The Pauline letters continue to provoke scholarly discussion. This volume includes papers that raise a variety of questions regarding the canon of the Pauline writings. Some of the essays are more narrowly focused in their intent, sometimes concentrating upon a single dimension related to the Pauline canon, and sometimes upon even a single letter. Others of the essays are more broadly conceived and deal with how one assesses or accounts for the process that resulted in the letters as a collection, rather than analyzing individual letters. There are also mediating positions that attempt to overcome the disjunction between authenticity and inauthenticity by exploring the complex notion of interpolation.

What happened to Paul after Paul? This book examines the relationships between Paul's undisputed writings, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Pauline legacy adopted and adapted by the early church. Book jacket.

This highly readable investigation of the early church explores the revolutionary nature, dynamics, and effects of the earliest Christian communities. It introduces readers to the cultural setting of the house churches of biblical times, examines the apostle Paul's vision of life in the Christian church, and explores how the New Testament model of community applies to Christian practice today. Updated and revised throughout, this 40th-anniversary edition incorporates recent research, updates the bibliography, and adds a new fictional narrative that depicts the life and times of the early church.

With a scholar's mind and a pastor's heart, Tom Wright walks you through Ephesians in this guide designed especially with everyday readers in mind. Perfect for group use or daily personal reflection, this study uses the popular inductive method combined with Wright's thoughtful insights to bring contemporary application of Scripture to life.

We know a good deal about the life of the Apostle Paul, and are also reasonably well-informed about the circumstances connected with the writing of his letters. Concerning, however, the collecting of those letters together--how, why, when and where this was done--we are curiously ignorant. The conventional answer has been that it happened gradually, as an almost inevitable, imperceptible process. The arguments, however, on which this answer is based, cannot claim to be conclusive, and in recent years two scholars in the United States have challenged the whole assumption. In this book Dr. Mitton presents both points of view and the arguments by which they are supported, and invites the reader to give consideration to the less familiar theory.

Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James

"The Church's Guide for Reading Paul is the final work of a prolific and beloved biblical scholar. Brevard Childs here turns his sharp scholarly eye to the works of the apostle Paul and makes an unusual argument: the New Testament canon's formation was, above all, a hermeneutical exercise in which its anonymous apostles and postapostolic editors collected, preserved, and theologically shaped the material in order for the evangelical traditions to serve successive generations of Christians."--BOOK JACKET.