Markus Bockmuehl

A Jew to the Jews

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The Jewish identity of the Apostle Paul has returned to the limelight. Where mainstream scholarship tended to prefer in 1 Corinthians 9 a Paul who observes Jewish law only sporadically as an instrument to advance his mission among Jews and Gentiles, this groundbreaking study breaks with that picture of the apostle as a chameleon and opportunist. In its place, David Rudolph's learned argument proposes to restore the integrity of the apostle's voice as a consistently Jewish missionary, to Gentiles as well as to Jews. A provocative and compelling argument!”

Altogether Lovely

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Modern critical interpreters, allergic to ‘allegorical’ interpretations, have often tended to make heavy weather of their preferred ‘historical-critical’ readings of the Song of Songs as an erotic love song first and last – thereby severing its interpretation from the entire history of Jewish as well as Christian reading of the Song as Scripture. Havilah Dharamraj, one of India’s most accomplished Old Testament scholars, here develops a captivating intertextual approach that allows the Song to be heard alongside its Scriptural co-texts about marriage in the prophets. The result is a vibrantly fresh interpretation that brings to life the full color of the Song’s register of desire and affection as reflecting ‘the many-splendored love of the divine husband’. Highly recommended!”

Biblical Theology

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Clifton Black is a Princeton institution, widely admired for his depth of Christian learning, his charm and style, and his disarming sense of humor. He is one of today’s leading literary and theological scholars of the Gospel of Mark and the history of biblical interpretation—and also, by his own account, ‘a churchman first.’ All these qualities come together in this fine anthology of thirty of his best essays, loosely but significantly organized under the contested heading of ‘biblical theology’—which is shown here to range from scholarly debates about Paul and the Gospels to their astonishingly wide application in homiletical and pastoral ministry.”

Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament

Theology

“Whether locating Mary in the Old Testament or seeing types of Christ in Genesis or Tobit, unlocking unexpected biblical dynamics of merit or uncovering unexpected hints of purgatory, this is radical work from a biblical scholar and theological master provocateur. For Anderson, the key to the biblical text lies in recognizing how it is that the Jewish Bible continues to function as Scripture for Christian readers ever since antiquity. Doctrine, he claims, has an uncanny way of unlocking exegesis. Allow yourself to be provoked!”

Colossians and Philemon

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Marianne Meye Thompson's major new work on Colossians and Philemon bears all the hallmarks of her Johannine theological acumen, bringing the epistles' spiritual dynamism to life with her characteristic combination of learning and lightness of touch. This is an exemplary Two Horizons commentary. . . An impressive, timely contribution to the interpretation of these two New Testament letters.”

Defending Substitution

Theology

“In this slender but admirably clear and focused volume, Simon Gathercole sets out to recover the recently unfashionable understanding of the atonement in classic Reformational terms of substitution. He concludes that there is indeed every reason to recognize this theme in key texts such as 1 Corinthians 15:3 and Romans 5:6, when they are understood in their Old Testament as well as Greco-Roman contexts. But this is for him a case of compatible rather than competing metaphors: Christ’s substitution for sinners does not make his death any the less representative or liberating. I warmly recommend this revival of a classic argument that recent New Testament scholarship sometimes appears to have forgotten. Here is an eminently accessible point of reference for future exegetical, theological, and, indeed, ecumenical engagement with St. Paul on the death of Christ.”

Engaging Leviticus

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“"The theological Cinderella status of Leviticus, cemented by Reformational and historical-critical certainties, appears to leave it languishing as the epitome of rule-bound ritualism and archaic moral strictures against which progressive religion confidently defines itself. Here, by contrast, Mark Elliott's learned album of theological commentary through the ages retrieves a sparkling treasury of attentive reflection on the awkwardly alien particularities of Leviticus as holding forth and anticipating the word of truth.”

In the Shadow of the Temple

History & Biography

“Professor Skarsaune has long been known as a leading scholar of early Jewish and Gentile Christian history. Here he brings his outstanding specialist learning to bear in a wonderfully accessible, comprehensive introduction to the Jewish basis of Christian faith and history throughout the first three centuries. In binding together the New Testament's Jewish roots with the life of the early Jewish and Gentile church, this is an outstanding textbook of Christian origins.”

Mark

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“It is a delight to welcome this exegetically informed and sensitive exposition of Mark's Gospel. Unlike so many ineffectual gestures towards globalization in biblical studies, this commentary adds to its series a learned, critically and theologically invested interpretation that is composed in a non-Western setting but seeks to engage its text for a global Christian readership. Tan and [the] editors deserve our thanks for this valuable contribution to a much-needed widening of the conversation.”

The Commentarial Impulse

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“These accomplished essays vividly illuminate the character and impact of St. Paul’s scriptural interpretation through several generations of early Christian writing. The apostle’s readers borrowed, adapted, and sometimes resisted his biblical references, now embracing and now subverting his apocalyptic hope for Israel. David Lincicum’s characteristic, expert close readings trace Paul’s exegetical legacy across second-century landscapes of ‘commentarial’ tradition, contest, and experimentation concerning the scriptural promise and its fulfilment.”

The Gospel and the Gospels

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“This compellingly argued, brilliant, and provocative thesis calls into question several assured convictions of modern gospels scholarship. It looks certain to spark robust debate, from which fans and critics alike are sure to benefit. Take up and read!”

The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“This landmark study, a decade in the making, advances a bold and fresh interpretation of Gospel origins that seems sure to generate interest, debate, and controversy for some time to come. Against the established 'Two Source' (Mark and 'Q') and the increasingly popular 'Farrer-Goulder' (Mark-Matthew-Luke) hypotheses, Edwards revives an older scholarly fascination with the mysterious 'Hebrew Gospel' that was held in high regard by many church fathers and attributed to Matthew the apostle. Drawing on patient study of patristic quotations and on Semitisms in the Gospel of Luke, Edwards proposes that the Third Evangelist used a single Gospel document in Hebrew both for his special material and for his overall narrative outline (together with Mark and a much more compact 'double tradition' also known to the later canonical Matthew). This is an important and exciting work that offers students an excellent introduction to early Christian views of the Gospel tradition — and it gives Synoptic scholars much to chew on!”

The Inspiration and Interpretation of Scripture

Theology

“Drawing on the resources of the early church, Michael Graves takes an interestingly textured approach to the abiding questions surrounding a theology of scripture. . . . Anyone who cares about the subject matter will welcome this book's fresh and engaging attention to the early church's hermeneutical diversity.”

The Pastor Theologian

Church Leadership & Ministry

“Academically trained pastors, like engineers or lawyers, may struggle to navigate between a vocation and passion as scholars on the one hand and as practitioners on the other. Of course, not all are called to be both. But Hiestand and Wilson challenge their North American evangelical readership to confront a double problem of anemia—in their churches’ theology and in the theological academy’s understanding of the church. All those alert to the tension are here invited to a practically minded vision of the pastor as “ecclesial theologian,” called to feed his or her people with the life-giving gospel as transforming nourishment for heart and mind.”

Vox Petri

Theology

“Recent scholarship has sought to revisit Simon Peter’s long-neglected and frequently caricatured profile as the leading disciple of Jesus in Scripture and early Christian memory. But what might happen if one were to take one logical step further, drawing out and synthesizing such glimpses of a remembered Peter into a more coherent picture of this first among the apostles? Gene Green offers his answer in a composite theology of Peter as a New Testament teacher and writer: one who ‘got by with a little help from his friends,’ yet can rightly be pictured at the wellspring and ‘head of the table’ of Christian theology. Warmly recommended as a book with which to think about the shape of the apostolic church, its leadership, and its beliefs.”