Books in the Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series series

John D. Moores engages with the most significant riddles displayed in the complex argumentation of Romans 1-8. Viewing Paul as he does against the background of semiology (especially the theory of Umberto Eco), his 1995 book combines literary theory and classical logic to put an entirely new complexion on Paul's rationality.

In the process of exploring the full implications of Luke's preface, Loveday Alexander puts forward the innovative thesis that Luke followed the prefaces of the 'scientific' tradition in the Greaco-Roman world, rather than the conventions of the literati.

This 2004 book was the first in English to situate the Lukan exorcism stories within their ancient cultural context, including popular belief as well as official religion. Close linguistic analysis sheds light on the Jewishness of the text and the understanding of exorcism within the hellenized Jewish religious world.

The New Testament narratives reporting the resuscitation of dead persons by Jesus and Peter are discussed in detail in this monograph, and their theology is examined. His analysis leads the author to the hypothesis that neither Jesus nor Peter in fact brought the dead to life.

In this detailed analysis Dr Schramm challenges suggestions, from recent research, that Luke's exclusive source for his Markan tradition was Mark's Gospel, and points out that Luke also drew on other oral or written traditions. He concludes that modifications to his main source should not be regarded as evidence of Luke's own theology.

For many years Luke-Acts has been studied as a work of history and theology. The Trial of the Gospel sets out to examine Luke's writings as an apologetic work, by focusing on those parts of Luke's story where the apologetic overtones seem most prominent - the trial narratives.

This book illustrates in detail the range of understandings of the human condition in New Testament times and remedies for ills that prevailed when Jesus and the apostles were spreading the Christian message and launching Christian communities in the Graeco-Roman world.

This is the first book to examine the Aramaic dimension of Q since the Aramaic Dead Sea scrolls made such work more feasible. Maurice Casey reconstructs and interprets the Aramaic sources, raising the level of proof that Jesus said and did some of the things attributed in our earliest sources.

This book, first published in 2000, is the main bibliographical listing of Greek New Testament manuscripts and provides scholars with an invaluable tool for research. It will assist those who wish to investigate the readings in a manuscript or group of manuscripts by directing them to the primary sources.

The belly is today a matter of much concern. Modern cultures have developed means to cultivate this part of the body. Does St Paul in any way address a culture in which the stomach is similarly high on the agenda? To answer this question is the aim of this investigation.

This book makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate about which of the synoptic gospels was written first. Using the christological criterion, Dr Head argues against the revival of interest in the Griesbach Hypothesis (this claimed that Mark had used, conflated and abbreviated Matthew and Luke) in favour of Markan priority.

This study raises important questions about the social impact of conversion during the first two centuries CE. The author convincingly challenges assumptions made about the relations between Christian faith and family life, and shows how important a concern the effects of discipleship on the family were for Mark and Matthew.

In this original and thought-provoking 1995 study, Willi Braun analyses the Pharisaic dinner episode in Luke 14 and shows how gospel writers manipulated the inherited Jesus traditions for the purposes of ideological and social formation of Christian communities.

The aim of this study is to show that the Evangelists, to an extent hitherto unrecognised, wrote narratives which set out to distinguish Jesus's time from their own.

Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus is a book-length investigation of the archaeological evidence for Greek and Roman culture in Galilee. Mark Chancey argues that the extent of Greco-Roman culture in Galilee in the time of Jesus has often been greatly exaggerated.

Stephen Ahearne-Kroll examines the literary interaction between the Gospel of Mark's passion narrative and four Psalms of Individual Lament that focuses on King David challenging God because he suffers. Mark alludes to these psalms in reference to Jesus and David's concerns become woven into the depiction of Jesus' suffering and death.

Studying the Gospels must incorporate a detailed understanding of their audience and origins in early Christianity. Edward W. Klink III challenges a scholarly consensus concerning the original audience behind the Gospel of John, and provides a more appropriate model for how it should be read.

In this second edition of a work which first appeared in 1979, Professor Howard brings the original discussion of Paul's Letter to the Galatians into line with recent scholarship and his present thinking on the issues it raises.

This study is the first full-length scholarly book on Pontius Pilate in English. It reconstructs the historical Pontius Pilate and looks at the way in which he is used as a literary character in the works of six first century authors: Philo, Josephus and the four evangelists.

The author claims that development can be traced since we have not only letters from Paul himself, but also the Pastoral epistles from the beginning of the second century, as well as Ephesians and Colossians, writings which are characteristic of the ambiguous period following the disappearance of the earliest authorities.

A study of the hymnic and liturgical material in the New Testament which describes Christ's nature and person. Professor Sanders analyzes the hymns in detail and finds in them a common mythological pattern. He traces its origin to a particular and unorthodox branch of Judaism which is itself a branch of the 'wisdom' tradition where the thanksgiving hymn had its home.

Dr McDonald studies the fundamental structures and procedures of Christian communication. He explores what lies behind each of them as well as the way they are used by Jesus and the early Church. Both kerygmatic and didactic features are found in all of these structures.

St Paul and his contemporaries - so runs a commonly accepted scholarly opinion - inhabited a world believed to be dominated by hostile superhuman powers, of whom Jews and Gentiles alike liked in fear. Dr Carr concludes that the notion of mighty forces of evil ranged against man was not part of the earliest Christian understanding of the world and the gospel.

This study first examines the concept of the Son of man against its Jewish background and then details the most important Son of man sayings attributed to Jesus in the first three Gospels. The book concludes that some of the sayings originated not in the creative thought of early Christians but in the preaching of Jesus himself.

Dr Wilson examines Jesus' attitude to Gentiles and concludes that not only did he fail to anticipate a historical Gentile mission, but that his eschatological expectations logically disallowed it.

The author of this work shows that the plan of God is a distinctively Lucan theme which undergirds the whole of the Third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, becoming especially prominent in the speeches of the latter.

This study is an attempt to show how proverbial or aphoristic sayings played an important role in the early formulation of the sayings of Jesus by the church. Small collections of aphoristic sayings can be detected in the sayings tradition known as 'Q'.

This study provides an analysis and commentary on Josephus' description of the Essenes in the light of the new material from Qumran. A fresh translation is provided alongside the Greek text of the passages in Josephus, as well as a full commentary on the major passages in which he describes this group.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the basic structures of Matthew's and Paul's ethics, rather than to deal in detail with their teaching on specific moral issues. Dr Mohrlang discusses their perspectives and gives special attention to the question of ethical motivation.

This book offers a thesis about the interests underlying the Epistle. Dr Hughes argues that the major concern of the author has been to achieve a theological understanding of the relationship between the now out-moded forms and institutions of Old Testament worship and those of the distinctively new (yet not unrelated) Christian faith in which he now finds himself.