Carey C. Newman - Böcker

Glory formed an essential part of early Christianity's christological vocabulary. Along with ""word,"" ""image,"" and ""wisdom,"" Glory ( doxa) language worked to define the identity, status, and even uniqueness of Christian belief in Jesus. In Paul's Glory-Christology author Carey C. Newman, using methodology developed in semantics, semiotics, and literary theory, examines the origin and rhetoric of Paul's Glory-language. Newman divides the investigation into three distinct tasks: (1) to plot the tradition-history of Glory that formed part of Paul's linguistic world, (2) to examine Paul's letters, in light of the reconstructed tradition-history of Glory, in order to discern the rationale of Paul's identification of Christ as Glory, and (3) to map out the implications of such an identification for Paul's theological and rhetorical strategy. Newman reaches four conclusions for understanding Paul. First, Paul inherited a symbolic universe with signs already full of signification. Second, awareness of the connotative range of a surface symbol aids in discerning Paul's precise contingent strategy. Third, knowing a symbol's referential power defines and contributes to the deeper structure of Paul's theological grammar. Finally, the heuristic power within the construals of the Glory tradition coalesce in Paul's Christophany and thus provide coherence at the deepest level of Paul's Christology. Taken together, these conclusions reveal that nothing less than Paul's declaration of Jesus as God is expressed in his designation of Jesus as Glory.

Second Temple Judaism exerted a profound and shaping influence upon early Christianity. The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism documents this influence by exploring the ways in which the Christian praxis of Christ-devotion in the first two centuries of the Common Era can be understood as a manifestation of Jewish monotheism. The volume approaches this phenomenon along four distinctive lines of inquiry: (1) reexamining (and problematizing) the theological force of monotheism during the Second Temple period; (2) retracing the historical steps of Christianity's adaptation, mutation, and/or redefinition of Jewish monotheism; (3) exploring and debating the influence of non-Jewish traditions on this process; and (4) mapping how Christianity's unique appropriation of Jewish monotheism helps explain the intriguing relationships among emerging Christian, Jewish, and gnostic communities. Eighteen chapters, each from an expert in the study of early Judaism and Christianity, comprise the volume. The chapters collectively demonstrate how the creation of new mythic narratives, the revelatory power of mystical experiences, and the sociology of community formation capitalized on Jewish mediator traditions to initiate the praxis of Christ-devotion.

N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God is widely heralded as one of the most significant and brilliantly argued works in the current ""third quest"" of the historical Jesus. In this second volume of his multivolume investigation entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God, Wright uncovers a Jesus that most historians and believers have never met.Rooted and engaged in the soil of Israel's history, its first-century plight, and its prophetic hope, this portrait of Jesus has set new terms of discourse and debate. Through Wright's lens, familiar sayings and actions of Jesus that have long been taken to mean one thing now look totally different. Yet amidst all that is new in Wright's portrait, there emerges a profile of Jesus that bears striking lines of continuity with the Jesus of Christian belief and worship. This resemblance has captured the attention of confessing Christian biblical scholars and theologians.Jesus and the Restoration of Israel is a serious attempt to offer a multifaceted and critical appreciation and assessment of Wright's work. Essays focus on Israel's continuing exile, Jesus as prophet, his Christology, apocalyptic sayings, parables, and ethics. The entire portrait of Jesus is evaluated from the standpoint of philosophy and systematic theology. Wright then responds to the essayists, and Marcus Borg, a prominent Jesus scholar and Wright's frequent dialogue partner, offers his critical appraisal of the discussion.