Preliminary Material /David Edward Aune -- Animals and Symbolism in Luke (Lexical notes on Luke-Acts, IX) /Henry J. Cadbury -- The Text of Matthew 1.16 /Bruce M. Metzger -- Capitalization in english translations of the Gospel of Matthew /Floyd V. Filson -- The Greek new testament with a limited critical Aapparatus: Its nature and Uses /Ernest Cadman Colwell -- The Q-Problem Reconsidered /Olof Linton -- The Christian two ways Tradition: Its Antiquity, Form, and Function /M. Jack Suggs -- Pseudepigraphy and the early Christians /Martin Rist -- Proverbs in the Gospel of Thomas /William A. Beardslee -- The Historical beginnings of the Resurrection Faith /Howard M. Teeple -- Synoptic prophecies on the destruction of Jerusalem /Bo Relcke -- Luke, The Literary Physician /Morton S. Enslin -- The Census in Luke as an Apologetic Device /Horst R. Moehring -- The Israel of God /Kenneth Willis Clark -- Redactions of the Fourth Gospel and the mother of Jesus /Harry M. Buck -- Unsolved questions about early Christianity in Anatolia /Sherman E. Johnson -- The Phenomenon Of early Christian 'Anti-Saoramentalism ' /David E. Aune -- Christians and imperial economic policy in the early Fourth Century /Robert M. Grant -- The concept of the so-called 'Divine Man ' in mark's Christology /Otto Betz -- Christian Baptism and the contribution of Melito of Sardis reconsidered /Gerald F. Hawthorne -- Allen P. Wikgren : Biography and Bibliography /Robert W. Alllson -- Index Of Authors /David Edward Aune -- Index Of References /David Edward Aune.

The Westminster Dictionary of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Rhetoric details the variety of literary and rhetorical forms found in the New Testament and in the literature of the early Christian church. This authoritative reference source is a treasury for understanding the methods employed by New Testament and early Christian writers. Aune's extensive study will be of immense value to scholars and all those interested in the ways literary and rhetorical forms were used and how they functioned in the early Christian world. This unique and encyclopedic study will serve generations of scholars and students by illuminating the ways words shaped the consciousness of those who encountered Christian teachings.

This volume is a collection of newly published scholarly studies honoring Prof.Dr. David. E. Aune on his 65th birthday. These groundbreaking studies written by prominent international scholars investigate a range of topics in the New Testament and early Christian literature with insights drawn from Greco-Roman culture and Hellenistic Judaism.

There has been growing interest in recent years in the presence and image of blacks and blackness in classical antiquity. However this pioneering and much needed work is the first to survey and theorise the black as seen by early Christian writers.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Jewish and early Christian authors discussed Abraham in numerous and diverse ways, adapting his Old Testament narratives and using Abrahamic imagery in their works. However, while some areas of study in Abrahamic texts have received much scholarly attention, other areas remain nearly untouched. Beginning with a perspective on how Abraham was used within Jewish literature, this collection of essays follows the impact of Abraham across biblical texts–including Pseudigraphic and Apocryphal texts – into early Greek, Latin and Gnostic literature. These essays build upon existing Abraham scholarship, by discussing Abraham in less explored areas such as rewritten scripture, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, the Apostolic Fathers and contemporary Greek and Latin authors. Through the presentation of a more thorough outline of the impact of the figure and stories of Abraham, the contributors to this volume create a concise and complete idea of how his narrative was employed throughout the centuries, and how ancient authors adopted and adapted received traditions.

This publication deals with A Biblical Theology of Life based on the New Testament. It forms the second of a two volume publication on A Biblical Theology of Life. These two volumes trace the concept of life throughout Protestant canon, working with the final form of the biblical books in Hebrew (vol. 5) and Greek (vol. 6) Scripture. This is done by providing the reader with a book-by-book overview of this concept. This book concludes with a final chapter synthesising the findings of the respective investigations of the Old and New Testament corpora in order to provide a summative theological perspective of the development of the concept through Scripture. It is clear that life forms a central and continuous theme throughout the Biblical text. The theme begins with the living God that creates life, but is shortly followed by death that threatens life. Despite this threat, God sustains life and awakens life from death. The text concludes with the consummation depicting eternal life in the new heaven and earth. The biblical theological approach that has been taken entails a thematic approach as it investigates the concept of life, with contextual foci on what individual books of Scripture teach about life, joined diachronically with an investigation of the progressive use of the concept of life in Scripture, while providing a theology of Scripture as a whole investigating the concept of life in all sixty-six books of the Protestant canon.

The relationship between faith and reason is multifaceted. Faith transcends reason in that it is more than reason alone can contain or fully guarantee, yet it is neither unreasonable nor something to which reason is irrelevant--and reason says some pretty fine things about it! This volume updates nine previously published articles on faith and reason by a Christian philosopher who has been studying these matters for two decades, alongside one new essay and a philosophical dialogue. These articles explain and integrate key ideas on faith and reason, including Alvin Plantinga's account of how Christian belief can be knowledge even without evidence; defenses of faith from Augustine and William James; accounts of empirical evidence for faith from different world religions; the distinction between faith and sight in the New Testament; the structure of the evidence for the authority of the Bible; the idea that faith transcends reason because some articles of faith are beyond human comprehension, even if we have evidence that they are true; and the nature of faith as a total commitment beyond what the evidence alone can guarantee.

Helen Rhee’s outstanding work is the first book to bring together The Apologies and the semi-fictional Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts in a single study. Filling a significant gap in the scholarship, she looks at Christian self definition and self representation in the context of pagan-Christian conflict. Using an interdisciplinary approach; historical, literary, theological, sociological, and anthropological, Rhee studies the Christians in the formative period of their religion; from mid first to early third centuries. She examines how the forms of Greco-Roman society were adapted by the Christians to present the superiority of Christian monotheism, Christian sexual morality, and Christian (dis)loyalty to the Empire. Tackling broad topics, including theology, asceticism, sexuality and patriotism, this book explores issues of cultural identity and examines how these propagandist writings shaped the theological, moral and political trajectories of Christian faith and contributed largely to the definition of orthodoxy. This thorough study will benefit all students of early Christianity and Greco-Roman literary culture and civilization.

The Synoptic gospels were written by elites educated in Greco-Roman literature, not exclusively by and for early Christian communities.

In The Church as Paradise and the Way Therein: Early Christian Appropriation of Genesis 3:22–24, Christopher A. Graham demonstrates that early Christian authors employed the words “paradise” and “way” as allusions to the expulsion narrative (Genesis 3:22–24) to signify that the benefits available in protological Paradise were once again accessible in and through Jesus and the Church. The centrality of the expulsion narrative in their literary milieus gave these authors confidence that readers would discern these allusions. After considering the reception of the expulsion in texts circulating within the early Christian milieu, Graham turns to the texts of Luke and Irenaeus of Lyons. Both authors drew from an interpretive tradition in which a return to Paradise was desirable. Both celebrated Jesus's reversal of Adam's expulsion and the constitution of Jesus's followers as the location and means by which humanity could continue to access divine truth and life. For both authors, the Church is Paradise and the way therein.