Jesus and the Village Scribes


Book Description

Sets the early Jesus movement and Q within the context of the socio-economic crisis in Galilee.




Kingdom of Bureaucracy


Book Description

The Sayings Gospel Q was composed in the central decades of the first century CE by Galilean villagers who had acquired knowledge of Greek mostly through their involvement with the public administration. The present book analyzes the text of Q in order to rediscover the terminological and ideological traces of the activity of these sub-elite scribes in the Sayings Gospel. Given the bureaucratic positions occupied by the members of this group, the peculiar use of the phrase Basileia tou theou carries a specific significance for its theological political implications. On the basis of Giorgio Agamben's recent revision of the category of political theology, the attitude of Q on divine kingship is understood as an instance of sub-elite negotiation of social and political positions vis-a-vis the expansion of Roman imperial hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean. In this context the author(s) of Q envisage apocalyptic scenarios in which divine kingship replaces human rulers and native sub-elite bureaucrats can share in the exercise of cosmic government.




Matthew, Disciple and Scribe


Book Description

This fresh look at the Gospel of Matthew highlights the unique contribution that Matthew's rich and multilayered portrait of Jesus makes to understanding the connection between the Old and New Testaments. Patrick Schreiner argues that Matthew obeyed the Great Commission by acting as scribe to his teacher Jesus in order to share Jesus's life and work with the world, thereby making disciples of future generations. The First Gospel presents Jesus's life as the fulfillment of the Old Testament story of Israel and shows how Jesus brings new life in the New Testament.




Jesus and the Peasants


Book Description

While some of the chapters focus on systemic issues, others probe the depths of individual Gospel passages. The author's keen eye for textual detail, archaeological data, comparative materials, and systemic overviews make this volume a joy for anyone interested in understanding Jesus in his own context. The volume is organized into three interrelated parts: 1) political economy and the peasant values of Jesus, 2) the Jesus traditions within peasant realities, and 3) the peasant aims of Jesus.




T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World


Book Description

This ground-breaking volume examines the presentation and role of children in the ancient world, and specifically in ancient Jewish and Christian texts. With carefully commissioned chapters that follow chronological and canonical progression, a sequential reading of this book enables deeper appreciation of how understandings of children change over time. Divided into four sections, this handbook first offers an overview of key methodological approaches employed in the study of children in the biblical world, and the texts at hand. Three further sections examine crucial texts in which children or discussions of childhood are featured; presented along chronological lines, with sections on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Intertestamental Literature, and the New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha. Relevant not only to biblical studies but also cross-disciplinary scholars interested in children in antiquity.




Christian Origins and the Ancient Economy


Book Description

What does economics have to do with Christian origins? Why study such a connection? First of all, the New Testament makes many direct references to economic issues. But, second of all, the economy affects every other aspect of life (family, religion, community, work, health, and politics). How prosperous was first-century Galilee? To understand what it was like to live in a society, one must understand its economy. The study of the economy includes not only the goods and services of the society but also human labor and its control. The study must also take into account how fair the economy was to each family. Those involved in the quest for the historical Jesus have discovered that the ancient economy is a major point of dispute among various interpreters. Was the early Jesus movement a socioeconomic protest? Or was it primarily a religious reform? These two approaches understand Jesus in remarkably different ways. This volume seeks to guide readers through some of the most controversial issues raised inthe last twenty years on this important topic.




Framing Social Criticism in the Jesus Movement


Book Description

Which milieu did the earliest rural Jesus movement emerge from? Sarah E. Rollens provides a sociological study of the earliest Christians in rural Palestine based on evidence in the Sayings Gospels Q. She compares this Jesus movement to other movements of social reform in similar socio-cultural contexts.




Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages


Book Description

In Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages fifteen scholars offer specialist studies on Jewish education from the areas of their expertise. This tightly themed volume in honour of Philip S. Alexander has some essays that look at individual manuscripts, some that consider larger literary corpora, and some that are more thematically organised. Jewish education has been addressed largely as a matter of the study house, the bet midrash. Here a richer range of texts and themes discloses a wide variety of activity in several spheres of Jewish life. In addition, some notable non-Jewish sources provide a wider context for the discourse than is often the case.




The Radical Jesus, the Bible, and the Great Transformation


Book Description

The Radical Jesus offers a companion to the author's previous article collection Jesus and the Peasants. Even more than in Jesus and the Peasants, these eleven chapters sharpen the focus on the political-economic meaning of Jesus then and the deeper values embodied in him that perhaps are still pertinent for now. Part One considers his activities and aims within the political economy of first-century Galilee. Part Two offers perspectives on the critical hermeneutical task of linking the values of Jesus and the Bible to a world that has undergone what Karl Polanyi called the Great Transformation. Polanyi argued suasively in his 1944 book that economy in the pre-industrial age was embedded in social relations and served necessary social purposes, while society after the Great Transformation became embedded within market capitalist economy to the detriment of social relations. This book finds in sustained critical dialog with the Radical Jesus another transforming force and a guiding light toward a more humane economy and society that will serve human need rather than selfish greed.




The Political Aims of Jesus


Book Description

Amid competing portrayals of the 'cynic Jesus,' the 'peasant Jesus,' and the 'apocalyptic Jesus,' the 'political Jesus' remains a marginal figure. Oakman argues that advances in our understanding of the political economy of Roman Galilee warrant a revival of Reimarus's understanding of Jesus as an instigator of revolutionary change.