Amos Wilder is widely known as a pioneer of an indigenously North American approach to biblical interpretation which takes language to be an expression not only of psychological but also of sociological and concrete reality. Recording the history of his interest in eschatological language, Wilder further advances the literary and rhetorical criticism of Scripture, especially by alerting interpreters to the deeper modes of language and communication often overlooked. The essays in this volume, recaptured and edited to clarify their relatedness, are presented in two groups. The first group includes essays that situate the parables of Jesus within the broader context of the biblical narrative. The second is a series of essays dealing with the problem of adequately interpreting the "kingdom language" of Jesus. The book includes an essay in which Wilder chronicles and advances his long interest in the task of doing justice to the imaginative dimension of biblical language. Wilder develops a contemporary hermeneutic that combines the full range of historical-critical methods with approaches generated by various modern disciplines which attempt to do full justice to the interrelationship of language and reality. The preface by James Breech offers an exposition of the main features of Wilder's hermeneutic, together with a discussion of Wilder's understanding of parabolic narrative and Jesus' symbolics.

Amos Wilder is widely known as a pioneer of an indigenously North American approach to biblical interpretation which takes language to be an expression not only of psychological but also of sociological and concrete reality. Recording the history of his interest in eschatological language, Wilder further advances the literary and rhetorical criticism of Scripture, especially by alerting interpreters to the deeper modes of language and communication often overlooked. The essays in this volume, recaptured and edited to clarify their relatedness, are presented in two groups. The first group includes essays that situate the parables of Jesus within the broader context of the biblical narrative. The second is a series of essays dealing with the problem of adequately interpreting the "kingdom language" of Jesus. The book includes an essay in which Wilder chronicles and advances his long interest in the task of doing justice to the imaginative dimension of biblical language. Wilder develops a contemporary hermeneutic that combines the full range of historical-critical methods with approaches generated by various modern disciplines which attempt to do full justice to the interrelationship of language and reality. The preface by James Breech offers an exposition of the main features of Wilder's hermeneutic, together with a discussion of Wilder's understanding of parabolic narrative and Jesus' symbolics.

Telling the Whole Story is both a book about preaching and reading the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. John C. Holbert (PhD in Hebrew Bible) was a longtime teacher of preaching and Hebrew Bible at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, having retired in 2012 after thirty-three years. In this volume he combines his two skills of careful narrative reading and imaginative story preaching to offer the first comprehensive look at this particular kind of sermon proclamation. The reader will also find here an introduction to the long history of story preaching in the history of the church, as well as a primer both in ways to read the narratives more effectively and ways to preach several varieties of story sermons. At the heart of this book four narratives from the Hebrew Bible are exegeted and are accompanied by four story sermons based on those texts: Genesis 2-3; 1 Samuel 15; Judges 4; and Jonah. The goal of the book is to help preachers who are looking for effective ways to proclaim the gospel using narrative texts from the Hebrew Bible to allow the rich stories of the texts to sound their ancient truth to the modern world

Contending that Jesus narrative parables are more poetic than metaphoric, Hedrick argues that parables should be heard solely on their own terms. Hedrick s dissatisfaction with figurative and metaphorical approaches or those that argue for a particular meaning or a single interpretation diverges sharply from the modern consensus and breaks new ground in parable studies.

What was the relationship of ancient education to early Christianity? This volume provides an in-depth look at different approaches currently employed by scholars who draw upon educational settings in the ancient world to inform their historical research in Christian origins. The book is divided into two sections: one consisting of essays on education in the ancient world, and one consisting of exegetical studies dealing with various passages where motifs emerging from ancient educational culture provide illumination. The chapters summarize the state of the discussion on ancient education in classical and biblical studies, examine obstacles to arriving at a comprehensive theory of early Christianity's relationship to ancient education, compare different approaches, and compile the diverse methodologies into one comparative study. Several educational motifs are integrated in order to demonstrate the exegetical insights that they may yield when utilized in New Testament historical investigation and interpretation.

This book is a study of the parables unique to the Third Gospel, aiming in particular to establish a link between Luke's choice of these parables and his overall purpose in writing. In comparison to the synoptic kingdom parables, one distinguishing feature of the Lukan parables is their more personal portrait of the character and the nature of God himself. Luke's desire is to demonstrate to his readers, whoever they are, that in Christianity the realization of the Jewish hope has occurred. The parables promote this idea by offering both continuity (OT) and contrast (contemporary Judaism) in their portrait of God. Thus, as well as operating in a parenetic sense, the parables also help to legitimize Luke's argument regarding fulfilment.