This study demonstrates that Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:5 - 4:5 is led by the rhetorical situation to emphasize God's final judgment as the affirmation of the individual Christian's work. Paul is not simply opposing his future eschatology to a Corinthian "realized" eschatology. Rather, he is teaching the Corinthians to adapt their inherited belief in a corporate judgment to new concerns within the community. The exegetical study is set in the context of past scholarship on the questions of Paul's eschatology, his beliefs concerning judgment, and the role of eschatology in 1 Corinthians. Chapters on the functions of divine judgment in Jewish and Greco-Roman writings help to define the way early Christians thought of God's judgment and to suggest how Corinthian sensibilities influenced Paul's application of judgment language. This book contributes to ongoing debates about the apocalyptic theology of Paul and the eschatological views of the Corinthians. It will also be useful to scholars who are interested in the role played by ideas of divine judgment in the world of the New Testament.

Featuring more than two hundred in-depth articles, a comprehensive resource introduces the principal players in the history of biblical interpretation and explores their historical and intellectual contexts, their primary works, their interpretive principles, and their broader historical significance.

In 1927 C.A.A. Scott, while commenting on the apostle Paul's Christology, remarked that the "history of the word Glory in the Bible has yet to be written." By using methodology developed in semantics, semiotics, and, more generally, literary theory, Newman examines the origin and rhetoric of Paul's Glory-Christology. The investigation involves three distinct tasks: (1) to plot the tradition-history of Glory which formed part of Paul's linguistic world, (2) to examine Paul's letter, in light of the reconstructed tradition-history of Glory, in order to discern the rationale of Paul's identification of Christ as Glory and, (3) to map out the implications of such an identification for Paul's theological and rhetorical strategy. On the basis of this study, four conclusions are reached for understanding Paul. First, Paul inherited a symbolic universe with signs already "full" of signification. Second, knowing the (diachronically acquired) connotative range of a "surface" symbol (e.g. Glory) aids in discerning Paul's precise contingent strategy. Third, knowing the "surface" symbol's referential power defines and contributes to the "deeper structure" of Paul's theological grammar. Finally, the heuristic power within the construals of the Glory tradition coalesce in Paul's Christophany and thus provide coherence at the "deepest" level of Paul's Christology.

"Produced within the framework of a consultation ... at the Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, Switzerland from 12-17 September 1975."

Der vorliegende Band faßt Aufsätze des Bochumer Neutestamentlers zusammen, die sich mit Jesus, seiner Botschaft und seinem Weg, aber auch mit der in der Überlieferung der Evangelien sich ausdrückenden Christologie befassen. Eine erste Gruppe von Beiträgen behandelt die Gottesverkündigung Jesu und das auf ihn zurückgehende "Gebet des Herrn". Es folgen Abhandlungen über Jesu Ruf in die "Nachfolge" und seine ethischen Weisungen (Liebesgebot, Verbot der Ehescheidung). Die Leidengeschichte Jesu ist Gegenstand weiterer Untersuchungen. Dabei steht sowohl die historische Rückfrage als auch die Theologie der Passiongeschichte im Zentrum des Fragens. Die vier letzten Studien befassen sich mit explizit christologischen Themen: Davidsohn-Frage, Präexistenz-Christologie, und Neuschöpfung in Christus. Insgesamt liegt somit ein Werk vor, das aktuelle Aspekte der Jesus-Forschung erörtert und zugleich die Anfänge der Christologie ins Blickfeld rückt.

The second volume in Travis B. Williams' and David G. Horrell's magisterial ICC commentary on first Peter. Williams and Horrell bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the letter. This second covers the major part of the letter, providing commentary on 2.11 to the end of the letter. The exegesis provides for each passage sections on bibliography, text-criticism, literary introduction, detailed exegesis, and overall summary. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography, which covers the whole epistle.

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.