Most historical Jesus and Gospel scholars have supposed three hypotheses of unidirectionality: geographically, the more Judaeo-Palestinian, the earlier; modally, the more oral, the earlier; and linguistically, the more Aramaized, the earlier. These are based on the chronological assumption of'the earlier, the more original'. These four long-held hypotheses have been applied as authenticity criteria. However, this book proposes that linguistic milieus of 1st-century Palestine and the Roman Near East were bilingual in Greek and vernacular languages and that the earliest church in Jerusalem was a bilingual Christian community. The study of bilingualism blurs the lines between each of the temporal dichotomies. The bilingual approach undermines unidirectional assumptions prevalent among Gospels and Acts scholarship with regard to the major issues of source criticism, textual criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, the Synoptic Problem, the Historical Jesus, provenances of the Gospels and Acts, the development of Christological titles and the development of early Christianity. There is a need for New Testament studies to rethink the major issues from the perspective of the interdirectionality theory based on bilingualism.

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

In The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament, Hughson Ong provides a study of the multifarious social and linguistic dynamics that compose the speech community of ancient Palestine, which include its historical linguistic shifts under different military regimes, its geographical linguistic landscape, the social functions of the languages in its linguistic repertoire, and the specific types of social contexts where those languages were used. Using a sociolinguistic model, his study attempts to paint a portrait of the sociolinguistic situation of ancient Palestine. This book is arguably the most comprehensive treatment of the subject matter to date in terms of its survey of the secondary literature and of its analysis of the sociolinguistic environment of first-century Palestine.

This volume discusses the new approaches regarding the criteria of authenticity and their relevance in the quest for the historical Jesus studies.

This book is a collection of cutting-edge essays on the Dead Sea Scrolls as part of ancient Mediterranean media culture, featuring interdisciplinary feedback from scholars in New Testament studies and Classics.

In this book, through a distinctive evangelical and critical approach, Michael Bird explores the historical development of the four canonical Gospels. He shows how the memories and faith of the earliest believers formed the Gospel accounts of Jesus that got written and, in turn, how these accounts further shaped the early church. Bird's study clarifies the often confusing debates over the origins of the canonical Gospels. Bird navigates recent concerns and research as he builds an informed case for how the early Christ followers wrote and spread the story of Jesus -- the story by which they believed they were called to live. The Gospel of the Lord is ideal for students or anyone who wants to know the story behind the four Gospels. Watch an interview with Michael Bird from our Eerdmans Author Interview Series:

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media is a convenient and authoritative reference tool, introducing specific terms and concepts helpful to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Since the early 1980s, biblical scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture and ritual. Over time these theories have been combined with considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins, and rabbinics. The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a source of reference that offers clear definitions, and in-depth discussions of relevant terms and concepts, and the relationships between them. The volume begins with an overview of 'ancient media studies' and a brief history of research to orient the reader to the field and the broader research context of the book, with individual entries on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/ concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic, paying particular attention to its relevance for the study of the Bible and related literature

Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement explores the events, people, and writings surrounding the founding of the early Jesus movement in the mid to late first century. The essays are divided into four parts, focused upon the movement’s formation, the production of its early Gospels, description of the Jesus movement itself, and the Jewish mission and its literature. This collection of essays includes chapters by a global cast of scholars from a variety of methodological and critical viewpoints, and continues the important Early Christianity in its Hellenistic Context series.

This study critically examines the current state of Synoptic Gospel studies, particularly many scholars' reliance on the Literary Dependence Hypothesis, and endeavors to advance a more balanced approach. The author attempts to deduce the Synoptic Gospels' construction process by meticulously examining the Eucharist and its co-text within these Gospels, by employing a model of Mode Register Analysis based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. This study uncovers the probability that each designated text in the Synoptic Gospels was constructed based on oral Gospel tradition(s) under the influence of each constructor’s identity.

This book introduces sociolinguistic criticism to New Testament studies. It utilizes a wide range of sociolinguistic theories, principles, and concepts in treating the language and sociolinguistic contexts of the New Testament, social memory, orality and literacy, and the oral traditions of the Gospels, and various texts and genres in the New Testament.