Through a twist of fate, the eruption that destroyed Pompeii in 79 CE also preserved a wealth of evidence about the town, buried for centuries in volcanic ash. Since the town’s excavations in the eighteenth century, archaeologists have disputed the evidence that might attest the presence of Christians in Pompeii before the eruption. Now, Bruce W. Longenecker reviews that evidence, in comparison with other possible evidence of first-century Christian presence elsewhere, and reaches the conclusion that there were indeed Christians living in the doomed town. Illustrated with maps, charts, photographs, and line drawings depicting artifacts from the town, The Crosses of Pompeii presents an elegant case for their presence. Longenecker’s arguments require dramatic changes to our understanding of the early history of Christianity.

Upending a longstanding consensus, Bruce W. Longenecker presents a wide variety of material artifacts to illustrate that Christians made use of the cross as a visual symbol of their faith long before Constantine appropriated it to consolidate his power in the fourth century. Constantine did not invent the cross as a symbol of Christian faith; for an impressive number of Christians before Constantine’s reign, the cross served as a visual symbol of commitment to a living deity in a dangerous world.

The cross stirs intense feelings among Christians as well as non-Christians. Robin Jensen takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the two-thousand-year evolution of the cross as an idea and an artifact, illuminating the controversies—along with the forms of devotion—this central symbol of Christianity inspires. Jesus’s death on the cross posed a dilemma for Saint Paul and the early Church fathers. Crucifixion was a humiliating form of execution reserved for slaves and criminals. How could their messiah and savior have been subjected to such an ignominious death? Wrestling with this paradox, they reimagined the cross as a triumphant expression of Christ’s sacrificial love and miraculous resurrection. Over time, the symbol’s transformation raised myriad doctrinal questions, particularly about the crucifix—the cross with the figure of Christ—and whether it should emphasize Jesus’s suffering or his glorification. How should Jesus’s body be depicted: alive or dead, naked or dressed? Should it be shown at all? Jensen’s wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

The Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies (JBTS) is an academic journal focused on the fields of Bible and Theology from an inter-denominational point of view. The journal is comprised of an editorial board of scholars that represent several academic institutions throughout the world. JBTS is concerned with presenting high-level original scholarship in an approachable way. Academic journals are often written by scholars for other scholars. They are technical in nature, assuming a robust knowledge of the field. There are fewer journals that seek to introduce biblical and theological scholarship that is also accessible to students. JBTS seeks to provide high-level scholarship and research to both scholars and students, which results in original scholarship that is readable and accessible. As an inter-denominational journal JBTS is broadly evangelical. We accept contributions in all theological disciplines from any evangelical perspective. In particular, we encourage articles and book reviews within the fields of Old Testament, New Testament, Biblical Theology, Church History, Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, Philosophical Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics.

Convinced that we can no longer have direct, unmediated access to the sense of Jesus’s prayer but must account for the history of its “effects,” David Clark seeks to trace the meaning of one of Christianity’s most repeated, and thus most “effective” texts through the early centuries of the faith. Clark begins by arguing that the prayer’s original context was in a revival of Jewish prayer, then sets it in the literary context of Gospels that, he argues, represented Jesus as recapitulating Israel’s testing in the wilderness in his own temptation. He then traces the prayer’s meaning within the narratives of Matthew and Luke and in the Didache, then examines the first full commentary on the prayer, that of Tertullian in the third century ce. Clark attends to the evolution of ideas and themes embodied in the prayer and of the understanding of prayer itself across epic transitions, from Judaism to the teaching of Jesus, from Jesus to the Gospels, and from the Gospels to earliest self-consciously “catholic” Christianity. This is an engaging narrative of the history behind and reception of the Lord’s Prayer; it illustrates how a text’s reception may help us explore and understand the multivalent meaning of the text itself.

Waiting to be rediscovered in the British Library is an ancient manuscript of the early Church, copied by an anonymous monk. The manuscript is at least 1,450 years old, possibly dating to the first century. And now, The Lost Gospel provides the first ever translation from Syriac into English of this unique document that tells the inside story of Jesus’ social, family, and political life.The Lost Gospel takes the reader on an unparalleled historical adventure through a paradigm shifting manuscript. What the authors eventually discover is as astounding as it is surprising: the confirmation of Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene; the names of their two children; the towering presence of Mary Magdalene; a previously unknown plot on Jesus’ life (thirteen years prior to the crucifixion); an assassination attempt against Mary Magdalene and their children; Jesus’ connection to political figures at the highest level of the Roman Empire; and a religious movement that antedates that of Paul—the Church of Mary Magdalene.Part historical detective story, part modern adventure, The Lost Gospel reveals secrets that have been hiding in plain sight for millennia.

Who was Priscilla? Ben Witherington combines biblical scholarship and winsome storytelling to give readers a vivid picture of this important New Testament woman. In this work of historical fiction, Priscilla's story makes the first-century biblical world come alive as she looks back on her long life and remembers the ways she has participated in the early church.