Search results for ""Author Wayne Coppins""

Wayne Coppins investigates the interpretation of freedom in Paul's letters with special reference to Martin Luther and twentieth-century "German" New Testament scholarship. He focuses on three key issues, namely the importance of freedom in Paul's letters and theology, the centrality and meaning of "freedom from the law," and the relationship between freedom and service. In addition to providing a detailed exegesis of the key Pauline texts, the monograph also offers a synthesis of the aforementioned issues and concludes with a retrospective assessment of the promise and pitfalls of 'German' scholarship on freedom in Paul. While critical of the assumption that Paul himself had already developed a unified concept of freedom, the author suggests that it may nevertheless be appropriate to employ freedom as a category for depicting Paul's thought.

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The tenth and final volume in the Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity series, brings together seven of Matthias Konradt's most important essays on the Gospel of Matthew. Together they highlight key themes of this major early Christian text and demonstrate its formative role in shaping both the identity and theology of the growing Christian movement.Matthias Konradt presents the main points of controversy in recent scholarship on the relationship of the Matthean community to Judaism, identifies the interpretive problems that underlie the disagreements, and deals with central aspects of Matthean Christology. The author works out his sophisticated understanding of Matthew's Torah hermeneutic, giving special attention to the interpretation of the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount and to Matthew's reception and interpretation of the decalogue.Published in North America by Baylor University Press, Waco.

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In this fifth volume of the Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity series, Michael Wolter provides a detailed, verse-by-verse interpretation of the Third Evangelist's Gospel (Luke 9:51--24). His approach to a sustained reading of Luke's Gospel is comprehensive. He carefully places Luke's narrative of Jesus in its cultural context, paying close attention to the relationship of the Gospel with its Jewish and Greco-Roman environment and performs form-critical and narrative analysis of the specific stories; however, he also emphasizes Luke as a theologian and his Gospel as a work of theology. Michael Wolter's commentary shows that Luke succeeds in preserving the history of Jesus and its theological impact and that this history stands on equal footing with the history of early Christianity.Published in the US by Baylor University Press, Waco.

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In this fourth volume of the Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity, Michael Wolter provides a detailed, verse-by-verse interpretation of the Third Evangelist. His commentary shows that Luke succeeds in preserving the history of Jesus and its theological impact and that this history stands on equal footing with the history of early Christianity. Wolter's thorough, careful reading follows Luke as the Evangelist seeks to explain how the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of God for Israel results in a parting of the ways between the Christian church on the one side and Judaism on the other. Scholars and students alike will benefit from access to new German scholarship now available to English-language audiences.Published in the US by Baylor University Press, Waco.

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Translated from German into English for the first time, this monograph seeks to reclaim the original sense of humility as an ethical mindset that is of community-building value. This exploration of humility begins with a consideration of how the concept plays into current cultural crises before considering its linguistic and philosophical history in Western culture. In turning to the roots of Christian humility, Eve-Marie Becker focuses on Philippians 2, a passage in which Paul appeals to the lowliness of Christ to encourage his fellow Christians to persevere. She shows that humility both formed the basis of the ethic Paul instilled in Christ-believing communities and acted as a mimetic device centered on Jesus' example that was molded into the earliest Christian identity and community.

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The debate over the extent of Jewish influence upon early Christianity rages on. At the heart of this argument lies the question of Jesus: how does the fate of a first-century Galilean Jew inspire and determine the nature, shape, and practices of a distinct religious movement? Vital to this first question is another equally challenging one: can the four Gospels be used to reconstruct the historical Jesus? In this work, Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer seek to untangle the complex relationships among Jesus, Judaism, and the Gospels in the earliest Christian movement. Jesus and Judaism, the first in a four-volume series, focuses on the person of Jesus in the context of Judaism. Beginning with his Galilean origin, the volume analyzes Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist and the Jewish context of Jesus' life and work. The authors argue that there never was a nonmessianic Jesus. Rather, his messianic claim finds expression in his relationship to the Baptist, his preaching in authority, his deeds of power, and his crucifixion as king of the Jews, and in the emergence of the earliest Christology. As Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer reveal, Jesus was not only a devout Jew, nor merely a miracle worker, but the essential part of the earliest form of Christianity.The authors insist that Jesus belongs within the history of early Christianity, rather than as its presupposition. Christianity did not begin after Jesus' death; Christianity began as soon as a Jew from Galilee started to preach the word of God.

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