In Borderline Exegesis, Leif Vaage presents an alternative approach to biblical interpretation, or exegesis—an approach that bends the boundaries of the traditional North American methodology to analyze the meaning of biblical texts for a wider audience. To accomplish this, Vaage engages in a practice he calls “borderline exegesis.” Adapting anthropological notions of borderlands, borderline exegesis writes biblical scholarship peripherally, unearthing the Bible’s textual and disc...

Tras la publicación de Así empezó el cristianismo (2010), sobre el proceso formativo del cristianismo, en Así vivían los primeros cristianos, los mismos autores, con un trabajo en equipo, abordan la vida de los primeros seguidores de Jesús. La obra se divide en cuatro partes: 1) Experiencias extraordinarias en los orígenes; 2) Los ritos; 3) Las prácticas de vida; 4) Las creencias. El orden mismo de los capítulos pone de manifiesto que el aspecto doctrinal no fue el decisivo en los orígenes...

Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity discusses the diverse cultural destinies of early Christianity, early Judaism, and other ancient religious groups as a question of social rivalry.The book is divided into three main sections. The first section debates the degree to which the category of rivalry adequately names the issue(s) that must be addressed when comparing and contrasting the social “success” of different religious groups in an...

As a complex historical phenomenon, asceticism raises the question about ordinary impulses, the orientation and practices, the power dynamics and politics with transcendental religions. The question of the role of asceticism has often been overlooked in examining the New Testament. This book is both comprehensive and comparative in its representation of how the question of asceticism might reorder the way in which we interpret the New Testament. Looking at the New Testament from an ascetic...