Few Christian writings have had the world-changing impact of St Paul’s epistles to the churches, and yet from the very beginning these works proved themselves to be tricky texts. The Second Letter of Peter, commenting about them, says: “There are some things in them that are hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). Indeed! To this day many issues of their interpretation remain highly contested. In this book, Anthony Thiselton grasps the nettle and examines forty puzzling passages from Paul’s epistles. He considers the various scholarly proposals about their meaning and offers his own reflections in the hope of dispersing fog and shedding light, and of expounding a coherent and self-consistent Paul.

"Paul's letters, the earliest writings in the New Testament, are filled with allusions, images and quotations from the Old Testament. This book investigates Paul's appropriation of Scripture from a perspective based on recent literary-critical studies of intertextuality."--Amazon.com.

The Bible Puzzle Book: A to Z Edition contains 26 freeform crossword puzzles and 26 companion word searches. Each puzzle focuses on a different biblical subject, theme, or passage from scripture.

This latest addition to the Fortress Social-Science Commentaries on New Testament writings illuminates the values, perceptions, and social codes of the Mediterranean culture that shaped Paul and his interactions - both harmonious and conflicted - with others, Malina and Pilch add new dimensions to our understanding of the apostle as a social change agent, his coworkers as innovators, and his gospel as an assertion of the honor of the God of Israel.

Brian S. Rosner seeks to build bridges between old and new perspectives on Paul with this biblical-theological account of the apostle's complex relationship with Jewish law. Rosner argues that Paul reevaluates the Law of Moses, including its repudiation as legal code, its replacement by other things, and its reappropriation as prophecy and wisdom.

This careful, sometimes innovative, mid-level commentary touches on an astonishingly wide swath of important, sensitive issues - theological and pastoral - that have urgent resonances in twenty-first-century life. This thorough commentary presents a coherent reading of 1 Corinthians, taking full account of its Old Testament and Jewish roots and demonstrating Paula's primary concern for the unity and purity of the church and the glory of God. Those who preach and teach 1 Corinthians will be grateful to Ciampa and Rosner for years to come and scholars will be challenged to see this letter with fresh eyes.

A shorter, simpler first draft of the Gospel of Mark has been theorized by New Testament scholars for almost two hundred years. Using literary tools, David Oliver Smith strips away interpolation and redaction from the canonical Gospel to reveal that long-sought first draft--the Original Gospel of Mark. Original Mark, shorter than the canonical version and with several large blocks of text replaced in their original locations, reveals a coherent structure and a different picture of who Jesus is. But it is anything other than simple. The Original Gospel also presents puzzles for the curious reader of Mark to solve, and Smith has found the keys to their solution. Analysis of the text that was interpolated into Mark reveals who that redactor might have been. Evidence is presented that it was the author of the Gospel of Luke who redacted the first-written Gospel, jumbled its structure, and changed its Christology. Follow the analysis of literary structures created by the genius who wrote Mark's Gospel and discover the astounding design of the Original Gospel of Mark.