Richard L. Rohrbaugh

Gathered around Jesus

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“For the first time in the long scholarly discussion of Mark's problematic geography, Stewart uses both modern spatial theory and an exhaustive review of ancient evidence to demonstrate how Mark's spatial perceptions reflect Greek, Roman, and Jewish understandings of human geography. Moving well beyond the anachronistic studies that have dominated the discussion to date, he has provided a significant advance in the study of the Gospel of Mark.”

Preaching John

Preaching & Worship

“From long years in both the classroom and the pulpit, Robert Kysar has developed a unique gift for bridging the gap between the two. He is able to see and show the reader a whole host of surprising homiletical implications that emerge from recent Johannine scholarship. Best of all, with sermon excerpts from the preaching of his wife and himself, he richly demonstrates how to lead a congregation into the strange world of John's Gospel.”

Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“This is not the typical introspective, individualistic Paul of Western theology. Rather Malina and Pilch reveal Paul as a thoroughgoing Mediterranean person, functioning as a change agent among Israelites living in minority communities around the Greco-Roman world. Pauline theology will never look the same again.”

The Life of a Galilean Shaman

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Can the sense of reality in one culture (the modern West) really provide an accurate guide for understanding what happened in an alien culture (ancient Mediterranean) in the distant past? Craffert argues persuasively that the answer is no. Judgments about the real, the strange, the odd, the implausible, indeed the historical, are all culturally determined. The net result: Craffert's study raises as sharp a challenge to traditional historical Jesus studies as has come along in a generation.”

The Parables of Jesus the Galilean

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Despite a century and more of decrying allegorical interpretation of the parables, the practice is still pervasive in New Testament scholarship. But by taking seriously the cultural distance between our world and that of Jesus, and then mining the ancient papyri for the actual realities of people's lives, van Eck has produced a compelling, fresh, and truly realistic reading of the parables of Jesus.”

The Radical Jesus, the Bible, and the Great Transformation

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“A powerful demonstration of why the estrangement of the Bible and its world from modern America cannot be overcome by unconsciously reading ourselves into its pages . . . or by removing it from the real world of the struggling 95 percent in its own time whose voices are never heard.”