Long overshadowed by the apostle Paul, Peter has received increased scholarly attention of late. Building on that resurgence of interest, nineteen internationally prominent scholars of early Christian history examine and reassess the historical Peter and his significance in Christian texts from the first three centuries. Giving due attention to archaeological data and recent scholarship, the contributors offer a comprehensive view of Peter through analysis of both New Testament texts and later, noncanonical literature. Markus Bockmuehl concludes the volume by considering present-day questions about the role of Peter, popes, and church leadership.

After Jesus, Peter is the most frequently mentioned individual both in the Gospels and in the New Testament as a whole. He was the leading disciple, the "rock" on which Jesus would build his church. How can we know so little about this formative figure of the early church? World-renowned New Testament scholar Markus Bockmuehl introduces the New Testament Peter by asking how first- and second-century sources may be understood through the prism of "living memory" among the disciples of the apostolic generation and the students of those disciples. He argues that early Christian memory of Peter underscores his central role as a bridge-building figure holding together the diversity of first-century Christianity. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Bockmuehl applies cutting-edge scholarship to the question of the history and traditions of this important but strangely elusive figure. Bockmuehl provides fresh insight into the biblical witness and early Christian tradition that New Testament students and professors will value.

This fascinating new book by Paul Barnett, an expert in the New Testament, traces Peter's life chronologically from his beginnings in Bethsaida to his martyrdom in Rome c. 64. It demonstrates the importance of the apostle Peter to earliest Christianity and to our own day through the biblical narratives and his letters. The record of his leadership between the resurrection of Jesus and Peter's own death secured the vocation Jesus commissioned him to have as the 'rock'. From failure to success, from denying Jesus to leading his Church in Jerusalem and beyond, Peter's is a remarkable and inspiring narrative; his contribution to early Christianity was unique and irreplaceable. Paul Barnett is not only a sure guide to the subject, but a pastorally sensitive writer and communicator.

Written by an L. A. County homicide detective and former atheist, Cold-Case Christianity examines the claims of the New Testament using the skills and strategies of a hard-to-convince criminal investigator. Christianity could be defined as a “cold case”: it makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little forensic evidence. In Cold-Case Christianity, J. Warner Wallace uses his nationally recognized skills as a homicide detective to look at the evidence and eyewitnesses behind Christian beliefs. Including gripping stories from his career and the visual techniques he developed in the courtroom, Wallace uses illustration to examine the powerful evidence that validates the claims of Christianity. A unique apologetic that speaks to readers’ intense interest in detective stories, Cold-Case Christianity inspires readers to have confidence in Christ as it prepares them to articulate the case for Christianity.

From the Publisher: Bart Ehrman, author of the bestsellers Misquoting Jesus and Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, here takes readers on another engaging tour of the early Christian church, illuminating the lives of three of Jesus' most intriguing followers: Simon Peter, Paul of Tarsus, and Mary Magdalene.

The Acts of Peter, one of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles that detail the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity, provides a unique window into the formation of early Christian narrative. Like the Gospels, the Acts of Peter developed from disparate oral and written narrative from the first century. The apocryphal text, however, continued to develop into a number of re-castings, translations, abridgements, and expansions. The Acts of Peter present Christian narrative in an alternate universe, in which canonization did not halt the process of creative re-composition. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Thomas examines the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts, from the earliest traditions through the sixth-century Passions of the Apostles, arguing the importance of its "narrative fluidity": the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms. This feature, shared with the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel, the Greek romance about Alexander the Great, and the Christian Gospels, allows these narratives to adapt to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences. In each new version, the audiences' defining conflicts were reflected in the text, echoing a historical consciousness more often identified with primary oral societies, in which the account of the past is a malleable script explaining the present. Although the genre most closely comparable to these works is the ancient novel, their serious historical intent separates them from the later, more self-consciously fictive novels, and maintains them within the realm of the earlier historical novels produced by ethnic subcultures within the Roman empire.