Few documents in world history can match the inspirational impact of the New Testament. For all its variety - gospels, letters and visions - this firstcentury collection of texts keeps always at its centre the enigmatic figure of Joshua/Jesus: the Jewish prophet who gathered a group around him, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, but was made captive by the authorities of Rome only to suffer a shameful criminal's death on a cross. When his followers (including former persecutor Saul/...

This is a different book about Jesus. It does not study the Gospels as sources for the historical Jesus, but reads them as memories about Jesus, each Gospel with its characteristic picture of Jesus. The book traces the transmission and growth of memories of Jesus in various contexts and in different historical periods. It also introduces readers to the little known counterstories to Christian memories in Jewish sources, as well as to the rival stories in the Quran. A central perspective in...

The study of Jesus has rarely looked at its own scholarly context, at how the representation of Jesus might be shaped by those who study him. 'Jesus beyond Nationalism' examines how - since the beginnings of historical Jesus studies in the nineteenth century - representations of Jesus have been used to promote hegemonic or mono-cultural views. The ideology behind such representation has operated to deny difference in society, difference in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. E...

El Nuevo Testamento es una obra de gran importancia en la cultura occidental, pero a menudo resulta poco accesible para los estudiantes por las enormes diferencias entre el mundo moderno y el antiguo mundo mediterráneo en que fue escrito. Para poder entender y apreciar plenamente los libros que conforman el Nuevo Testamento, es absolutamente necesario desarrollar un entendimiento transcultural de los valores de aquella sociedad mediterránea de la que surgieron. Dietmar Neufeld y Richard E....

Biblical scholars often read the Bible with their own interpretive interests in mind, without associating the Bible with the concerns of laypeople. This largely undermines the contributions laypeople can offer from reading the Bible in their own contexts and from their own life experiences. Moreover, such exclusively scholarly reading conceals the role of biblical texts in dealing with current social problems, such as HIV/AIDS-related stigmatization. Hence, the lack of lay participation in...

The question of contextual theology and its relevance to Africa in this time of globalization, whereby there are rampant uncontrolled changes in cultures, technologies, economic policies, and even people's religious lives, is very urgent. How is contextual theology relevant in the ever-changing contexts of the church in Africa? Indeed, there are a number of challenges which contextual theology faces within the church in Africa, which need to be addressed contextually. Some such challenges ...

The family is a topical issue for studies of the Ancient world. Family, household and kinship have different connotations in antiquity from their modern ones. This volume expands that discussion to investigate the early Christian family structures within the larger Graeco-Roman context. Particular emphasis is given to how family metaphors, such as 'brotherhood' function to describe relations in early Christian communities. Asceticism and the rejection of sexuality are considered in the con...