What can Jesus, Paul, and the early church teach pastors about sustainable, bivocational ministry?In Wages in the Kingdom, biblical scholar Jason Mills argues that for much of the early church, pastoral ministry was shared and self-sustaining. Drawing on careful exegesis of New Testament texts and historical evidence, Mills demonstrates that most early church leaders were not paid for ministry itself but sustained themselves by working a trade.This...

James Arminius is frequently mischaracterized as a mere opponent of the Reformation. In this historically rigorous and theologically nuanced reappraisal, Thomas Dow offers a sophisticated corrective to this narrative. He presents Arminius as a deliberate bridge-builder committed to the unity of the church. Dow demonstrates that Arminius's project was built upon a principled evangelical catholicity--one profoundly anchored in the Scripture, the patristic tradition, and the shared doctrinal ...

Captures John's unique perspective and voice in the wider field of Jesus studiesIn this volume Stanley Porter tackles a variety of important and often highly contentious topics within the Gospel of John as a means of defining and capturing the distinctive Johannine voice. Subjects discussed include John in relation to competing Gospels, the public proclamation of Jesus in John, the sources of John's Gospel, John's prologue, the "I Am" sayings, the notion of truth, the Pass...

Constantin von Tischendorf was a pioneer. He existed in an age when biblical studies as we know it was being formed, when the quest for forgotten manuscripts and lost treasures was being undertaken with no less zeal and intrigue than it is today. It was Tischendorf who found, and preserved, the oldest extant version of the complete bible that we know of, the so-called Codex Sinaiticus, which he discovered in poor condition at St Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, in 1846.

Did Paul ever meet Jesus and hear him teach? A century ago, a curious assortment of scholars - William Ramsay, Johannes Weiss, and James Hope Moulton - thought that he had. Since then, their idea has virtually disappeared from New Testament scholarship, to be revived in this monograph. When Paul Met Jesus is an exercise in both biblical exegesis and intellectual history. After examining the positive arguments raised, it considers the negative influence of Ferdinand Christian Baur, William ...

How should we expect multiple interpretations of the Bible to be kept in check? Each of the contributors, experts in the field, considers one parameter of responsibility, which may act as a constraint on the validity of competing biblical interpretations. Stanley E. Porter considers theological resposibility; Walter Moberly on ecclesial reponsibility; Richard S. Briggs on scriptural responsibility; Matthew R Malcolm on kerygmatic responsibility; James D.G. Dunn on historical reponsibility;...

The 'Dictionary of New Testament Background' joins the 'Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels', the 'Dictionary of Paul and his Letters' and the 'Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments' as the fourth in a landmark series of reference works on the Bible.In a time when our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean world has grown, this volume sets out for readers the wealth of Jewish and Greco-Roman background that should inform our reading and underst...

Stanley E. Porter provides descriptions of various important topics in Greek linguistics from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective; an approach that has been foundational to Porter's long and influential career in the field of New Testament Greek.Deep insights into Porter's understanding of SFL are displayed throughout, based either upon how he positions SFL in relation to other linguistic models, or how he utilizes it to describe topics within Greek and New Testamen...

This volume examines and outlines a Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) model of discourse analysis and its relationship to New Testament Greek. The book reflects upon how SFL has grown as a field since it was first introduced to New Testament Greek studies by Stanley E. Porter in the 1980s.Porter and Matthew Brook O'Donnell first introduce basic concepts regarding discourse analysis and the major approaches towards it within New Testament studies. They then provide a detailed exp...

The volume presents Stanley E. Porter's considered thoughts and reflections on key questions of meaning and context, addressing the problems of biblical interpretation and how a close collaboration between hermeneutics and linguistics can help to solve them.The chapters display Porter's work in both fields, examining how hermeneutics functions as a field in modern biblical studies, and how the quest for meaning in biblical texts is underpinned by the study of lingui...

Fills the need for a truly mid-level, quality textbook on New Testament textual criticismPresenting all the essential, foundational elements necessary to grasp textual criticism of the New Testament, Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts accurately define the subject of textual criticism, discuss the canon and manuscripts of the New Testament, outline methodological principles, and more, concluding with a chapter on New Testament translations and how to evaluate them.Par...

Nowhere are the chaotic debates surrounding contemporary aspect theory more heated than in discussions of the theory’s application to Hellenistic Greek, and especially its understanding of the semantics of the Greek perfect tense. This book is a distilled academic debate among three of the best-known scholars on the subject, each defending his own unique interpretation while engaging the other two. The Perfect Storm will prove an indispensable resource for any scholar seeking to w...