Search results for ""author paul f."

This volume includes eighteen essays on the Gospel of Matthew from historical and theological perspectives. They center around three topics: Matthew in Reception and Research; Matthew in Context; and Themes and Motifs in Matthew. The volume includes studies of both the Gospel in its context and its reception history in ancient Christianity and in churches today. All contributors are leading authorities in biblical studies on different continents, in a variety of countries, and of different confessions. The book therefore showcases the present state of inter-confessional and international biblical studies on Matthew.

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The Gospel of John is well-known for its wealth and depth of figurative language, metaphors and symbols. These articles, written by some of the leading scholars in Johannine exegesis and particularly in the debate on Johannine imagery, utilize a broad variety of methods of interpretation. The authors provide an in-depth discussion of the variety of terms and forms of figurative speech and explore the conceptual and traditio-historical background of central motifs. Some of the most prominent Johannine images (lamb, king, bread, shepherd, vine, eating and drinking and others) are discussed with regard to their literary design and theological meaning. The collection aims at opening up paths in the tangled thicket of John's figurative world, it amply demonstrates the close relationship between the different metaphors and images in the Fourth Gospel and opens the view to the inter-relatedness of its theological themes.

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Odd Magne Bakke presents the first in-depth study of 1 Clement from the standpoint of the letter's rhetoric. He bases his methodological analysis on tools from the Graeco-Roman rhetorical tradition, using both the handbooks as well as actual speeches and letters. These are supplemented by tools from modern text linguistics, which the author uses to do a compositional analysis of the letter, and by the tools of modern semantics, used to establish the language of concord in 1 Clement which it has in common with other relevant ancient literature. The author's approach constitutes a fresh reading of 1 Clement and provides new suggestions on several important issues in the immense research on the letter. He demonstrates both the thematic and argumentative unity of the letter. Its macro-structure reflects the conventional parts of the dispositio of ancient rhetoric ( exordium, narratio, probatio, peroratio). Also, the sub-texts on different levels of these parts are shown to be integrated into and to serve Clement's overall argument for re-establishing concord and peace in the Corinthian church. Odd Magne Bakke questions the traditional views that the conflict in this church was between 'spirit' and 'office' or was a matter of 'doctrine'. He argues that Clement primarily regarded it as a conflict between people of different socio-economic statuses in which a struggle for honor appeared to be an important aspect.

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Friedrich Wilhelm Graf skizziert die Biographie des in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren überaus einflussreichen Hamburger Systematischen Theologen Helmut Thielicke, um dann dessen Aktivitäten zur Gründung einer Zeitschrift für Theologische Ethik zu rekonstruieren. Dabei untersucht er auch Thielickes Kontakte zu dem amerikanischen Theologen Reinhold Niebuhr und zu Paul Tillich.Vorgestellt werden die von Thielicke zunächst in den Blick genommenen Herausgeber, seine Programmentwürfe zu Aufgabe und Profil der seit Januar 1957 erscheinenden Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik und das tatsächliche Herausgebergremium, dem neben Thielicke protestantische Universitätstheologen wie Heinz-Dietrich Wendland, Hendrik van Oyen, Wolfgang Schweitzer sowie der kirchlich vielfältig engagierte rheinische Unternehmer Friedrich Karrenberg und der spätere WDR-Intendant Klaus von Bismarck angehörten. Durch die dichte Analyse der in den ersten Jahrgängen der Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik geführten Kontroversen über die atomare Bewaffnung sowie den Institutionenbegriff zeigt Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, dass die ZEE primär ein Organ innerprotestantischer Verständigung sein und zugleich die politisch-soziale Gestaltungskraft des bundesdeutschen Protestantismus stärken sollte. Trotz ihres dezidiert internationalen Anspruchs wurde die Zeitschrift schon bald zu einem Organ, in dem hauptsächlich nur noch deutschsprachige protestantische Theologen publizierten.

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Anders E. Nielsen presents a fresh look on New Testament eschatology by analysing the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. He first of all considers whether ancient literary expressions of farewell motif may or may not lead to an outlook of some sort of transcendental nature, which could play an active role in the composition of the text as read text. He concludes that in a fairly representative number of non-biblical as well as biblical farewell-addresses we do find transcendental outlooks with eschatological implications. Furthermore, these particular outlooks seem to be at work in close relation to the approaching death of the intended speaker of the addresses. Against this background the two major farewell addresses, the one of Jesus in Luke 22 and the one of Paul in Acts 20, are at great length analysed by means of a rhetorical and text-linguistic approach.Anders E. Nielsen divides his exegetical-theological findings into three main-points. First of all the traditional hypothesis of an imminent expectation of the parousia is seen as problematic, because the eschatology in Luke seems to be less a matter of chronology and more a question of quality. Secondly, some of the sayings in a hellenistic work like Luke-Acts may sometimes be free to express a vertical-transcendent aspect with individual-eschatological associations, while other phases are sufficiently vague to call up in the audience both individual and/or collective-eschatological connotations. Thirdly, all this put together suggests that Luke's religious language does in fact not play down eschatology. On the contrary, Anders E. Nielsen suggests that one can speak of some sort of applied eschatology in the sense that all the relevant expressions in the compositions examined suggest a far more parenetic or prescriptive semantic function than an informative one.

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Christoph W. Stenschke examines Luke's portrait of the Gentiles' state prior to their coming to Christian faith. Following the history of research, he commences with Luke's direct references to the Gentiles prior to faith and then draws conclusions concerning their state from the Gentile encounter with Jesus and Christian salvation. This includes Luke's notes on the condition of Gentiles and on their appropriation of salvation. Finally conclusions from Luke's portrayal of Gentile Christians are drawn.With his approach Christoph W. Stenschke challenges some previous contributions to Lukan anthropology. He argues that the main study in the field (J.-W. Taeger, Der Mensch und sein Heil) does not sufficiently consider all the evidence. By concentrating on the Gentiles in Luke-Act (including Samaritans and God-fearers) the author's thesis covers all the relevant material. Contrary to Taeger, who suggests that Gentiles do not need 'salvation' as much as 'correction', he discovers that Luke portrays Gentiles prior to faith in a condition requiring God's saving intervention. Thorough correction has to accompany and follow this salvation. Though allowing for distinct Lukan emphases, this portrait is not essentially at odds with that of other NT authors.These results further show that the Areopagus speech needs to and can be satisfactorily interpreted in its context and in conjunction with similar statements. The author further argues that Luke's narrative sections and the characterization they present should no longer be neglected in favour of the speeches. Luke's portrayal of Gentiles prior to faith also bears on his understanding of sin and provides additional justification for the Gentile mission. Christoph W. Stenschke challenges proposals of Luke's alleged anti-Judaism and provides some hitherto little-noticed correctives.

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The writings of Flavius Josephus provide much of what we know about the first century CE - which witnessed the birth of Christianity, the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and the concomitant rise of rabbinic Judaism. However, Josephus was an author, not a video camera, and what he wrote often reflects much apart from what actually happened in the first century: Josephus' works were affected both by his literary models and by current events, and they functioned in various ways for Josephus as an individual and also as a Jew and a Roman, writing in a time of tumult and radical change. Daniel R. Schwartz argues that by building from the bottom up - first establishing the text and its meaning, then moving on to issues of Josephus' models, sources, and purposes - we may nevertheless reconstruct, with some confidence, the events and processes of this crucial era.

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Is philosophy still alive? Are there any alternatives to univocal postmodernist thought? Is there any point in asking age-old questions about the existence of reality and the possibility of knowledge, about being (ontology) and knowing (epistemology)? In this book, Ernesto Castro issues a resounding yes to these and many other questions plaguing philosophy today. "Postcontinental realism” is the term coined by Castro to designate a group of realist thinkers who have overcome contemporary philosophy's time-honored division between the analytic tradition (concerned with epistemological and scientific questions) and the continental tradition (concerned with artistic and ontological questions). Written in a perfectly plain style that is accessible to readers from all walks of life, including those without a previous academic education, the author introduces the readers to the works and ideas of important, living philosophers such as Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant, Maurizio Ferraris, or Markus Gabriel. Published with the support of Fundación Sicomoro.

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The consensus view asserts Augustine developed his later doctrines ca. 396 CE while writing Ad Simplicianum as a result of studying scripture. His early De libero arbitrio argued for traditional free choice refuting Manichaean determinism, but his anti-Pelagian writings rejected any human ability to believe without God giving faith. Kenneth M. Wilson's study is the first work applying the comprehensive methodology of reading systematically and chronologically through Augustine's entire extant corpus (works, sermons, and letters 386-430 CE), and examining his doctrinal development. The author explores Augustine's later theology within the prior philosophical-religious context of free choice versus deterministic arguments. This analysis demonstrates Augustine persisted in traditional views until 412 CE and his theological transition was primarily due to his prior Stoic, Neoplatonic, and Manichaean influences.

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The political rhetoric of ancient Israel took several literary, architectural, and graphic forms. Much of the relevant material concerns kingship, but other loci of authority and submission also drew significant attention. Mark W. Hamilton illustrates how these "texts" interacted with other political rhetorics, especially those of the great Mesopotamian empires. By paying close attention to the argumentation of the Israelite literature as well as their function as epideictic oratory building solidarity with hearers he reveals the complexity of Israelite intellectual activity both during and after the period of the monarchy. By doing this he shows that this body of thought lies at the heart of Western political thought even today.

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This is a study of the symbolic meaning of arnion (lamb) in the Apocalypse of John as the central feature of the Christology of Revelation. Loren L. Johns argues that arnion did not refer to an aggressive, militant ram in extant Greek literature prior to the Apocalypse, nor did it normally denote the expiatory sacrificial lamb. Rather, it symbolized vulnerability in the extant literature.The author examines the symbolic antecedents of arnion in the Hebrew Bible, while ranging throughout the literary evidence from the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman era, even touching on the evidence from Homer and Aesop's Fables traditions. He analyzes closely the evidence that has been offered in support of a militant lamb-redeemer figure in the apocalyptic traditions of Early Judaism and concludes that none of the writings that predate the Apocalypse and that are cited in support of this tradition is free from Christian editorializing. Furthermore, the Christology of the Apocalypse is not militant. The blood on the lamb in Rev. 19 is not from the defeated enemies of God; it is from the slaughter of the lamb.Loren L. Johns concludes that the Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse has an ethical force - that the author develops his Lamb Christology specifically to encourage his audience to the kind of faithful witness that he was convinced would result in their death as innocent lambs in much the same way that Jesus' witness did.

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In this volume Alberto J. Quiroga Puertas brings together twelve essays that deal with the role and importance of rhetoric in theology, literature and politics in Late Antiquity, more specifically in the fourth century CE. The point of departure of this book is the assumption that religious, cultural and political issues of that period were fought in the rhetorical arena. Thus aspects related to religious orthodoxy and the condemnation of heresies, to spiritual advancement, to the composition of a literary work, or to the ideological objectives of the rhetorical education in Late Antiquity are discussed in this volume. Authors such as Themistius, Libanius, Augustine, Evagrius, Firmicus, or the emperor Julian deployed in their works rhetorical devices and strategies in order to strengthen their arguments. The protean nature of rhetoric facilitated its use as a hermeneutical, persuasive and exegetical tool.

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During the fourth century, Antioch on the Orontes was the most important imperial residence in the Roman Empire and a "hot-bed" of intellectual and religious activity. The writings of men such as Libanius, the emperor Julian, Ammianus Marcellinus, John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and many others, provide a density of written sources that is nearly unmatched in antiquity, while the archaeological evidence of the city's evolution is much harder to reconstruct. This volume assembles state-of-the-art scholarship on these ancient authors within the context of recent archaeological work to offer a rare comprehensive view of this late Roman city.

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Amy Marga studies Karl Barth's early encounter with Roman Catholic theology during the 1920s, especially seen in his seminal set of dogmatic lectures given in Göttingen, and his second set of dogmatic lectures, given in Münster and which remain unpublished. Her analysis demonstrates his search for a concept of God's objectivity - Gegenständlichkeit - which would not be dependent upon philosophically-laden concepts such as the analogia entis, but which would rather be anchored in God's being alone. The author shows that Roman Catholicism, especially the thought of Erich Przywara, became the key interlocutor that helped Barth bring this clarity to his doctrine of revelation and the triune God.

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How did the drastic experiences of the turbulent twentieth century affect the works of a legal historian? What kind of an impact did they have on the ideas of justice and rule of law prominent in legal historiography? Ville Erkkilä analyses the way in which the concepts of 'Rechtsgewissen' and 'Rechtsbewusstsein' evolved over time in the works of the prestigious legal historian Franz Wieacker. With the help of previously unavailable sources such as private correspondence, the author reveals how Franz Wieacker's personal experiences intertwined in his legal historiography with the tradition of legal science as well as the social and political destinies of twentieth century Germany.

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While there has been much scholarly attention devoted to the Enochic Book of the Watchers, much less has been paid to the Book of Giants from Qumran. This volume is the proceedings of a conference that convened in Munich, Germany, in June 2014, which was devoted to the giants of Enochic tradition and in particular the Qumran Book of Giants. It engages the topic of the giants in relation to various ancient contexts, including the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and ancient Mesopotamia. The authors of this volume give particular attention to Manichaeism, especially the Manichaean Book of Giants, fragments of which were found in Turfan (western China). They contribute to our understanding of the range of stories Jews told in antiquity about the sons of the watchers who descended to earth and their vibrant Nachleben in Manichaeism.

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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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The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch or Second Baruch is a Jewish work of the late first century C.E., written in Israel in the aftermath of the Jewish War against Rome. It is part of a larger body of post-70 C.E. Jewish literature. The authors of these works had a difficult charge. They needed to re/imagine Judaism and its central symbols, take count of a thriving Diaspora, and articulate how Jewish life was to be lived from then on, without the benefit of a temple. Written at a time of religious reconstruction and mental reorientation, Second Baruch occupies a unique place in the history of early Jewish thought. In this highly original work, the author of Second Baruch developed an apocalyptic program that was intended for post-70 C.E. Judaism at large and not for a small dissident community only. The program incorporates various theological strands, chief among them the Deuteronomic promise of a prosperous and long life for those keeping the Torah and the apocalyptic promise of a new heaven and a new earth.In this book, Matthias Henze offers a close reading of some of the central passages in Second Baruch, exposes its main themes, explains the apocalyptic program it advocates, draws some parallels with other texts, Jewish and Christian, and locates Second Baruch 's intellectual place in the rugged terrain of post-70 C.E. Jewish literature and thought. For modern readers interested in Judaism of the late Second Temple period, in the Jewish world from which early Christianity emerged, and in the origins of rabbinic Judaism, Second Baruch is an invaluable source.

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The teachers of early Christianity were one of its most intriguing groups and appear to have been the equivalent of the Jewish rabbis or pagan philosophers. By examining all the earliest sources mentioning the 'didaskaloi', Alessandro Falcetta sheds light on the first hundred years of their history, tackling questions such as why their fate was so different from that of the rabbis, and whether they were tradents of the Jesus material and therefore guarantors of the Gospels' historic reliability. By relating teachers to apostles, prophets and bishops, the author enriches our knowledge of the structure of early Christian communities and how they developed into hierarchical churches.

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Jan Jakob Bornheim analyses the hypothesis about the inherent efficiency of common law compared to civil law. He examines key commercial property law concepts (i.e., ownership and security interests in relation to movables) and determines the characteristics of each system with regard to these. Using the Canadian experience as a model, he then takes a close look at how the two legal systems interact, arguing that efficient interaction can take place on both vertical and horizontal planes. On the vertical plane, property law would be able to interact with higher-level law (e.g., federal law in a federal state); on the horizontal plane, property laws of different jurisdictions could interact through the conflict of laws. The author also contends that equitable property rights, including constructive trusts as a response to unjust enrichment, should be governed by property law choice-of-law rules.

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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 present volume consists of twenty essays on the Prophetic Books, with a major focus on Isaiah as well as the Minor Prophets and Jeremiah. They span a period of roughly thirty-five years and trace a methodological shift away from the excavation of the individual prophet and setting toward an appreciation of a book or a collection in its final form, as an intentionally shaped accomplishment. An introductory chapter places the individual contributions in their original settings-in-composition and in relationship to one another. A description in this chapter of the period in which the author was trained in Germany and at Yale University enables the reader to comprehend the "rise of a new model of interpretation," now referred to as canonical reading or canonical interpretation. The essays come alongside published commentary treatments of Isaiah and Joel, as well as public lectures delivered in the 1980s through the present decade.

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A scholarly consensus holds that Luke is ambivalent toward the Pharisees, or at least that he has left readers with an ambiguous depiction of them. What previous evaluations of the Lukan Pharisees have left unanswered, however, is why Luke would give such an impression of these characters and then what might lie behind the rhetorical effects of ambiguity. Justin R. Howell reevaluates the long-standing debate about the Pharisees in Luke-Acts, arguing the thesis that there is ambiguity in the Lukan Pharisees because, in his portrayals of them, the author has applied what ancient Greco-Roman rhetoricians call "figured speech." The fact that the Lukan Pharisees appear ambiguous to some readers does not necessarily mean that Luke was also undecided about or ambivalent toward them, for the use of figured speech can presuppose a firm and critical stance on the characters in view.

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Justification by faith alone defined teaching in Evangelical churches of the sixteenth century. In 1550 the former reformer of Nuremberg, Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), as a new professor of theology at the University of Königsberg in East Prussia, advocated a divergent understanding of that doctrine, arguing that a Christian's righteousness consisted of the indwelling of Christ's divine nature. In the ensuing years, almost all other Evangelical churches and theologians in German-speaking lands rejected his position. In this book Timothy J. Wengert studies their objections to Osiander's theology in detail, offering a theological perspective on the process of confessionalization among Lutherans in the period after Martin Luther's death in 1546 and before publication of the Book of Concord in 1580. Reactions against Osiander represented a singular literary event in the development of Evangelical churches in central Europe, with over 100 tracts for and against Osiander's position being published between 1551 and 1559. The lines between so-called "genuine" followers of Luther and backers of Philip Melanchthon disappeared, as nearly all Lutheran theologians joined in the attack. Timothy J. Wengert, after providing an outline of Osiander's position in an initial chapter, focuses on his opponents' published responses. Not only does he provide a detailed chronology for these tracts, he also looks at the various theological themes struck by their authors. Separate chapters pay special attention to the contributions of Gnesio-Lutherans (Joachim Mörlin, Matthias Flacius and Nicholas Gallus), to the very different approaches to the dispute pursued by Johannes Brenz and Philip Melanchthon, especially after Osiander's death, and to the struggle over Martin Luther's writings and their authority. Philip Melanchthon's contributions, especially a speech from 1551 and his 1556 commentary on Romans, are also examined.

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This volume collects revised versions of essays from a 2011 workshop held in Munich on Remembering and Forgetting in Early Second Temple Judah. The authors of the essays address these issues from both general methodological perspectives and through case studies emerging out or associated with a wide range of texts from the prophetic literature, the Pentateuch, the historical books, Psalms and Lamentations. All these texts share one main feature: they shape memories of the past (or future) and involve forgetting. Contributors: Bob Becking, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kåre Berge, Diana Edelman, Christina Ehring, Judith Gärtner, Friedhelm Hartenstein, Michael Hundley, Jörg Jeremias, Sonya Kostamo, Francis Landy, Christoph Levin, James Linville, Zhenhua Meng, Bill Morrow, Reinhard Müller, Urmas Nõmmik, Juha Pakkala, Hermann-Josef Stipp

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In this study, Mikael Haxbyoffers a comprehensive reading of a little-studied ancient Christian text, making use of recently discovered manuscript evidence. This text was originally found in the Nag Hammadi Codices and has historically been classified as Gnostic or heretical. Using new manuscript evidence, the author shows that the First Apocalypse of James intervenes in ancient Christian debates about martyrdom, ritual practice, scriptural interpretation, and questions of gender in both theology and social order. By bringing the First Apocalypse of James back into dialogue with other Christian texts, whether later classified as heretical or not, this study offers new insights into how Christians responded to the threat of political violence, engaged with holy texts, and produced new social formations in which women might hold authoritative positions.

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Mark B. Stephens investigates the cosmic eschatology of Revelation, with a particular focus on the question of continuity and discontinuity between the present and future world. Key background texts are examined for their influence, including selected traditions from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple apocalyptic texts, and the literature of early Christianity. The centrepiece of the analysis is an integrated exploration of the topic throughout the entirety of Revelation. Drawing upon a range of methodologies, the author shows that the imagery and auditions of Revelation work together to communicate both judgement upon the present order of creation, and yet at the same time the eschatological renewal of all things. In particular, the eschaton is depicted in terms of a transfer of sovereignty over the earth, with the eschatological arrival of God's throne bringing about the displacement of the present "destroyers of the earth" (Rev 11:18).

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The finished puzzle of The BFG measures 335mm x 496mm and is suitable for human beans aged 7 years old and over.

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To say that the first Gospel is about Jesus is to state what any reader knows from the most cursory glance at Matthew's narrative. Yet the scholarly discourse about Jesus' identity in Matthew reveals a fundamental confusion about how to articulate the identity of Jesus vis-à-vis "God" in the narrative.In this work, Joshua Leim attempts to bring greater clarity to the articulation of Jesus' identity in Matthew by attending more precisely to two linguistic patterns woven deeply into the entire narrative's presentation of Jesus: Matthew's christological use of "worship/obeisance" language (proskyneō) and his paternal-filial idiom. Along with exploring the role these linguistic patterns play in the narrative, the author attempts to hear such language in relation to early Judaism and its articulation of the identity of the God of Israel. The study of these various elements yields the conclusion that the identity of God and Jesus Christ are inseparably related in Matthew's Gospel. Matthew articulates the identity of Israel's God around the Father-Son relation.

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Charles E. Carlston and Craig A. Evans examine in detail five major motifs in the theology of Matthew: Christology, Law, Church, Scripture and Tradition, as well as History and Eschatology.In this study they reveal a Jewish-Christian author who attempts to mediate the traditions of Judaism and early Christianity to Christian churches in his area that are becoming increasingly composed of former Gentiles. Diversity then, as now, offers both a challenge and an opportunity. The evangelist, moreover, was faced with rejection by the synagogue and strongly voiced skepticism with regard to the proclamation of Jesus as Israel's Messiah. To encourage believers and defend the story of Jesus, the evangelist shows how prophetic Scripture and the demands of Torah have been fulfilled.While not all of the specifics of Matthew's program are immediately usable today, the evangelist offers valuable guidance for the contemporary church in our vastly different historical situation.

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The Christological exclusivism of John 14,6 has made it a tough row for scholars to hoe and gain yield from in theological discussions. Sajan George Perepparambil argues that this text is not a problem to be solved, but rather a mystery to be understood, best done by interpreting it with John himself or by thinking it through in the context of John's Gospel itself. Using intra-textual connections to pinpoint the intertextuality of the text and interpreting it in its conceptual, literary, and historical contexts, the author provides a new perspective with particular consideration of the way motif.

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The Pentateuch lies at the heart of the Western humanities. Yet despite nearly two centuries of scholarship, its historical origins and its literary history are still a subject of intense discussion. Critical scholarship has isolated multiple layers of tradition, inconsistent laws, and narratives that could only have originated from separate communities within ancient Israel, and were joined together at a relatively late stage by a process of splicing and editing. Recent developments in academic biblical studies, however, jeopardize the revolutionary progress that has been accomplished over the last two centuries. The past forty years of scholarship have witnessed not simply a proliferation of intellectual models, but the fragmentation of discourse within the three main research centers of Europe, Israel, and North America. Even when they employ the same terminology (redactor, author, source, exegesis), scholars often mean quite different things. Concepts taken for granted by one group

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The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) was the most important festival of late-antique Judaism, but its influence on Christianity was not generally recognized. Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra here not only reveals the profound influence of Yom Kippur on early Christianity up to the fifth century but also offers the first detailed analysis of the festival itself. He examines the rituals of and the concepts underlying Yom Kippur in various types of Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism. In detailed analyses of many New Testament and extra-canonical writings, as well as Gnostic and early mystical texts, the author portrays the sweeping influence of the high priest, Holy of Holies, blood sacrifice and scapegoat ritual on early Christian thought and practice. In the final part he examines Christian exegesis of Leviticus 16, Christian-Jewish polemics and the impact of Yom Kippur on Christian liturgy.

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What does the practical work of writing contribute to historical writing? What does it mean for historical knowledge that it is, inescapably, written? Henning Trüper explores quotidian practices of writing as constituting the working life of a historian, the Belgian mediaevalist François Louis Ganshof (1895-1980). The argument draws on a large variety of texts and writing situations, so as to discuss, across the fault lines of twentieth-century historiography, shifting patterns of methodological discourse; procedures of historicisation; the making of scholarly sociability in writing practice; and finally the actual writing of historical text. Ganshof the historian, whether as author, reader, teacher, student, polemic, diplomat, witness, or mere voice on the radio, remained bound to paperwork, an ensemble of small-scale routines and makeshift solutions that ultimately lacked a central steering agency. The nexus between historical knowledge and paperwork was indissoluble.

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First published in 1987. The cartographic history of Hawaii began with the arrival of explorer and chartmaker Captain James Cook in 1778. Between then and the mid-19th century, visitors to Hawaii produced a rich assortment of charts amid maps depicting the shores, harbors, towns, and volcanoes of the various islands. This volume traces the story of the mapping of Hawaii during the pivotal years in which the indigenous society was radically transformed by the peoples and ideas imported from the West. A major segment of The Early Mapping of Hawaii it examines the contribution of American missionaries in mapping Hawaii. Mostly produced at the seminary school at Lahainaluna, Maui, these maps introduced geographical education into the Hawaiian school system. Lahainaluna graduate S. P. Kalama produced a landmark map of the islands in 1838, one of the most significant maps in Hawaiian history. Nearly one hundred maps, views, portraits, and illustrations are reproduced here. Included are many charts and harbor plans produced by James Cook, William Bligh, George Vancouver, Otto von Kotzebue, Urey Lisiansky, Jean Francois de la Pérouse, Louis Duperrey, and Charles Wilkes. These charts document the early geography of Honolulu, Lahaina, Hilo, and Kailua, as well as many bays and harbors in the islands.

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In this work Michael A. Daise broaches the question of the rationale lying behind the six feasts mentioned in the Gospel of John. He argues that, in an earlier recension of the Fourth Gospel, those feasts were sequenced into a single, liturgical year and, as such, furnished temporal momentum for the concurrent motif of Jesus' 'hour'. After reviewing the feasts as they appear in the narrative, then critiquing the major theories proposed for their purpose, the author presents his key premise that the Passover at John 6:4 is to be read not as a regular Passover, observed on 14 Nisan (first month of the Jewish calendar), but as the 'Second Passover' of Numbers 9:9-14, observed on 14 Iyyar (second month of the Jewish calendar). The law of "hadash" for barley (6:9) requires a date for chapter 6 after the regular Passover; the Exodus manna episode (Exodus 16), on which John 6 largely turns, dates to 15 Iyyar; the contingent character of the Second Passover explains Jesus' absence from Jerusalem in John 6; and, with John 5 and 6 reversed, the chronology of John 2:13-6:71 coheres. On such a reading, the feasts of the entire Fourth Gospel unfold within a single, liturgical year: Passover (2:13), Second Passover (6:4), the unnamed feast/Pentecost? (5:1), Tabernacles (7:2), the Dedication (10:22-23) and Passover (11:55). Inasmuch as this scheme brings chronological design to chapters 2-12, and inasmuch as those same chapters also chronicle the imminent arrival of Jesus' "hour" (2:4; 12:23), an overarching purpose for the feasts emerges; namely, to serve the motif of Jesus' "hour" by marking the movement of time toward its arrival.

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Lukas Lemcke challenges the conventional understanding of the Late Roman administration as a three-tiered system by demonstrating that its hierarchy of communication was distinctly two-tiered. In so doing, he offers a new perspective on the functional and organizational structure of this administrative system and advances our understanding of the vicariate by introducing a new functional dimension and by reassessing its development during the fifth and early sixth centuries. Based on a comprehensive collection of legal, epigraphic and other literary documents to which the concept of "formal communication" is applied, the author explores the forms and development of administrative communication channels that facilitated the official exchange of information from Constantine to Justinian and thus reveals how emperors actively sought to regulate the centripetal and centrifugal flow of official information.

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Exploring the ways of thinking and living that the narrative in the Gospel of John would likely have engendered Lindsey M. Trozzo utilizes rhetorical analysis to facilitate a fresh approach to the long-standing "problem" of Johannine ethics. She considers four rhetorical features: participation in genre, incorporation of encomiastic topics, metaleptic extension of those topics, and appropriation of structural devices as guides for interpreting the story's narrative and rhetorical trajectory. Each rhetorical feature is defined and situated in its ancient literary context to provide a theoretical framework for discussion. From there, the author explores the presence of the rhetorical feature in the Fourth Gospel. She finds that Johannine ethics engages the audience in moral deliberation rather than delivering explicit ethical propositions. Despite the lack of explicit ethical material in the Fourth Gospel, Exploring Johannine Ethics demonstrates that there is much we can say about John's elusive ethics.

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Yakir Paz argues that ancient Homeric scholarship had a major impact on the formation of rabbinic biblical commentaries and their modes of exegesis. This impact is discernible not only in the terminology and hermeneutical techniques used by the rabbis, but also in their perception of the Bible as a literary product, their didactic methods, editorial principles and aesthetic sensitivities. In fact, it is the influence of Homeric scholarship which can best explain the drastic differences between earlier biblical commentaries from Palestine, such as those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the scholastic Halakhic Midrashim (second to third century CE). The results of the author's study call for a re-examination of many assumptions regarding the emergence of Midrash, as well as a broader appreciation of the impact of Homeric scholarship on biblical exegesis in Antiquity.

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Lorne R. Zelyck explores the influence of the Fourth Gospel on the extra-canonical gospels from the second and third centuries CE, and evaluates how these other gospels used the Gospel of John. First he provides a succinct demarcation of the extra-canonical gospel corpus and introduces a critical methodology for measuring the influence of the Fourth Gospel. Then he measures its influence on the narrative, sayings, and dialogue/discourse gospels. Lastly the author concludes that the majority of extra-canonical gospels indicate a probable or plausible measure of influence from the Gospel of John: they have lengthy and shorter parallels with the Fourth Gospel, quote and exegete this work, and provide traditional interpretations of the Fourth Gospel that are evident in other early Christian literature.

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In this volume, Benjamin D. Giffone shows that the coexistence of at least three cultic centralization models within the Pentateuch, including Northern, Benjaminite, and Southern traditions, helps to calibrate the level of theological consistency that may reasonably be expected of biblical texts. The scholarly tendency to view biblical narratives as late, tendentious fictions is not sufficient to explain the texts' final forms. The author explains how the use of earlier narrative and legal material within Chronicles and other Second Temple texts illumines instances of unevenness that later interpreters smoothed to a degree but retained in the text. Community memory existing outside the written texts provided limits on the changes that could be introduced by scribes but was sufficiently malleable to allow for changes. Narrativity as a key feature of the texts allowed certain memories to be retained, framed by various techniques to suit the storymakers' aims.

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In this study, Francesco Filannino focuses on the introductory section of Mark's Gospel (Mark 1:1-15), which scholars believe to be the key to understanding the whole narrative of Mark. In it, one can recognise an incipit (Mark 1:1) and a proper introduction (Mark 1:2-15). The author studies the text of Mark 1:1, 2-15 through a detailed exegesis which attempts to combine diachronic and synchronic approaches. Exegetical analysis highlights the theological contents of this section, which can be classified within the most important poles of Marcan theology: Christology, eschatology, soteriology, and discipleship. The purpose of the study is to show that the incipit and the introduction of the Second Gospel represent a programmatic anticipation of the contents of each of these theological poles and end up by constituting a "miniature" of the theology of the Second Gospel.

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This book presents a selection of adapted papers originally read at the 7th Nordic New Testament conference in Stavanger in 2003. The 14 essays expose different aspects of the conference theme "the formation of the early church". To these belong considerations about how the primitive church developed and defined its own identity over against (other) Jews, both historically and with regard to how recent research has treated this theme methodologically. Further, early developments within and between different church communities and congregations are discussed as well as aspects of authority and power structures within them. Three essays deal with questions relating to the New Testament canon. For obvious thematic reasons the volume moves beyond the 1st century A.D.; two essays address issues related to the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and one patristic contribution focuses predominantly on Cyprian.

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Trevor N. Wedman seeks to understand the key assumptions underlying modern legal theory. Going back to Hobbes, but also making use of the developments in the theory of action and language philosophy over the past century, he breaks down the static conception of the state into one dependent on the actions and reflections of individuals, i.e., its citizens. He develops a social ontological theory of the law, in which the law is not taken as a mere given, but as an institutional fact. He criticizes both the Kelsenian conception of the Basic Norm and the Hartian notion of the Rule of Recognition as failing to account for the agency of individuals. The author turns to the work of one of Kelsen's contemporaries, Felix Somlo, in order to develop an alternative conception of the law that operates not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. In this way, the law itself comes into focus as that which results from the reasoned jurisprudential reflection on the reality of meanings and actions.

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"In the humanities, if they are to remain alive, it is necessary to have a relationship to the thought as well as to the thinker from the past" (Karl Rahner). Rudolf Smend attempts to establish such a relationship for one single branch of the humanities, which however can be seen as particularly paradigmatic. He does this in rough descriptions of 15 scholars who had a certain share in contributing to the history of Old Testament scholarship. He begins with the French physician Jean Astruc and the English Bishop Robert Lowth. Using the names for God, Astruc was the first to show that Genesis was based on various sources and manuscript traditions, and Lowth discovered the fundamental principle of Hebrew poetry (the "parallelismus membrorum"). At the end of the book the author discusses scholars whom he knew personally: Albrecht Alt, Gerhard v. Rad, Martin Noth, Isac Leo Seeligmann and Walther Zimmerli.

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The use of biblical and parabiblical texts on amulets and other apotropaic objects was ubiquitous in late antique Egypt. Among the passages most frequently cited were the opening lines ( incipits) of the Gospels, the Psalms, and other scriptural texts. Scholars have repeatedly observed the apotropaic use of such incipits, but have yet to subject them to thorough and focused analysis. In the present volume, Joseph E. Sanzo addresses this scholarly need by offering the first sustained study of the scriptural incipits on Greek and Coptic amulets and other apotropaic objects from late antique Egypt. In addition to providing a catalog and edition of these texts, the author draws on insights from cognitive linguistics, ritual studies, and the history of the book to establish a typology of the incipits and to determine their ritual functions.

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