Paula Fredriksen

Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus?

Apologetics

“…it is hard to imagine a better introduction to the question of the Gospels and the historical Jesus, whether for the thinking layman or for the responsible pastor. This book is at once learned and lively. Teachers in seminaries, take note: Can We Trust the Bible on the Historical Jesus? awaits its rightful place on your bookshelf and in your syllabi.”

Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“What happens if we attend to Matthew’s inception history, rather than to its reception history? If we read it not within the New Testament, but alongside of other late first-century Jewish texts (4 Ezra, 2 Baruch)? If we see this 'passionately angry' gospel not as an instance of 'Christian origins,' but as a witness to Jewish origins? In Divine Wrath and Salvation in Matthew, Anders Runesson offers exactly such an accomplishment at historical reimagining. The result is a profound work of ethical reasoning, and a clear summons to theological courage.”

Every Wickedness

Fiction

“Tall, blond, caffeine-dependent, and fearless. Fighting the forces of darkness while surviving faculty meetings. Juggling the demands of small children with those of ad hoc detective work. And—did I mention this?—flattening the occasional bad guy with her black-belt Tae Kwan Do. Thistlethwaite’s Ginelli has it and does it all, a Wonder Woman with powers that we can all strive to have. And she moves through a Chicago landscape vividly conjured by Thistlethwaite’s wonderful, funny, and high-energy prose. Do yourself a favor and read this book.”

Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“In Helping Jesus Fulfill Prophecy, Robert Miller traces the apologetic, political, and polemical uses of the idea of prophecy and fulfillment from the scriptures of ancient Israel to the web pages of the modern American megachurch. Passionately argued and morally lucid, Helping issues a fervent appeal for an ethical, reasoned, biblical interpretation. This is a thoughtful must-read for anyone concerned with the moral compass of contemporary Christianity.”

In the Form of a God

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“When reading Paul’s letters, to what degree does context determine content? For Andrew Perriman, the answer is ‘quite a lot’—and that context is first-century Mediterranean paganism, the matrix of Paul’s gentile mission. How would his pagan audience have heard Paul’s claims about Christ? In the Form of a God answers this question through recreating, with sympathetic imagination, Paul’s reception within his gentile assemblies. Perriman’s fresh reading offers a refreshed Christology.”

Jesus and the Law of Moses

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Jewish Law provided not the contrast to Jesus’s message but its context and much of its content. By reading closely in biblical and postbiblical Jewish texts, Paul Sloan restores this dimension to the Synoptic Gospels’ representations of Jesus. Jesus and the Law of Moses is an exemplary work of scholarship.”

Jesus, the New Testament, and Christian Origins

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Panoramic in scope, sensitive in exposition, richly informed by illustrative detail: Jesus, the New Testament, and Christian Origins offers the reader a wonderful introduction both to the field of New Testament Studies and to the ancient world from which its texts sprang.”

John of History, Baptist of Faith

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Engaging an astonishingly rich and polyglot array of scholarly secondary sources, reading closely in ancient authors and traditions not often brought together—Q, Josephus, Mandaean texts, the Protoevangelium of James, Coptic and Syriac Christian materials—James McGrath offers an imaginative and original interpretation of the figure of John the Baptist, one whose work and life importantly informed and inspired both the mission and the message of Jesus. John of History, Baptist of Faith inaugurates a new phase in the quest for this elusive historical figure. It is a major scholarly achievement.”

Judeophobia and the New Testament

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The scholars assembled here have not only issued a clarion call to colleagues to name and to resist this toxic inheritance. They have given us the tools to do so.”

Paul

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The revolution in New Testament studies that E.P. Sanders inaugurated with Paul and Palestinian Judaism reaches its culmination in Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters and Thought. This is a masterful portrait by a master historian.”

Paul and Palestinian Judaism

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Paul and Palestinian Judaism revolutionized New Testament Studies. This great book began the serious academic retrieval of Second Temple Judaism as the defining context, in positive ways, of Paul’s life and work. Brilliantly analyzing a broad range of early Jewish texts, Sanders likewise exposed the deep and abiding anti-Judaism afflicting – and disfiguring – centuries of Christian scholarship. Both intellectually and morally, his writing sounded a summons that has reshaped an entire field of study. If, in the forty years since its first publication, things have begun to change, it is thanks to Sanders, and to the enduring achievement of Paul and Palestinian Judaism.”

Paul and the Gentiles

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Not since E.P. Sander's Paul and Palestinian Judaism has there been such a sustained effort to understand Paul by locating him in his native religion, late Second Temple Judaism. Donaldson constructs Paul's context by looking particularly at ancient evidence, both scriptural and social, as it pertains to Jewish views of and interactions with Gentiles. The result is a breathtakingly ambitious survey and analysis of Jewish thought on 'the Gentile questions,' combined with a close reading of the epistles and, consequently, a coherent and plausible reconstruction of Paul's mission and motives. In this book, Terry Donaldson brings together ancient and modern sources with imagination and conviction to advance his own original hypothesis explaining how this 'Hebrew of Hebrew' came to see the incorporation of Gentiles as the logical extension of his commitment to Christ and to the redemption of Israel.”

Paul the Jew under Roman Rule

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Neither life nor scholarship occurs in a political vacuum. True for Paul, Elliott insists, and true no less for his modern interpreters. In these intellectually impassioned and morally lucid essays, Elliott summons his reader to approach Paul’s letters with critical historical imagination; to place Paul in his Roman no less than in his Jewish context; to think historically when thinking theologically. Paul the Jew under Roman Rule is an exciting exploration of the ethics of New Testament interpretation.”

Reading Paul within Judaism

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Mark Nanos has pioneered the historical reconstruction of Paul as native to his own time and place—a Paul, in brief, who stands entirely within the traditional hopes, beliefs, and practices of his own people, Israel. This exciting book conveys to the reader the thrill of a refreshed portrait, free of the later overlays of Luther, of Augustine, and of post-70 CE interpretations. If you want to meet Paul again for the first time, pick up Nanos’ Reading Paul Within Judaism.”

The Message and the Kingdom

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“The panoply and power of the Roman empire, the grandeur of Herodian Jerusalem, the disorienting poverty of rural Galilee and urban Judea: Horsley and Silberman walk the reader through all these distant landscapes. Their reconstruction of this lost world, drawn from archaeological data and modern social theory as well as ancient texts, gives new depth and drama to the often told story of Christian origins.”