Texts and Editions for New Testament Study – serie

This volume provides a detailed introduction addressing critical issues such as authorship, date, integrity, miracles, Jewish involvement, the imitation of Christ, theology, and ethics. The section-by-section commentary examines grammar, philology, text critical questions, metaphors, intertextuality, historical issues, etc. In addition, there are numerous excursuses on topics such as the charge of atheism in antiquity, praying toward the east, the repurposing of Roman stadia, and the cult of the saints. Throughout, the author engages a wide array of secondary literature. A modern theological postscript considers the ongoing relevance of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in our contemporary world marked by religious violence.

The essays in On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries discuss historical, hermeneutical, methodological, literary, and theological questions that shape the writing of commentaries on the books of the New Testament. While these essays honor Grant R. Osborne, they also represent the first sustained effort to systematically address commentary writing in the field of New Testament studies.

In this commentary on the Egerton Gospel, Lorne R. Zelyck presents a fresh paleographical analysis and thorough reconstruction of the fragmentary text, which results in new readings and interpretations. Details surrounding the acquisition of the manuscript are presented for the first time, and various scholarly viewpoints on controversial topics, such as the date of composition and relationship to the canonical gospels, are addressed. This early apocryphal gospel (150-250 CE) provides traditional interpretations of the canonical gospels that are similar to those of other early Christian authors, and affirms Jesus’ continuity with the miracle-working prophets Moses and Elisha, his obedience to the Law, divinity, and violent rejection by Jewish opponents.

In History of the Pauline Corpus in Texts, Transmissions, and Trajectories , Chris S. Stevens examines the Greek manuscripts of the Pauline texts from P46 to Claromontanus. Previous research is often hindered by the lack of a systematic analysis and an indelicate linguistic methodology. This book offers an entirely new analysis of the early life of the Pauline corpus. Departing from traditional approaches, this text-critical work is the first to use Systemic Functional Linguistics, which enables both the comparison and ranking of textual differences across multiple manuscripts. Furthermore, the analysis is synchronically oriented, so it is non-evaluative. The results indicate a highly uniform textual transmission during the early centuries. The systematic analysis challenges previous research regarding text types, Christological scribal alterations, and textual trajectories.

Studies on the Intersection of Text, Paratext, and Reception brings together thirteen contributions from leading scholars in the fields of textual criticism, manuscript/paratextual research, and reception history. These fields have tended to operate in isolation, but recent years have seen a rise in valuable research being done at their multiple points of intersection. The contributors to this volume show the potential of such crossover work through, for example, exploring how paratextual features of papyri and minuscules give insight into their text; probing how scribal behaviors illumine textual transmission/restoration, and examining how colometry, inner-biblical references, and early church reading cultures may contribute to understanding canon formation. These essays reflect the contours of the scholarship of Dr. Charles E. Hill, to whom the volume is dedicated.Contributors are James Barker, Richard Bauckham, Paul Foster, Peter J. Gentry, Peter J. Gurry, Moses Han, Peter M. Head, Jennifer Knust, Michael J. Kruger, Gregory R. Lanier, Peter Malik, Stanley E. Porter, J. Nicholas Reid, Tommy Wasserman, Peter J. Williams.

The Catena to James (compiled ca. 700 CE) collected excerpts from the best ancient Greek commentaries on the Letter of James, ranging from Origen to Maximus the Confessor. This translation and commentary make the whole Catena available for the first time in a modern language. An extensive introduction locates the Catena both in its own historical and literary context and in the context of modern catena studies. The detailed commentary elucidates the wide-ranging and sophisticated nature of the philological, historical-critical, rhetorical, ethical, theological, and pastoral insights of these ancient readers of James.

Why would early Christians perceive the need for a ‘New Testament’? Unfortunately, most studies on the NT canon concentrate on its development and closing to the neglect of its impetus. Yet NT texts like 1 Tim. 5:18 and 2 Pet. 3:16 reveal that, within the first century, early Christians began receiving recent Christian texts as “Scripture”, on par with their Old Testament scriptural collection. What explains this rapid and remarkable development? Levi Baker traces the connection between Scripture and covenant in early Judaism and early Christianity, arguing that the answer lies in early Christianity’s conviction that Jesus had inaugurated the new covenant.