This Element focuses on the historiography of Christian origins from the mid-19th century to the present. It argues that this historiography is shaped by two factors: the theories and ideas that prevailed in the historians' own eras; and the views about Jews and Judaism in predominantly Christian societies. In the mid-19th century, the Great Man theory, developed by Thomas Carlyle, fostered debates about which Great Man - Jesus or Paul - founded Christianity. In the late 19th century, evol...

Four simple rules, amazing results—how wisdom from an overlooked biblical hero can change your life!Tikva Frymer-Kensky shows readers how a seemingly minor story in the first book of Samuel can teach them key lessons to dramatically improve their lives. Saul, abandoned by God, approaches a medium in the village of Endor to call up the spirit of Samuel. Though Saul had outlawed her craft, she helped him when he promised her safety. And after Samuel prophesied Saul's...

The Gospel of John presents its readers, listeners, and interpreters with a serious problem: how can we reconcile the Gospel’s exalted spirituality and deep knowledge of Judaism with its portrayal of the Jews as the children of the devil (John 8:44) who persecuted Christ and his followers?One widespread solution to this problem is the so-called “expulsion hypothesis.” According to this view, the Fourth Gospel was addressed to a Jewish group of believers in Christ that had been expe...

The Fourth Gospel is at the same time a sublime work that has inspired and enriched the faith of countless Christians and a problematic text that has provided potent anti-Jewish imagery exploited in anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic discourse over the course of two millennia. The Fourth Gospel contains approximately 70 references to hoi ioudaioi, a designation most often (and best) translated as “the Jews.” Several of these references are neutral or descriptive, referring to Jewish festivals or...

Few scholarly constructs have proven as influential or as durable as the Johannine community. A product of the era in New Testament studies dominated by redaction criticism, the Johannine community construct as articulated first by J. Louis Martyn and later by Raymond E. Brown emerged with an explanatory power that proved persuasive to scholars deliberating on the provenance and emergence of the Johannine literature for the next 50 years. Recent years, however, have seen this once dominant...

Ancient literature was generally written by and produced for elite men. That fact creates specific challenges to modern interpreters of gender roles in the ancient world, especially once contemporary understandings of gender as construction and performance are embraced. In Gender and Second-Temple Judaism, world-renowned scholars take on these challenges with regard to ancient Judaism (here including early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism as well), at once examining the ancient evid...

This book charts the shifting boundaries of Judaism from antiquity to the modern period in order to bring clarity to what scholars mean when they claim that ancient texts or groups are “within Judaism,” as well as exploring how rabbinic Jews, Christians, and Muslims have negotiated and renegotiated what Judaism is and is not in order to form their own identities. Belief in Jesus as the Messiah was seen as part of first-century Judaism, but by the fourth or fifth century, the boundaries had...

Covering the period from 200 BCE to 600 CE, this book describes important aspects of identity formation processes within early Judaism and Christianity, and shows how negotiations involving issues of ethnicity, stereotyping, purity, commensality, and institution building contributed to the forming of group identities. Over time, some of these Jewish group identities evolved into non-Jewish Christian identities, others into a rabbinic Jewish identity, while yet others remained somewhere in ...

Bible and Cinema: An Introduction is a comprehensive examination of how the Bible has been used and represented in mainstream cinema to develop its plots, characters, and themes. The book considers two general types of films: Bible movies that retell biblical stories, such as the Exodus and the life of Jesus, and Bible-related movies that make use of biblical books, stories, verses, and figures, and Bibles themselves to tell non-biblical, often fictional, narratives. Topics covered include...

Since the advent of the cinema, Jesus has frequently appeared in our movie houses and on our television screens. Indeed, it may well be that more people worldwide know about Jesus and his life story from the movies than from any other medium. Indeed, Jesus' story has been adapted dozens of times throughout the history of commercial cinema, from the 1912 silent From the Manger to the Cross to Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. No doubt there are more to come. Dra...

Movies which have drawn inspiration from the Bible, either directly or indirectly, have been extremely popular since the earliest days of cinema. Bible and Cinema: Fifty Key Films introduces a wide range of those movies, which are among the most important, critically-acclaimed and highest-grossing films of all time, including:The King of KingsBen-HurThe Passion of the ChristFrankensteinClose Encounters of the Third Kind

Highly respected New Testament scholar D. A. Carson provides students and pastors with expert guidance on choosing a commentary for any book of the New Testament. The seventh edition has been updated to assess the most recently published commentaries. Carson examines sets, one-volume commentaries, and New Testament introductions and theologies, offering evaluative comments on the available offerings for each New Testament book. This is an essential guide to building a reference library.