The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told is an inspiring personal narrative about a filly named Winning Colors who broke through the male-dominated world of horseracing, and a trio of gamblers who embark on an unforgettable adventure as epic as the horse's historic victory. It's Seabiscuit meets Narcos, and the best true-life gambling story ever tol

This volume presents a detailed case for the plausible literary dependence of the Gospel of Mark on select letters of the apostle Paul. The book argues that Mark and Paul share a gospel narrative that tells the story of the life, death, resurrection, and second coming of Jesus Christ "in accordance with the scriptures," and it suggests that Mark presumed Paul and his mission to be constitutive episodes of that story. It contends that Mark self-consciously sought to anticipate the person, teachings, and mission of Paul by constructing narrative precursors concordant with the eventual teachings of the itinerant apostle–a process Ferguson labels Mark’s ‘etiological hermeneutic.’ The book focuses in particular on the various (re)presentations of Christ’s death that Paul believed occurred within his communities—Christ's death performed in ritual, prefigured in scripture, and embodied within Paul’s person—and it argues that these are all seeded within and anticipated by Mark’s narrative. Through careful argument and detailed analysis, A New Perspective on the Use of Paul in the Gospel of Mark makes a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the dependence of Mark on Paul. It is key reading for any scholar engaged in that debate, and the insights it provides will be of interest to anyone studying the Synoptic Gospels or the epistles of Paul more generally.

"Is the wide range of indications in the Gospel of Mark for the influence of Pauline theology the fruit of chance or rather of the will of the Evangelist to unify his work with the thought of the Apostle Paul? In this study, Mar Pérez i Días argues that Mark, rather than being a disciple of Peter who puts in writing what he remembers from his preaching, is a theological disciple of Paul." --

In these chapters, a group of renowned international scholars seek to describe Paul and his work from “within Judaism,” rather than on the assumption, still current after thirty years of the “New Perspective,” that in practice Paul left behind aspects of Jewish living after his discovery of Jesus as Christ (Messiah). After an introduction that surveys recent study of Paul and highlights the centrality of questions about Paul’s Judaism, chapters explore the implications of reading Paul’s instructions as aimed at Christ-following non-Jews, teaching them how to live in ways consistent with Judaism while remaining non-Jews. The contributors take different methodological points of departure: historical, ideological-critical, gender-critical, and empire-critical, and examine issues of terminology and of interfaith relations. Surprising common ground among the contributors presents a coherent alternative to the “New Perspective.” The volume concludes with a critical evaluation of the Paul within Judaism perspective by Terence L. Donaldson, a well-known voice representative of the best insights of the New Perspective.

Mark Strom unveils Paul in his original context and invites us to engage with him in new terms. He courageously draws Paul into vital conversation with contemporary evangelicalism. This book is for anyone who wants to learn how the church can be an attractive community of transforming grace and conversation.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul takes you on a journey through the Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles providing a new solution to a literary puzzle that has vexed biblical scholars for over two-hundred years--The Synoptic Problem. When the Synoptic evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke sat down to write their gospels did they have copies of some of the epistles? This book examines the Synoptic Gospels, Hebrews, and Paul's Epistles finding many intriguing similarities, suggesting that the Synoptic evangelists used extensive parts of the epistles to weave into their stories of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. David Oliver Smith then compares these epistle-based passages to the theoretical lost gospel Q and finds that a large portion of what many New Testament scholars consider to be contained in Q may have its inspiration in the Epistles.

The earliest of the four Gospels, the book portrays Jesus as an enigmatic figure, struggling with enemies, his inner and external demons, and with his devoted but disconcerted disciples. Unlike other gospels, his parables are obscure, to be explained secretly to his followers. With an introduction by Nick Cave