A classic in Christian discipleship for twenty years, this updated edition shows why disciple making should be the focus of every believer's life.

This volume analyzes the "Q materials" in the light of compositional conventions of ancient instructional genres. The author begins by assessing literary-critical approaches to Q which began with Harnack and have culminated in the work of Kloppenborg, Sato, and others. Next he articulates a theory of genre analysis drawn from text-linguistics, literary criticism, and rhetorical criticism. An array of ancient paraenetic texts is used to generate genre-critical models, in turn applied comprehensively to the double tradition materials. The results are used to critically assess recent redaction-history theories of Q's formation and to locate Q more securely among ancient paraenetic genres. The book will be of interest to synoptic gospels scholarship, historians of Christian origins, literary critics, and those investigating the production, social function, and performance of texts in early Christianity.

The average age of churchgoers in Britain is now 47. Almost every denomination is experiencing steady decline. How sure can we be that we are still offering something people want to hear? Alison Morgan identifies four clear reasons to be confident: 1. The gospel still speaks to confused teens and weary sceptics. By embracing doubts and welcoming questions it remains open to us to present something which answers people's real needs. 2. The word of truth and the Spirit of power still exercise authority and compel attention. Alison's own experience of ministry in the UK and abroad provides illustrations. 3. Spiritual gifts, given not to excite individuals but in order to renew the church for its core task of mission, are powerfully present and widely recognised and practised. 4. In a time of rapid cultural change, new expressions of church are constantly emerging: this is necessary to guard against vital spirituality sliding into drab religion.

The monograph analyses eucharistic texts on the basis of the social practices which generated them. Six stages of ideology are identified. Jesus himself practised fellowship at meals as celebrations of Israel's purity (stage 1), and later insisted that a pure meal was a better sacrifice than an offering in the Temple (stage 2). The circle of Peter made such meals into covenantal celebrations; Jesus became a new Moses (stage 3). In order to militate against the full participation of non-Jews, the circle of James invented the full identifications with Passover (stage 4). Paul resisted any such limitations (stage 5). The Synoptic tradition accepted the Jacobean chronology, but joined Paul in developing the Hellenistic theme of Jesus as heroic martyr, and in explaining eucharist as a means of effecting solidarity with Jesus (stage 5). The Johannine ideologies transformed the idiom of eucharist by making Jesus into the paschal lamb which is consumed (stage 6). A conclusion relates the practices identified to the sources behind the Gospels; and shows how practice is key to the meanings of eucharistic texts.

Illumining the Jewish context of early Christian mission, this study through close exegesis of Paul's letter to the Philippians reveals the crucial place of the mission of the church in Paul's thought.

This collection of essays by an international team of New Testament scholars focuses on various kinds of christological claim, whether by the historical Jesus, in the Q tradition, John, Paul or the synoptics, and their connection with controversy and community.

This book begins by offering a reading of the theological views of Luke-Acts in terms of Peter J. Rabinowitz's authorial audience and closes with reflections on how one might assess the historical value of Acts.

This is the second edition of a book published as long ago as 1962. The at that time relatively young Dr. A.F.J. Klijn was brought up in the school of W.C. van Unnik and G. Quispel, both in Utrecht. In his book about the Acts of Thomas he tried to demonstrate that this work cannot be reckoned among the Gnostic writings but belongs to the early Syriac or rather Eastern Christian tradition. In the last decades much has been written about Syriac Christianity, which made it necessary to rewrite the original introduction of this book. The commentary has mainly been left as it was, although many additions have been made to its great number of valuable references.