Have you ever been overwhelmed by the writings of the New Testament? This 12-session study helps us hear Scripture in its own historical and cultural context before guiding us to apply it to our own lives—a comprehensive overview to enrich our knowledge and deepen our faith.

Following the format of the Essentials series (as designed by Greg Ogden, author of Discipleship Essentials), this comprehensive guide from Tremper Longman offers a survey of the Old Testament for use in the context of a small group. Each study contains a question-answer format, a field-tested inductive Bible study and questions to draw out key principles.

Engaging and accessible, The Lion and the Lamb is an ideal resource for college students and others interested in knowing the essentials of each New Testament book. A concise summary of The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown -- the acclaimed New Testament introduction by the same authors -- this volume sets a new standard for high-level, up-to-date research presented in a core knowledge format that is practical, relevant, and easy to follow. Part One features chapters on the nature of Scripture and the religious and political background of the New Testament. Part Two covers the Gospels in the canonical order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Part Three uses Acts as the framework for treating Paul’s letters in chronological written order: Galatians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Corinthians, Romans, and the Prison and Pastoral Epistles (Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and 1-2 Timothy and Titus, respectively). Part Four includes discussions of the General Epistles (Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude) and Revelation. Each chapter clearly discusses the book’s key facts, contribution to the canon, historical setting, literary features, and theological message. In all, The Lion and the Lamb makes this learning exciting and rewarding.

Thirty-one lessons keyed to chapters of the textbook providing benefits for both beginning and advanced students. Includes study of textbook materials, building translation skills, focusing on Greek grammar and syntax, and providing supplemental vocabulary lists.

For almost seventy years, Essentials of New Testament Greek has been a classic textbook and key tool for students of New Testament Greek. This classic work by Ray Summers, with updates by Thomas Sawyer, will continue to be an effective resource for generations to come. Major features include: • A step-by-step approach which guides students through the learning process. • Clear explanations of the Greek language and how it works. • Extensive appendices with paradigms, indexes, and verb list. • High-frequency Greek vocabulary which presents every word used 50 times or more in the New Testament. • Numerous examples from the Greek New Testament to illustrate grammatical points. • Translation exercises which use nearly 300 New Testament verses, including: most of 1 John, a significant percentage of Matthew, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. • An easy-to-read verb chart. Essentials of New Testament Greek, Revised Edition is an exceptional textbook for college and seminary students, an effective resource for ministers, and an efficient guide for self-study of New Testament Greek.

Modern readers of the New Testament often notice its varying ideas about women. Some passages encouraged women to be submissive and remain silent. Yet in others, women characters owned property, headed households, or spoke with approval. Women in the New Testament World helps readers understand this conflicting evidence. It argues that social norms of the time encouraged traditional feminine virtues. However, as Susan Hylen argues, women in the culture enacted these virtues in a variety of ways, including active leadership in households, associations, and cities. In contrast to earlier approaches that divided the evidence into groups that either allowed or forbade women's leadership, this book points to a tension that was pervasive across different groups and regions of the Roman world. Society widely viewed women as inferior to men yet applauded their active pursuit of familial and civic interests. Thus, it was not the case that some women led while others were silent; instead, women were praised for modesty at the same time as they exerted influence in their communities. Elaborating on this rich historical background, Hylen illuminates new possibilities in New Testament texts.

What did it mean to be a Christian in the Roman Empire? In one of the inaugural titles of Oxford's new Essentials in Biblical Studies series, Harry O. Maier considers the multilayered social contexts that shaped the authors and audiences of the New Testament. Beginning with the cosmos and the gods, Maier presents concentric realms of influence on the new religious movement of Christ-followers. The next is that of the empire itself and the sway the cult of the emperor held over believers of a single deity. Within the empire, early Christianity developed mostly in cities, the shape of which often influenced the form of belief. The family stood as the social unit in which daily expression of belief was most clearly on view and, finally, Maier examines the role of personal and individual adherence to the religion in the shaping of the Christian experience in the Roman world. In all of these various realms, concepts of sacrifice, belief, patronage, poverty, Jewishness, integration into city life, and the social constitution of identity are explored as important facets of early Christianity as a lived religion. Maier encourages readers to think of early Christianity not simply as an abstract and disconnected set of beliefs and practices, but as made up of a host of social interactions and pluralisms. Religion thus ceases to exist as a single identity, and acts instead as a sphere in which myriad identities co-exist.