Angela Standhartinger

Empire, Economics, and the New Testament

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Reading New Testament texts from several perspectives of the sub-elite living in concrete houses in a Roman city like Pompeii and in concrete religious environments like Thessaloniki and Philippi under respective different economic conditions can impressively demonstrate the effects of space and lived experience on first readers understandings of the Gospels and Pauline letters. Peter Oakes’s constant eye on material culture and concrete economic conditions of first-hand readers gives surprising and astonishing new clues to the manifold processes of group formation and their text production in the earliest decades of the Jesus movement. This new book is the fruit of more than twenty-five years of digging into the Jesus tradition and Paul’s letters on a ground level. It is a profound, well-researched, and new approach to the understanding of real first-century readers of New Testament texts in the context of the Roman Empire.”

Myths on the Margins

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“What is at stake in Jewish and Christian mythmaking? This outstanding book provides a compact and lucid source-based overview of the four basic Jewish myths that formed Christianity. Updating Rudolf Bultmann’s existential interpretation of biblical myth, Bill Loader explains excellently its meaning and relevance for contemporary readers in multicultural societies. Any reader of this brilliant book will perceive the Bible and Christian tradition anew.”