In this pioneering study of Scripture and reception history, Tucker S. Ferda shows that the hope for Jesus's second coming originated in his own message about the coming of the kingdom after a time of distress. Most historical Jesus scholars take for granted that Jesus's second coming was invented by his zealous early followers. In Jesus and His ......
In the early and mid-twentieth century, Joseph Fielding Smith's (1876-1972) life as a public historian and theologian shaped the religious worldview of generations of Latter-day Saints. Matthew Bowman examines Smith's ideas and his place in American religious history. Smith achieved position and influence at a young age, while his theories about ......
C. Kavin Rowe's keenest essays on Luke, Acts, and Paul, collected into one volume How should scholars undertake New Testament interpretation? C. Kavin Rowe unfolds a careful, multidisciplinary approach across fifteen of his most incisive articles and chapters. Focusing on Luke, Acts, and Paul's letters, this authoritative collection exemplifies ......
What difference does it make to identify Mark's gospel as an ancient biography? Reading the gospels as ancient biographies makes a profound difference to the way that we interpret them. Biography immortalizes the memory of the subject, creating a literary monument to the person's life and teaching. Yet it is also a bid to legitimize a specific ......
Are the miracle stories in the Bible actually true? Christians and skeptics alike may doubt the veracity of Jesus's miracles. Preachers often rely on a dry, literal interpretation of his healings and wonders, or else try to tame them and explain them away rationally. Both approaches, in their obsession with historical accuracy, miss the truth ......
A lushly illustrated, magisterial exploration of the imaginative truth of the gospel In the modern academy, truth and imagination are thought to be mutually exclusive. But what if truth can spring from other fonts, like art, literature, and invention? The legacy of the Enlightenment favors historical and empirical inquiry above all other ......
A major scholarly collaboration exploring vivid visual rhetoric in the New Testament From Jesus's miraculous walk on water to the graphic horrors of hell, New Testament authors make vivid and unforgettable images appear before their audience's eyes. In the past decade, scholarship on early Christian use of ancient rhetorical techniques has ......
Unraveling Religious Leadership considers various attributes related to the form and function of leadership within religious institutions in conversation with decolonial ideas and practices. Decoloniality, in negation of the ongoing legacies of colonialism, seeks ways of being and doing beyond white, eurowestern, modern ideals of who a leader is ......
Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions
Contextualizing the gospels in ancient Greco-Roman media practices New Testament scholars have often relied on outdated assumptions for understanding the composition and circulation of the gospels. This scholarship has spread myths or misconceptions about how the ancients read, wrote, and published texts. ? ? Nicholas Elder updates our ......
