New to this expanded & updated edition are revisions of Ferguson's original material, updated bibliographies, & a fresh dicussion of first century social life, the Dead Sea Scrolls & much else.

Twenty-four scholars join their efforts to congratulate David Lee Balch for a long career of dedication to scholarship and teaching. Topics range from the life of early Christian house churches to the kinds of challenges that early Christians needed to negotiate in their artistic and literary worlds as they established their own identity. Contributors Edward Adams Frederick E Brenk Warren Carter John R. Clarke Everett Ferguson John T. Fitzgerald Richard A. Freund Ronald F. Hock Robin M. Jensen Davina C. Lopez Margaret Y. MacDonald Abraham J. Malherbe Aliou Cisse Niang Peter Oakes Todd Penner Leo G. Perdue Turid Karlsen Seim Dennis E. Smith Yancy W. Smith Stephen V. Sprinkle Hal Taussig Oliver Larry Yarbrough

The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field. Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

This work includes essays on aspects of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world.They derive from the author's long-standing interests in the analysis of texts as documents of cultural and religious interaction.

In Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity, A.D. Lee documents the transformation of the religious landscape of the Roman world from one of enormous diversity of religious practices and creeds in the 3rd century to a situation where, by the 6th century, Christianity had become the dominant religious force. Using translated extracts from contemporary sources he examines the fortunes of pagans and Christians from the upheavals of the 3rd Century, through the dramatic events associated with the emperors Constantine, Julian and Theodosius in the 4th, to the increasingly tumultuous times of the 5th and 6th centuries, while also illustrating important themes in late antique Christianity such as the growth of monasticism, the emerging power of bishops and the development of pilgrimage, as well as the fate of other significant religious groups including Jews and Manichaeans. This new edition has been updated to include: additional documentary material, including newly published papyri an expanded chapter on the emperor Constantine greater attention to church controversies in the fourth and fifth centuries thoroughly updated references and further reading, taking into account developments in modern scholarship during the past fifteen years. Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity is an invaluable resource for students of the late antique world, and of early Christianity and the early Church.

The Manichaeans of the Roman East is the first monograph that synthesizes an enormous body of primary material to reconstruct the history of East-Roman Manichaeans, from the time their first missionaries arrived in the territory of the Roman East until the disappearance of Manichaeism from the Eastern Roman Empire. Through her systematically comparative and intertextual investigation of the sources, Matsangou provides a number of original approaches to issues such as the classification of Manichaeism, the socio-religious profile and lifestyle of East Roman Manichaeans, the triggers of the severe anti-Manichaean persecutions. She thoroughly analyses the relationship between Manichaean and Christian ascetics for the first time, suggesting a possible Manichaean impact on the rise of ascetic manifestations among Christian ascetics, monks, and individuals in society. By considering the dimensions of the phenomenon of crypto-Manichaeism and using the concept of “entryism”—borrowed from politics—as a theoretical model, Matsangou makes intriguing hypotheses suggesting an alternative explanation for the disappearance of Manichaeism from the Roman East.