This volume investigates the Jewish cultural matrix that gave rise to the veneration of Jesus in the early Christianity. Specifically, this study examines Christian origins, the context of Jewish monotheism, Jewish divine mediator figures and the Christian practice of worshipping Jesus.

This book offers a new contribution by addressing alternative hypotheses and previously neglected evidence using transdisciplinary tools.

"This is a study of the NT witness to how Jews and Jewish Christians perceived the relationship of Moses with Israel and with the Jewish people. This is a narrowly tailored study, focusing specifically on that relationship without treating Moses in the New Testament comprehensively. The study consults ancient writings and historical material to situate the NT Moses in a larger milieu of Jewish thought. It contributes both to the knowledge of ancient Judaism and the to illumination of NT religion and theology, especially Christology."

The subject of early Christology is at the heart of the Christian faith. Believers in Jesus have been pondering the question that Jesus himself asked his disciples in Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matt 16:15). Scholars have labored for years to answer this question from a variety of perspectives and they've come to some drastically different conclusions. In Christology in Review Nick Norelli collates a number of book reviews on the topic of early Christology that originally appeared on his blog Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth. The reviews contained in this volume range in length and focus but they all offer critical interaction with scholarship from one end of the spectrum to the other.

“Unheil,” curse, disaster: according to German scholar Gerhard Kittel, this is the Jewish destiny attested to in scripture. Such interpretations of biblical texts provided Adolf Hitler with the theological legitimatization necessary to realizing his “final solution.” But theological antisemitism did not begin with the Third Reich. Ferdinand Baur’s nineteenth-century Judaism-Hellenism dichotomy empowered National Socialist scholars to construct an Aryan Jesus cleansed of his Jewish identity, building on Baur’s Enlightenment prejudices. Anders Gerdmar takes a fresh look at the dangers of the politicization of biblical scholarship and the ways our unrecognized interpretive filters may generate someone else’s apocalypse.

This book is a greatly revised and expanded edition of Richard Bauckham's acclaimed God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (1999), which helped redirect scholarly discussion of early Christology.

In discussions of Paul's letters, much attention has been devoted to statements that closely identify Christ with Israel's God (i.e., 1 Cor 8:6). However, in Rom 3:30 and Gal 3:20, Paul uses the phrase "God is one" to link Israel's monotheistic confession and the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God. Therefore, this study traces the OT and early Jewish backgrounds of the phrase "God is one" and their possible links to Gentile inclusion. Following this, Christopher Bruno examines the two key Pauline texts that link the confession of God as one with the inclusion of the Gentiles. Bruno observes a significant discontinuity between the consistent OT and Jewish interpretations of the phrase and Paul's use of "God is one" in relation to the Gentiles. In the both the OT and earlyJewish literature, the phrase functions as a boundary marker of sorts, distinguishing the covenant people and the Gentiles. The key exception to this pattern is Zech 14:9, which anticipates the confession of God as one expanding to the nations. Similarly, in Romans and Galatians, the phrase is not aboundary marker, but rather grounds the unity of Jew and Gentile. The contextand arguments in Rom 3:30 and Gal 3:20 lead to the conclusion that Paul's monotheism must now be understood in light of the Christ event; moreover, Zech14:9 may play a significant role in the link between Paul's eschatological monotheism and his argument for the inclusion of the Gentiles in Romans and Galatians.

This book offers a fresh cross-disciplinary approach to the current discussion on the Christian canon formation process. By carefully integrating historical, hermeneutical and theological aspects to account for the emergence of the canon, it seeks to offer a more comprehensive picture of the canon development than has previously been achieved. The formation and continuous usage of the Christian biblical canon is here viewed as an act of literary preservation and actualization of the church's apostolic normative tradition - 'the Scriptures and the Lord' - addressing, first of all, the church, but also the wider society. In order to grasp the complex phenomenon of the biblical canon, the study is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on linguistic and effective-historical, textual and material, performative, and ideational aspects of the canon. Attention is given to the scribal nomina sacra convention, the codex format, oral and written Gospel, early Christian liturgical praxis and the Rule of Faith. Bokedal argues that the canon was formed in a process, with its own particular intention, history, and direction. Throughout the study, history and theology, past and present are considered alongside each other. By using a Gadamerian hermeneutics of tradition, the reader's attention is directed to historical dimensions of the canon and its interpretative possibilities for our time. The notion of effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte), as well as the interaction between text, community and reader are crucial to the argument. The canonical text as text, its interpretation and ritual contextualization are highlighted as unifying elements for the communities being addressed.

This two-volume set is part of a growing body of literature concerned with the history of biblical interpretation. The ample introduction first situates key players in the story of the development of the major strands of biblical interpretation since the Enlightenment, identifying how different theoretical and methodological approaches are related to each other and describing the academic environment in which they emerged and developed. Volume 1 contains fourteen essays on twenty-two interpreters who were principally active before 1980, and volume 2 has nineteen essays on twenty-seven of those who were active primarily after this date. Each chapter provides a brief biography of one or more scholars, as well as a detailed description of their major contributions to the field. This is followed by an (often new) application of the scholar's theory. By focusing on the individual scholars and their work, the book recognizes that interpretive approaches arise out of certain circumstances, and that scholars are influenced by, and have influences upon, both other interpreters and the times in which they live. This set is ideal for any class on the history of biblical interpretation and for those who want a greater understanding of how the current field of biblical studies developed.