"Scale" is well known and understood in creative arts such as architecture, sculpture and music, but New Testament scholars have given no significant consideration to scale changes in the Biblical texts. A robust methodology allows scale changes in literature to be examined scientifically and reveals "scale-related" patterns in the epistles. To determine the significance of these patterns, George Barr has conducted a wide survey covering many texts in Greek, Latin and English. It reveals that the patterns found in the New Testament are very rare indeed, if not unique, and gives grounds for the belief that such patterns are associated with authorship. The patterns found in the Pauline epistles clarify some theories regarding the origins of the epistles and, in some cases, shed new light on their compilation.

In Paul and Pseudepigraphy, an international group of scholars engage open questions in the study of the Apostle Paul and those documents often deemed pseudepigraphal. This volume addresses many traditional questions, including those of method and the authenticity of several canonical Pauline letters, but they also reflect a desire to think in new ways about persistent questions surrounding pseudepigraphy. The focus on pseudepigraphy in relationship to Paul affords a unique opportunity to address this innovative inclination, not readily available in studies of New Testament pseudepigraphy in general. Regarding these concerns, new approaches are introduced, traditional evidence is reassessed, and some new suggestions are offered. In addition to Pauline letters, treatments of related non-canonical Pauline pseudepigraphs are included in discussion.

In Pauline Language and the Pastoral Epistles Jermo van Nes questions the common assumption in New Testament scholarship that language variation is necessarily due to author variation. By using the so-called Pastoral Epistles (PE) as a test-case, Van Nes demonstrates by means of statistical linguistics that only one out of five of their major lexical and syntactic peculiarities differs significantly from other Pauline writings. Most of the PE’s linguistic peculiarities are shown to differ considerably in the Corpus Paulinum, but modern studies in classics and linguistics suggest that factors other than author variation account equally if not better for this variation. Since all of these explanatory factors are compatible with current authorship hypotheses of the PE, Van Nes suggests to no longer use language as a criterion in debates about their authenticity.

The T&T Clark Handbook to the Historical Paul gathers leading voices on various aspects of Paul's biography into a thorough reconsideration of him as a historical figure. The contributors show how recent trends in Pauline scholarship have invited new questions about a variety of topics, including his social location, his mode of subsistence, his cultural formation, his place within Judaism, his religious experience and practice, and his affinities with other religious actors of the Roman world. Through careful attention to biographical detail, social context, and historical method, it seeks to describe him as a contextually plausible social actor. The volume is structured in three parts. Part One introduces sources, methods, and historiographical approaches, surveying the foundational texts for Paul and the early Pauline tradition. Part Two examines key biographical questions pertaining to Paul's bodily comportment, the material aspects of his career, and his religious activities. Part Three reconstructs the biographical portraits of Paul that emerge from the letters associated with him, presenting a series of “micro-biographies” pieced together by leading Pauline scholars.

Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics (BAGL) is an international journal that exists to further the application of modern linguistics to the study of Ancient and Biblical Greek, with a particular focus on the analysis of texts, including but not restricted to the Greek New Testament. The journal is hosted by McMaster Divinity College and works in conjunction with its Centre for Biblical Linguistics, Translation and Exegesis, and the OpenText.org organization (www.opentext.org) in the sponsoring of conferences and symposia open to scholars and students working in Greek linguistics who are interested in contributing to advancing the discussion and methods of the field of research. BAGL is a refereed on-line and print journal dedicated to distributing the results of significant research in the area of linguistic theory and application to biblical and ancient Greek, and is open to all scholars, not just those connected to the Centre and the OpenText.org project.

Leading New Testament scholar Stanley Porter offers a comprehensive commentary on the Pastoral Epistles that features rigorous biblical scholarship and emphasizes Greek language and linguistics. This book breaks new ground in its interpretation of these controversial letters by focusing on the Greek text and utilizing a linguistically informed exegetical method that draws on various elements in contemporary language study. Porter pays attention to the overall argument of the Pastoral Epistles while also analyzing word meanings and grammatical structures to tease out the textual meaning. Porter addresses major exegetical issues that arise in numerous highly disputed passages and--while attentive to the history of scholarship on First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus--often takes untraditional or innovative positions to blaze a new path forward rather than adopt settled answers. This commentary will appeal to professors, students, and scholars of the New Testament.

Building on his own translation from the Greek, Hultgren walks readers through Romans verse by verse, illuminating the text with helpful comments, probing into major puzzles, and highlighting the letter's most inspiring features. He also demonstrates the forward-looking, missional character of Paul's epistle -- written, as Hultgren suggests, to introduce Roman Christians to the major themes of Paul's theology and to inspire in them both confidence in the soundness of his teaching and support for his planned missionary efforts in Spain.