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A recognized expert in New Testament Greek offers a historical understanding of the writing, transmission, and translation of the New Testament and provides cutting-edge insights into how we got the New Testament in its ancient Greek and modern English forms. In part responding to those who question the New Testament's reliability, Stanley Porter rigorously defends the traditional goals of textual criticism: to establish the original text. He reveals fascinating details about the earliest New Testament manuscripts and shows that the textual evidence supports an early date for the New Testament's formation. He also explores the vital role translation plays in biblical understanding and evaluates various translation theories. The book offers a student-level summary of a vast amount of historical and textual information.

Includes citations for over 90,000 names in over 250 sources in one alphabetical arrangement.

In The Shepherd of Hermas and the Pauline Legacy, Jonathan E. Soyars traces the influence of Pauline literary traditions upon one of the most widely attested and influential apocalyptic texts from early Christianity. Scholarship largely considers Hermas to have known very little about Pauline letters, but by looking beyond verbatim quotations Soyars discovers extensive evidence of his adoption, adaptation, and synthesis of identifiable Pauline material in the Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes sections. Hermas emerges as a Pauline interpreter who creatively engages topics and themes developed within and across the Pauline letters through time. These results reconnect the Shepherd with early Paulinism and extend reconstructions of the sphere of Pauline influence in the second century C.E.

After sketching the history of modern criticism, this work examines the dating of New Testament books and their techniques of biblical citation, Paul's mission to Spain, the hypothesis of 'innocent' apostolic pseudepigrapha, and the use of preformed traditions in Paul's christology.

"Unlike literature in the modern western world, ancient documents were typically crafted for the ear rather than the eye. Jeffrey E. Brickle analyses the oral patterning and resulting soundscape reflected in the prologue of First John. After discussing contemporary techniques of sound analysis and establishing the study's methodological approach, Brickle examines the prologue's aural profile. To do this he explores, describes, and graphically depicts, the patterns of sound that emerge. Brickle then uses approaches to Greek pronunciation and orality advocated in recent New Testament research to determine the impact on the prologue's soundscape. He employs the principles for beautiful and effective composition elucidated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in his treatise On literary composition. The results and implications of this study enable Brickle to suggest further ways to apply research in orality, performance, and memory to ancient texts"--From publisher description.

In this comprehensive introduction to the apostle Paul, Stanley Porter devotes serious consideration both to the background and major contours of Paul’s thought and to the unique contributions of each of his letters. Porter begins by introducing the Pauline tradition and outlining the basics of Paul’s life, the chronology of his ministry, and his several imprisonments. Porter then discusses the background to Paul’s thought, examines some of the major themes of his writings, and treats issues concerning the Pauline epistles, such as pseudonymity and canon. Finally, Porter delves into all thirteen of Paul’s letters individually, placing them within their historical contexts and examining critical issues relating to the content and interpretation of each letter. The result is a thorough, balanced treatment of one of the most important figures in Christianity.