For ten years, the well-received first edition of this introduction offered readers a way to look at scriptural texts that combines historical, narrative, and contemporary interests. Carter explores Matthew by approaching it from the perspective of the "authorial audience"--by identifying with and reading along with the audience imagined by the author. Now an updated second edition is available as part of a series focusing on each of the gospel writers as storyteller, interpreter, and evan...

This useful, concise introduction to the worlds around the New Testament focuses on seven key moments in the centuries before and after Jesus. It enlightens readers about the beginnings of the Christian movement, showing how religious, political, and economic factors were interwoven in the fabric of the New Testament world.Leading New Testament scholar Warren Carter has a record of providing student-friendly texts. This introduction offers a "big picture" focus and is logically and...

The New Testament Gospels came into existence in a world ruled by Roman imperial power. Their main character, Jesus, is crucified on a Roman cross by a Roman governor. How do the Gospels interact with the structures, practices, and personnel of the Roman world? What strategies and approaches do the Gospels attest? What role for accommodation, for imitation, for critique, for opposition, for decolonizing, for reinscribing, for getting along, for survival? This book engages these questions b...

Christology and discipleship have largely remained separate categories in Markan scholarship. This study provides a commentary on the Gospel of Mark that underlines kinship as the nexus between Christology (Jesus and his kinship with God) and discipleship (Jesus and his kinship with disciples). Jesus, designated as the Son of God (1:1), establishes a kinship group of disciples and followers by providing them hospitality, welcoming them into his household, and addressing them in kinship ter...

What are the Gospels and what does it mean to read them? Warren Carter leads the beginning student in an inductive exploration of the New Testament Gospels, asking about their genre, the view that they were written by eyewitnesses, the early church traditions about them, and how they employ Hellenistic biography.He then examines the distinctive voice of each Gospel, describing the tale about Jesus each writer tells, then presenting likely views regarding the circumstances in which ...

The Final Volume in a Well-Received Gospel StudyJohn: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist is an accessible introduction to the Fourth Gospel. This book examines three aspects of John's Gospel: John's telling of the story of Jesus, his interpretation of Jesus for his readers, and his formulation of all of this into the Gospel of Jesus.Carter surveys the central issues of this Gospel and engages with narrative and historical approaches, the two domi...

In this concise, accessible book, Warren Carter and A.J. Levine introduce three aspects of New Testament study: the world of the text (plots, characters, setting, and themes), the world behind the text (the concerns, circumstances, and experiences of the early Christian communities), and the world in front of the text (the meaning for contemporary readers). As students engage the New Testament, they face a central issue that has confronted all students before them, namely, that these texts...

The relationship between Early Judaism and the New Testament is a major issue in biblical studies, one that has impacted Jewish-Christian relations for centuries. This impact has often been negative due to troubling misconceptions of both the New Testament and Jewish writings contemporaneous with it. Misunderstandings have arisen from inaccurate information, religious traditions, and anti-Semitism.Warren Carter and Ariel Feldman address and correct these misconceptions by engaging ...

The Christian movement emerged amidst complex social tensions, power politics, ethnic diversity, economic stress, and cultural changes. Both biblical scholars and social scientists find that a social scientific study of early Christian phenomena yields fascinating results. However, biblical scholars are sometimes unaware of the breadth of the useful social scientific concepts and techniques, and social scientists sometimes lack the most basic background in literary research methods. The

In The Massacre of the Innocents: Studies in the Cultural Afterlife of a Gospel Scene, Warren Carter examines some fifty instances of the interpretation of the Matthean “Massacre of the Innocents” (Matt 2:16-18). He emphasizes the agency of interpreters, who in their particular contexts and media, “think with” the shocking Matthean scene to address the often-tragic circumstances of their audiences. He argues throughout that the structure of the Gospel scene facilitates this “think...

The Book of Revelation has been mysterious, confusing, and misunderstood for centuries. Its content has been studied and analyzed by scholars from every corner of the globe.What is it about Revelation that draws us to it? Is this biblical book about end-time mysteries and hidden codes? Does and it relate to our present day?So what does Revelation actually reveal? Or should Revelation be left behind? According to Dr. Carter, the book of Revelation can tell us about ...

This insightful study engages the debates and interpretations of the brief and somewhat elusive writings known in the Christian canon as 1, 2, and 3 John. Chapter 1 identifies six unknowns about the origins of the three writings: authors, relationship to John's Gospel, order, date and location of the writings, and their audiences. Chapters 2 and 3 delineate the debate concerning the relationship of these writings to a purported “Johannine tradition” and “Johannine communit...