Books by F. Scott Spencer

Senior New Testament scholar F. Scott Spencer focuses on a neglected area in the study of Jesus and the Gospels: the emotional life of Jesus. This book offers a fresh reading of the Gospels through the lens of Jesus's emotions--anger, grief, disgust, surprise, compassion, and joy. These emotions motivate Jesus's mission and reveal to Gospel readers what matters most to him. Amid his passions, Jesus forges his character as God's incarnate Messiah, wholly embodied and emotionally engaged with others and thoroughly embedded in the surrounding environment.

This reading offers a traveller's guide through the book of Acts, charting both narrative features (plot development, character building and shifting points of view) and cultural scenarios informing the story (honor-shame contests, patron-client relations and purity-pollution boundaries). Within this 'literary-cultural' framework, Spencer undertakes to map the temporal, spatial and social settings of each segment of the Acts journey. While often detecting internal repetitive patterns along the way as well as comparative links with the preceding Lukan gospel and Jewish scriptures, this reading also exposes certain dramatic tensions within Acts (such as a 'double message' regarding women's prophetic ministry) and distinctive moves beyond prior narratives. The element of surprise is maximized, so that the commentary reads somewhat like a first-time exploration of the text.

The women in Jesus' life are a raucous and rowdy bunch, including 'riotous' foremothers, 'loose women,' and 'distressed daughters of Israel.' Reading these new ways of interpreting women in the Gospels, male New Testament scholars have discovered liberating perspectives.

What Would Jesus Do? is a popular phrase in Christian circles, but answers to that question might be more on-target if we spent more time exploring, as Scott Spencer has, What Did Jesus Do?Spencer examines both the Synoptics and the Gospel of John as he tries to catch a wide-angled vision of Jesus'' behavior in the gospels. Rather than focus on sayings or pronouncements as an authoritative code of conduct, he studies Jesus'' deeds or actions as keys to his identity and vocation. While not ignoring Jesus'' teaching, this study is more interested in discovering how Jesus personally lived up to his own moral instruction -- his personal conduct. Chapters are devoted to Jesus'' actions with respect to his family, his friends, his body, his possessions, his work, his reputation, and the environment. Spencer suggests paths -- and pitfalls -- for relating Jesus'' personal conduct to individual behavior, how we might move from what Jesus did in the New Testament to what we should do today.F. Scott Spencer is Professor of New Testament at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Virginia and is the author of The Portrait of Philip in Acts: A Study of Roles and Relations and Acts. He is the Chair of the New Testament section for the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion.