This linguistically informed study of Ephesians 2:11-22 in its original language and historical context will aid readers’ understanding of Ephesians. This book develops a fully articulated methodology to approach metaphors and narrative patterns in the New Testament epistles.

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story. The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding everyday readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is ideal for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and laypeople alike. Each volume employs three main, easy-to-use sections designed to help readers live out God's story: LISTEN to the Story: Includes complete NIV text with references to other texts at work in each passage, encouraging the reader to hear it within the Bible's grand story. EXPLAIN the Story: Explores and illuminates each text as embedded in its canonical and historical setting. LIVE the Story: Reflects on how each text can be lived today and includes contemporary stories and illustrations to aid preachers, teachers, and students. —Ephesians— Like all of Paul's letters, Ephesians is centered in the gospel and its implications. It tells the story of what God has done in Christ and spells out the ethical implications of this story. But the letter to the Ephesians is unique among Paul's letters in many ways, including in how it tells of the story of God, beginning "before the creation of the world" and ending in eternity. Edited by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III, and written by a number of top-notch theologians, The Story of God Bible Commentary series will bring relevant, balanced, and clear-minded theological insight to any biblical education or ministry.

From a foremost authority on the New Testament comes a major new commentary on Ephesians -- a letter of truth, love, and unity to our superficial world. This newest volume in the Pillar New Testament Commentary series provides a rich exposition of Ephesians, one of the most significant documents ever written. Using the fruits of recent biblical research, Peter O'Brien shows how Ephesians sums up God's magnificent plan of salvation in Christ and spells out his divine purpose for believers today. A model of the scholarly excellence characteristic of the entire PNTC series (which now features a striking new jacket design), O'Brien's Ephesians will become the standard work on this profoundly influential book. - Publisher.

In Timothy Gombis's dramatic reading of Ephesians we are drawn into a theological and cultural engagement with this epochal story of redemption. The Drama of Ephesians stands in the space between commentaries and specialized studies in Ephesians. Here you will renew your excitement for studying, preaching and teaching this great letter of Paul.

God is the originator of marriage. The Bible’s advice has helped many couples overcome problems and have a long, happy marriage. The Bible is a book for all people that provides practical advice that can improve our marriage. Husbands and wives can include God in their marriage by following his loving guidance. If we want a healthy, joyful, Christ-centered marriage, then we must embrace the principles in the Bible. Marriage is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us. Counsel from the Word of God will enrich, reinforce, and strengthen a marriage that is already strong and save a marriage that is failing.

The formation of the Book of the Twelve is one of the most vigorously debated subjects in Old Testament studies today. This volume assembles twenty-four essays by the world’s leading experts, providing an overview of the present state of scholarship in the field. The book’s contributors focus on questions of method, history, as well as redactional and textual history.

For the reconstruction of early Christianity, the lives of early Christians, their world of ideas, their ways of living, and their literature. Early Christian manuscripts - documents and literary texts - are pivotal archaeological artefacts. However, the manuscripts often came to us in fragmentary conditions, incomplete or with gaps and missing lines. Others appear to form a corpus, belong to an archive, or are connected with each other as far as theme or purpose are concerned. The present collection comprises of nine essays about individual or a set of certain manuscripts. With their essays the authors aim to present special approaches to early Christian manuscripts and, consequently, demonstrate methodically how to deal with them. The scope of topics ranges from the reconstruction of fragmentary manuscripts to the significance of amulets and from the discussion of individual fragments to the handling of the known manuscripts of a specific Christian text or a whole archive of papyri.

For the past hundred years, much has been written about the early editions of Christian texts discovered in the region that was once Roman Egypt. Scholars have cited these papyrus manuscripts--containing the Bible and other Christian works--as evidence of Christianity's presence in that historic area during the first three centuries AD. In Early Christian Books in Egypt, distinguished papyrologist Roger Bagnall shows that a great deal of this discussion and scholarship has been misdirected, biased, and at odds with the realities of the ancient world. Providing a detailed picture of the social, economic, and intellectual climate in which these manuscripts were written and circulated, he reveals that the number of Christian books from this period is likely fewer than previously believed. Bagnall explains why papyrus manuscripts have routinely been dated too early, how the role of Christians in the history of the codex has been misrepresented, and how the place of books in ancient society has been misunderstood. The author offers a realistic reappraisal of the number of Christians in Egypt during early Christianity, and provides a thorough picture of the economics of book production during the period in order to determine the number of Christian papyri likely to have existed. Supporting a more conservative approach to dating surviving papyri, Bagnall examines the dramatic consequences of these findings for the historical understanding of the Christian church in Egypt.

Do you have a question about some Bible verses concerning God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, a Bible verse or passage, theology, Christian history, textual issues, Bible translation differences, interpretation concerns, or anything Bible or Christian-related? GOT BIBLE QUESTIONS is a new book series that will address these types of difficult Bible questions. The apostle Peter said that the apostle Paul's letters were "hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction." (2 Pet. 3:16) The Bible at times can be difficult, complex, or elusive. GOT BIBLE QUESTIONS will get at what the author meant by his words. See the Table of Content and discover what verses and Bible difficulties we have dealt with in this volume.