Young and Strickland analyze the four largest discourses of Jesus in Mark in the context of Greco-Roman rhetoric in an attempt to hear them as a first-century audience would have heard them. The authors demonstrate that, contrary to what some historical critics have suggested, first-century audiences of Mark would have found the discourses of Jesus unified, well-integrated, and persuasive. They also show how these speeches of the Markan Jesus contribute to Mark‘s overall narrative accomplishments.

This book offers the first sustained attempt to read the Gospel of Mark both as an ancient biography and as a form of ancient rhetoric. Ben Witherington applies to Mark the socio-rhetorical approach for which he is well known, opening a fresh new perspective on the earliest Gospel. Written when the fledging Christian faith was experiencing a major crisis during the Jewish war, Mark provides us with the first window on how the life and teachings of Jesus were presented to a largely non-Jewish audience. According to Witherington, the structure of Mark demonstrates that this Gospel is biographically focused on the identity of Jesus and the importance of knowing who he is--the Christ, the Son of God. This finding reveals that Christology stood at the heart of the earliest Christians' faith. It also shows how important it was to these earliest Christians to persuade others about the nature of Jesus, both as a historical figure and as the Savior of the world.

The earliest of the four Gospels, the book portrays Jesus as an enigmatic figure, struggling with enemies, his inner and external demons, and with his devoted but disconcerted disciples. Unlike other gospels, his parables are obscure, to be explained secretly to his followers. With an introduction by Nick Cave

This book proposes that Mark's Gospel was written in late 71 for the traumatised Christians of Rome, who feared further arrests after Titus' return from Jerusalem, to help them face their fears and forgive those who had already failed.

In this book, Sara Parks examines the gendered parable pairs in Q, arguing that Jesus of Nazareth had an innovative gender-leveling rhetoric, thereby shedding new light on the study of early Jewish women.

Mark presents discipleship as a journey on "the way" with Jesus. Robert Ewusie Moses argues that the journey is a call for believers to reassess their relationship with material possessions and their desire for wealth and power.

Why do the New Testament gospels depict a Jesus who asks questions almost as often as he gives answers? In The Questions of Jesus in John Douglas Estes crafts a highly interdisciplinary theory of question-asking based on insights from ancient rhetoric and modern erotetics (the study of interrogatives) in order to investigate the logical and rhetorical purposes of Jesus' questions in the Gospel of John. While scholarly discussion about Jesus cares more for what he says, and not what he asks, Estes argues a better understanding of the rhetorical and dialectical roles of questions in ancient narratives sheds a more accurate light on both John’s narrative art and Jesus' message in the Fourth Gospel.