsequent research and place them within the context of contemporary research and scholarship. Those familiar with the well-trodden ground of New Testament studies will find in these essays new insights and previously unexplored comparative material for understanding early Christianity and the world in which it originated.

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This book is the result of a three-day conference about "European Economy and People's Mobility" which was held by the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Jena in May 2015.Within the internal market which lies at the heart of the European Union's rules, it is the free movement of persons that most drastically affects people's everyday lives in the Member States. In this book, the authors try to answer the questions arising from "People's Mobility" in the European Union from an interdisciplinary perspective.What are the manifestations of mobility? Have they changed in recent years/decades? What is the current grade of mobility? Are individuals more mobile today than in the past? Are there groups that are more mobile than others? What are the (social, economic, political, legal, psychological) preconditions for mobility, and which of these factors advance or impede mobility? Is mobility (socially, economically, politically, psychologically) desirable? What are its positive/negative effects, and how should mobility be increased or reduced?

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The modern cult of celebrity, commencing with Garibaldi, Byron, and Whitman, is compared to the quest for glory in late republican and early imperial Roman society. Studies based on the documentary and literary sources - including the "great man," the elite quest for civic honour, the Mediterranean athletic ideal, the ethical curriculum of the gymnasium, and local association values - provide the basis for James R. Harrison to assess the ancient preoccupation with fame, hierarchy, and status. He shows how Paul's gospel of the crucified Christ stood out in a culture obsessed with mutual comparison, boasting, and self-sufficiency. It departed from the self-exalting mores of classical culture and enshrined humility and other-centeredness in the western intellectual tradition. As such, the soteriological power of the cross became an impetus not only for individual moral transformation but also for social change.

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The Gospel of Matthew is an oeuvre mouvante (a work in process), and the dynamics of this process are essential to its identity and function. This understanding of the Gospel of Matthew stands in distinction from the long history of research centered on Matthew the author and his design for the gospel. Focused instead on tradition history—the history of composition and transmission—Edwin K. Broadhead's approach keeps open the dialectical engagements and the conflicting voices intrinsic to the Gospel of Matthew. As a result, the consistently Jewish textures of this gospel are emphasized, there is a broader engagement with the landscape of antiquity, and serious attention is given to further developments in the history of transmission. This focus on the developing tradition thus highlights, rather than suppresses, the viability and the generative potential of such discourses.

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In this work, JiSeong James Kwon examines a variety of scholarly arguments concerning the distinctive literary and historical relationship between the book of Job and the second part of the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), so-called Deutero-Isaiah. The general methodology in a comparative study between biblical texts has been the author-oriented approach which traces the complex interrelationships between corresponding texts, considering many verbal and thematic similarities, but this approach often arises from the misleading concepts of literary dependence from an early source to a later one. In this book, the author argues that scribes were writers of biblical materials and belonged to a group of the literate elite in Judahite society, and that resemblances between the two books result from the production of a scribal culture. This view may shed a light on traditional researches influenced by form-criticism, which divides the literate groups in Israelite society into different professional groups—priests, sages, and prophets. The proposed approach of the scribal culture has also resulted in a different way of interpreting the association with ancient Near Eastern literature which is supposed to be closely related to the two books. Similarities with non-Israelite sources have been suggested by scholars as unequivocal evidence of literary dependence or influence, but a careful examination of those extra-biblical compositions possibly affirms that scribes would have a broad awareness of other ancient texts. Finally, shared ideas and interests between the two books do offer insights into the theological views of the scribes in the Persian period. We may see the historical development of scribal ideas by comparing the two books with other biblical texts and by confirming the diversity and discrepancy within them.

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"Centre and periphery" frameworks have been particularly helpful for research on systems whose dynamics are strongly influenced by a substantially unequal distribution of qualities. But what can these frameworks, in all their present diversity and in their various "re-conceptualizations," contribute to the study of the early Second Temple period? The essays in this volume address this question through the prism of, for instance, the location of Jerusalem, diasporic communities, Torah, roles of temples and royal courts, Jerusalem/Gerizim, the Zion tradition, the universal kingdom of YHWH, the literary history of some texts, socio-linguistic choices, and gender.

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Albert Vanhoye is one of the most prominent French biblical scholars of the period following the Second Vatican Council, with an academic career spanning eight decades and publications in numerous European languages. Amidst diverse interests, the Letter to the Hebrews has remained the central focus of his scholarship throughout his career. This volume collects sixteen of his most significant essays on Hebrews, covering a variety of topics and approaches, with an emphasis on the key themes of priesthood and sacrifice. The essays are presented for the first time in English translation, with an introduction by the editors summarizing Vanhoye's contribution and analysing the central features of his work.

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The law on the "cities of refuge" contained in Num 35,9-34 is almost universally seen as a simple repetition of legal content that is basically already present in the legislation of other biblical books. Francesco Cocco demonstrates that we find ourselves here before a case of reformulation instead of simple repetition, the implications of which are extremely interesting for the understanding of biblical penal legislation. In this particular fragment, it exhibits traces of modernity so surprising as to be as good as the defence of civil liberties in the legal systems currently in force in the majority of democratic states.The author's enquiry takes its starting point and develops, therefore, from the novel contribution which the legislation in Num 35,9-34 confers on the entire biblical law of a penal character.

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Jordash Kiffiak offers the first concentrated study of a motif ubiquitous in the miracle stories of the gospels, namely the descriptions of characters' speech, feelings, physical actions and the like in response to miracles. Conventional wisdom sees the response motif as a means of casting the miracle worker in a positive light. However, the author's narrative-critical analysis argues that within each gospel the motif is employed creatively in a variety of ways. Responses serve to characterize various individuals and groups, both positively and negatively, sometimes in a more complex manner. They also contribute to the development of the plot, both in the individual episode and in the larger narrative. At the same time, observing that a network of features in the responses is shared among the gospels, Kiffiak argues that there is a common oral tradition behind the miracle stories, originating among the early followers of Jesus in the Galilee and/or Judea.

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Drawing from Michel Foucault's understanding of power, David A. Kaden explores how relations of power are instrumental in forming law as an object of discourse in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Letters of Paul. This is a comparative project in that the author examines the role that power relations play in generating discussions of law in the first century context, and in several ethnographies from the field of the anthropology of law from Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and colonial-era Hawaii. Discussions of law proliferate in situations where the relations of power within social groups come into contact with social forces outside the group. David A. Kaden's interdisciplinary approach reframes how law is studied in Christian Origins scholarship, especially Pauline and Matthean scholarship, by focusing on what makes discourses on law possible. For this he relies heavily on cross-cultural, ethnographic materials from legal anthropology.

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This volume studies the ways modern research has tried to detect traces of Docetism in ancient sources, including the gospels and the Johannine epistles and several second-century authors. As a concept, Docetism is often used in scholarly literature for denoting loosely connected or even quite different phenomena or doctrines that all have to do with defining the nature of Christ and the reality of the incarnation and passion of Jesus. The essays presented here approach the topic from a new angle by focusing on the ancient documents themselves instead of staying on a purely theoretical or dogmatic level, while at the same time critically re-examining the historical contexts in which these were produced and first circulated. In some cases, this serves to once more reveal the hidden agendas that have guided modern scholars in their discussion of these topics.

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