This collection of essays pursues two new approaches to Q, the speeches of Jesus paralleled in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. The essays in Part One suggest that recent work in ethnopoetics, the ethnography of performance, and theory of verbal art (especially that of John Miles Foley) both complements and challenges standard approaches to the teaching of Jesus. They explore how Q speeches might be appreciated as oral performance that resonates with listeners in a community context by referencing Israelite popular tradition. The essays in Part Two examine how the work of anthropologist and political scientist James C. Scott on popular tradition, "the moral economy of the peasant," and "hidden transcripts" may illuminate the social context and political implications of Q speeches. --From publisher's description.

The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels is unique among reference books on the Bible, the first volume of its kind since James Hastings published his Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels in 1909. In the more than eight decades since Hastings, our understanding of Jesus, the Evangelists and their world has grown remarkably. New interpretive methods illumined the text, the ever-changing profile of modern culture has put new questions to the Gospels, and our understanding of the Judaism of Jesus's day has advanced in ways that could not have been predicted in Hastings's day. But for many readers of the Gospels the new outlook on the Gospels remains hidden within technical journals and academic monographs. The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels bridges the gap between scholars and those pastors, teachers, students and lay people desiring in-depth treatment of select topics in an accessible and summary format. The topics range from cross-sectional themes (such as faith, law, Sabbath) to methods of interpretation (such as form criticism, redaction criticism, sociological approaches), from key events (such as the birth, temptation and death of Jesus) to each of the four Gospels as a whole. Some articles - such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic traditions and revolutionary movements at the time of Jesus - provide significant background information to the Gospels. Others reflect recent and less familiar issues in Jesus and Gospel studies, such as divine man, ancient rhetoric and the chreiai. Contemporary concerns of general interest are discusses in articles covering such topics as healing, the demonic and the historical reliability of the Gospels. And for those entrusted with communicating the message of the Gospels, there is an extensive article on preaching from the Gospels. The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels presents the fruit of evangelical New Testament scholarship at the end of the twentieth century - committed to the authority of Scripture, utilising the best of critical methods, and maintaining dialog with contemporary scholarship and challenges facing the church.

The study analyses the current state of research on the synoptic problem and proves that the Synoptic Gospels were written in the Mark, Luke, Matthew order of direct literary dependence. Moreover, the work demonstrates that the Synoptic Gospels are results of systematic, sequential, hypertextual reworking of the contents of the Pauline letters. Accordingly, the so-called 'Q source' turns out to be an invention of nineteenth-century scholars with their Romantic hermeneutic presuppositions. Demonstration of the fact that the Gospels are not records of the activity of the historical Jesus but that they narratively illustrate the identity of Christ as it has been revealed in the person and life of Paul the Apostle will certainly have major consequences for the whole Christian theology.

This ambitious and engaging book sets itself the task of combining a wide range of approaches to cast new light on the form and function of several ancient Jewish letters in a variety of languages. The focus of The Performance of Ancient Jewish Lettersis on applying a new emerging field of performance theory to texts and arguing that letters and other documents were not just read in silence, as is normal today, but were "performed," especially when they were addressed to a community. A distinctive feature of this book consists of being one of the first to apply the approach of performance criticism to ancient Jewish letters. Previous treatments of ancient letters have not given enough consideration to their oral context; however, this book prompts the reader to "listen" sympathetically with the audience. The Performance focuses close attention on the ways in which the engagement of the audience during the performance of a text might be read from traces present in the text itself. This book invites the audience to hear a fresh reading of a family letter from Hermopolis, concerning ugly tunics and castor oil; festal letters, about issues surrounding the celebration of Passover, Purim and Hanukkah; a diaspora letter on how to live in a foreign land; and also an official letter concerning the building of the Jerusalem temple. These letters will help us understand a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls, namely, MMT. Marvin L. Miller argues for the centrality of performance in the life of Jews of the Second Temple period, an area of study that has been traditionally neglected. The Performanceadvances the fields of orality and epistolography and supplements other scholars' works in those fields.

Synoptic pericopae is a reliable indicator of literary borrowing by the Synoptic Evangelists. In Oral Tradition and Synoptic Verbal Agreement, T.M. Derico presents a critical assessment of that claim through a consideration of the most recent empirical evidence concerning the kinds and amounts of verbal agreement that can be produced among independent performances of oral traditions.

The first two essays in this book examine the biblical and philosophical basis for mission in the post-modern world, emphasising the experiential quality of mission over against the rational. Subsequent essays discuss various aspects of mission with a focus on the Malawian context. They highlight the impact of missionary work on the formation, shaping and developments of Malawi as a national state. Other essays examine various issues in New Testament scholarship including images of the Historical Jesus and how these relate to wisdom and apocalyptic traditions.

Jesus Tradition – early Christian traditions from and about Jesus – plays an important role in New Testament letters, not only in the Gospels and Corpus Paulinum, but also in the seven Catholic Epistles (the epistles of James, I and II Peter, I John, and Jude, which are addressed to the universal Church rather than to an individual or a particular church). This dissertation revolves around the relationship between the Catholic Epistles and the traditions about Jesus that have informed the Gospels. Based on the research, two important observations can be made. First of all, there is a fundamental unity in the witness of the Catholic Epistles regarding their reliance upon and appropriation of Jesus Tradition. The same Jesus can be recognized throughout all Catholic Epistles (with the possible exception of Jude, since its brevity does not supply enough information for clarity about its relation to Jesus Tradition), and this Jesus is not merely a theological construct, but a historical person, very much in line with the Jesus from historical Jesus research. Second, a fundamental unity is observable between the canonical Gospels, Corpus Paulinum and the Catholic Epistles. All three corpora are consciously witnessing to Jesus. Each corpus has its own distinct way of doing this, and the Catholic Epistles can be seen as witnessing Jesus from an apostolic perspective.