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.

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.

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.

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 Pauline Corpus in Early Christianity: Its Formation, Publication, and Circulation offers a comprehensive and wide-ranging examination of the canonical development of the collection of writings associated with the Apostle Paul. The volume considers a number of clues from the New Testament writings, ancient literary conventions related to the composition and collection of letters, and a variety of early witnesses to the early state of the corpus such as biblical manuscripts, canonical lists, and the testimony of writers. As a conclusion to these inquiries, Laird argues that at least three major archetypal editions of the Pauline corpus--those containing 10, 13, and 14 letters--appear to have been collected and edited as early as the first century. These major archetypal editions, Laird concludes, circulated simultaneously for many years until editions containing 14 letters became nearly universally recognized by the fourth century. The volume serves as a valuable resource of information for those engaged in the study of the early state of the New Testament canon and offers a fresh perspective on the process that led to the formation of the Pauline corpus.