This book provides the most thorough and systematic analysis of early Jewish interpretations of Adam currently available. With detailed exegesis Levison demonstrates that each early Jewish author painted a unique portrait of Adam by utilizing Adam to express a particular, preconceived theological Tendenz. This study therefore displaces the notion that a unified Adam mythology existed in early Judaism with the recognition that each author readily adapted the early chapters of Genesis according to specific needs and aims. Alongside an introduction which surveys studies of early Jewish interpretations of Adam and studies on the Adam cycle, this book contains analyses of all relevant passages from Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, Jubilees, Josephus, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, Apocalypse of Moses and Vita Adae et Evae. This monograph is an indispensable tool for both Old and New Testament studies, providing a variety of early Jewish examples of biblical exegesis from c. 200 BCE to 135 CE, as well as insight into the milieu within which Paul and other early Christian writers formulated their own unique interpretations of Adam.

These essays explore ancient Jewish Bible interpretation preserved in the Aramaic Targums, bringing it into conversation with Rabbinic and Christian scriptural exegesis, and setting it in the larger world of ancient translations of the Bible.

This book presents a collection of papers from the fifth conference of the Enoch Seminar. The conference re-examined 2 Enoch, an early Jewish apocalyptic text previously known to scholars only in its Slavonic translation, in light of recently identified Coptic fragments.

Most New Testament scholars today agree that Jesus used an enigmatic self-designation, bar nasha ("the Son of Man"), translated into Greek as ho huios tou anthropou in the Synoptic Gospels. In contrast, Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, nowhere mentions the phrase in his letters. Does this indicate that the Gospel writers simply misunderstood the generic sense of the Aramaic idiom and used it as a christological title in connection with Daniel 7, as some scholars claim? Paul demonstrates explicit and sophisticated Adam Christology in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. In contrast, there is no real equivalent in the Synoptic Gospels. Does this indicate that Adam Christology in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 was essentially a Pauline invention to which the Evangelists were oblivious? In this study Yongbom Lee argues that in addition to the Old Testament, contemporary Jewish exegetical traditions, and his Damascus Christophany, Paul uses the early church tradition--in particular, its implicit primitive Adam-Jesus typology and the Son of Man saying traditions reflected in the Synoptic Gospels--as a source of his Adam Christology.

When scholars have set Jesus against various conceptions of the "messiah" and other reemptive figures in early Jewish expectation, those questions have been bound up with the problem of violence, whether the political violence of a militant messiah or the divine violence carried out by a heavenly or angelic figure. Simon J. Joseph enters the wide-ranging discussion of violence in the Bible, taking up questions of Jesus of Nazareth's relationship to the violence of revolutionary militancy and apocalyptic fantasy alike, and proposes an innovative new approach. Missing from past discussions, Joseph contends, is the unique conception of an Adamic redeemer figure in the Enochic material--a conception that informed the Q tradition and, he argues, Jesus' own self-understanding.

This volume considers the New Testament in the light of anthropological study, in particular the current trend towards theological anthropology. The book begins with three essays that survey the context in which the New Testament was written, covering the Old Testament, early Jewish writings and the literature of the Greco –Roman world. Chapters then explore the anthropological ideas found in the texts of the New Testament and in the thought of it writers, notably that of Paul. The volume concludes with pieces from Brian S. Roser and Ephraim Radner who bring the whole exploration together by reflecting on the theological implications of the New Testament's anthropological ideas. Taken together, the chapters in this volume address the question that humans have been asking since at least the earliest days of recorded history: what does it mean to be human? The presence of this question in modern theology, and its current prevalence in popular culture, makes this volume both a timely and relevant interdisciplinary addition to the scholarly conversation around the New Testament.

This book is a study of the union between God and those he has redeemed, as it is represented in the New Testament. In conversation with historical and systematic theology, Grant Macaskill argues that the union between God and his people is consistently represented by the New Testament authors as covenantal, with the participation of believers in the life of God specifically mediated by Jesus, the covenant Messiah: hence, it involves union with Christ. Christ's mediation of divine presence is grounded in the ontology of the Incarnation, the real divinity and real humanity of his person, and by the full divine personhood of the Holy Spirit, who unites believers to him in faith. His personal narrative of death and resurrection is understood in relation to the covenant by which God's dealings with humanity are ordered. In their union with him, believers are transformed both morally and noetically, so that the union has an epistemic dimension, strongly affirmed by the theological tradition but sometimes confused by scholars with Platonism. This account is developed in close engagement with the New Testament texts, read against Jewish backgrounds, and allowed to inform one another as context. As a 'participatory' understanding of New Testament soteriology, it is advanced in distinction to other participatory approaches that are here considered to be deficient, particularly the so-called 'apocalyptic' approach that is popular in Pauline scholarship, and those attempts to read New Testament soteriology in terms of theosis, elements of which are nevertheless affirmed.

The Gospel according to John presents Jesus in a unique way as compared with other New Testament writings. Scholars have long puzzled and pondered over why this should be. In this book, James McGrath offers a convincing explanation of how and why the author of the Fourth Gospel arrived at a christological portrait of Jesus that is so different from that of other New Testament authors, and yet at the same time clearly has its roots in earlier tradition. McGrath suggests that as the author of this Gospel sought to defend his beliefs about Jesus against the objections brought by opponents, he developed and drew out further implications from the beliefs he inherited. The book studies this process using insights from the field of sociology which helps to bring methodological clarity to the important issue of the development of Johannine Christology.

This is a general-interest introduction to the Old Testament from many disciplines. There are 23 essays with 23 individual reference lists.

Back cover: How did the Qumran discoveries change New Testament scholarship? What are the main insights to be gained from the Qumran corpus with regard to the Jesus tradition, Paul's language and theology, the dualistic language and worldview of the Fourth Gospel, or the formation of the biblical Canon? The articles of this volume present the fruits of 25 years of scholarship on Qumran and the New Testament.