March 2001
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July 2009From Qumran to Aleppo
A Discussion with Emanuel Tov about the Textual History of Jewish Scriptures in Honor of his 65th Birthday
by Herausgegeben von Lange, Armin; Herausgegeben von Weigold, Matthias; Herausgegeben von Zsengellér, József
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July 2017Angel Veneration and Christology
A Study in Early Judaism and in the Christology of the Apocalypse of John
by Loren T. Stuckenbruck
The public worship of the risen Christ as depicted in John’s Apocalypse directly contradicts the guiding angel’s emphasis that only God should be worshiped (Revelation 19:10; 22:8-9). In Angel Veneration and Christology, Loren Stuckenbruck explores this contradiction in light of angel veneration in Early Judaism. Stuckenbruck surveys a wide variety of Jewish traditions related to angelic worship and discovers proscriptions against sacrificing to angels; prohibitions against making images of angels; rejections of the "two powers"; second-century Christian apologetic accusations specifically directed against Jews; and, most importantly, the refusal tradition, widespread in Jewish and Jewish-Christian writings, wherein angelic messengers refuse the veneration of the seer and exhort the worship of God alone. While evidence for the practice of angel veneration among Jews of antiquity (Qumran, pseudepigraphal literature, and inscriptions from Asia Minor) does not furnish the immediate background for the worship of Christ, Stuckenbruck demonstrates that the very fact that safeguards to a monotheistic framework were issued at all throws light on the Christian practice of worshiping Jesus. The way the Apocalypse adapts the refusal tradition illuminates Revelation’s declarations about and depictions of Jesus. Though the refusal tradition itself only safeguards the worship of God, Stuckenbruck traces how the tradition has been split so that the angelophanic elements were absorbed into the christophany. As Stuckenbruck shows, an angelomorphic Christology, shared by the author of Revelation and its readers, functions to preserve the author’s monotheistic emphasis as well as to emphasize Christ’s superiority over the angels—setting the stage for the worship of the Lamb in a monotheistic framework that does not contradict the angelic directive to worship God alone.
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July 2017The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism
Papers from the St Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus
by Carey C. Newman, James R. Davila, Gladys S. Lewis
Second Temple Judaism exerted a profound and shaping influence upon early Christianity. The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism documents this influence by exploring the ways in which the Christian praxis of Christ-devotion in the first two centuries of the Common Era can be understood as a manifestation of Jewish monotheism. The volume approaches this phenomenon along four distinctive lines of inquiry: (1) reexamining (and problematizing) the theological force of monotheism during the Second Temple period; (2) retracing the historical steps of Christianity’s adaptation, mutation, and/or redefinition of Jewish monotheism; (3) exploring and debating the influence of non-Jewish traditions on this process; and (4) mapping how Christianity’s unique appropriation of Jewish monotheism helps explain the intriguing relationships among emerging Christian, Jewish, and gnostic communities. Eighteen chapters, each from an expert in the study of early Judaism and Christianity, comprise the volume. The chapters collectively demonstrate how the creation of new mythic narratives, the revelatory power of mystical experiences, and the sociology of community formation capitalized on Jewish mediator traditions to initiate the praxis of Christ-devotion.
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July 2017Messianic Exegesis
Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity
by Donald H. Juel
While the relationship between Second Temple Jewish exegesis and early Christian exegesis as demonstrated in the New Testament is universally recognized, the reasons for their similarities and differences are often elusive. Donald H. Juel in Messianic Exegesis seeks to unknot this tangled web of interpretation. Juel’s thesis is simple: Christianity’s origins are rooted in the earliest Christian interpretations of Israel’s Scriptures. The difficulty resides in showing how these distinctive interpretations arose. Juel argues that the events of Jesus’ life form the fulcrum for the Christian re-reading of Jewish Scripture. In particular, Juel shows how Christian belief in a crucified and risen Messiah guided both the selection and appropriation of Old Testament texts—texts like 2 Samuel 7, Daniel 7, and Psalms 2 and 110. With the confession "Jesus is the Messiah" as the central claim of Christianity, Juel is able to show the fluidity of contemporary Jewish exegesis while also making the anomalous uses of Scripture within the early Christian community understandable. Christians proclaimed Jesus as Messiah throughout their exegesis and thereby defined their emerging community through the way they read Scripture.
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Jewish studiesSeptember 2014The Jewish Pseudepigrapha
An introduction to the literature of the Second Temple period
by Susan Docherty
This is a concise yet comprehensive guide to the Pseudepigrapha: the Jewish texts of the late Second Temple Period (circa 250BCE–100CE) that are not included in theHebrew Bible or standard collections of the Apocrypha. Each chapter deals with a specific literary genre (e.g. apocalyptic, testaments, rewritten Bible), encouraging readers to appreciate the texts as literature as well as furthering their understanding of the content and significance of the texts themselves As well as providing helpful introductions to the different genres, the book surveys key issues such as: date, authorship, original language; purpose; overview of contents; key theological themes and significance.
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Religion & beliefsJuly 2015People Under Power
Early Jewish and Christian Responses to the Roman Empire
by Edited by Michael Labahn and Outi Lehtipuu
This volume presents a batch of incisive new essays on the relationship between Roman imperial power and ideology and Christian and Jewish life and thought within the empire. Employing diverse methodologies that include historical criticism, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and social historical studies, the contributors offer fresh perspectives on a question that is crucial for our understanding not only of the late Roman Empire, but also of the growth and change of Christianity and Judaism in the imperial period.
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Biblical studies & exegesisJune 2015
Jesus and the Victory of God
by N. T. Wright
Wright sets out in fascinating detail his own compelling account of how Jesus himself understood his mission: how he believed himself called to remake Israel, the people of God, around himself; how he announced God's judgement on the Israel of his day, especially its Temple and hierarchy; and how he saw his own movement as the divinely ordained fulfilment of Israel's destiny. Nearly twenty years on, this book is still a major point of reference for serious study of the historical Jesus Companion volume to The New Testament and the People of God (1992), The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) and Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013)
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Biblical studies & exegesisOctober 2015
Discovering Genesis
Content, interpretation, reception
by Iain Provan
This introduction to the interpretation of Genesis encourages indepth study of the text, and genuine grappling with the theological and historical questions raised, by providing a critical assessment of key interpreters and interpretative debates. It draws on a range of methodological approaches (author-, text- and reader-centred), as complementary rather than mutually exclusive ways of understanding the text. It also reflects the growing scholarly attention to the reception history of biblical texts, increasingly viewed as a vital aspect of interpretation rather than an optional extra.
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Biblical studies & exegesisMay 2015
The Challenge of Jesus
by N. T. Wright
A compelling historical picture of Jesus that also rings true to the resurrected Christ of Christian belief, worship and experience Written by a world-renowned theologian and communicator, hailed by Newsweek as 'the world's leading New Testament scholar' Now with a fascinating new introduction, reflecting on, among other things, Jesus' self-understanding and what he really meant by the 'kingdom of God' This book makes accessible to lay readers the arguments laid out in Jesus and the Victory of God (SPCK, 1996). But Wright does more than just rehash these arguments: he adds a discussion of the resurrection, and addresses the prickly problem of relevance. In the first six chapters, he tackles many of the questions of the historical Jesus debate. He then addresses how all these historical-cum-theological issues are significant for Christians living in a postmodern world.
