Essential classroom resource for New Testament courses

In this book, a group of international scholars go in detail to explain how the author of the Gospel of John uses a variety of narrative strategies to best tell his story. More than a commentary, this book offers a glimpse at the way an ancient author created and used narrative features such as genre, character, style, persuasion, and even time and space to shape a dramatic story of the life of Jesus.

Features:

• An introduction to the Fourth Gospel through its narrative features and dynamics
• Fifteen features of story design that comprise the Gospel of John
• Short, targeted essays about how John works that can be used as starting points for the study of other Gospels/texts

This volume explores the differing views expressed in the New Testament letters about the position of women in first- and second-generation Christian communities. Contributors place the letters in their broader Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural, religious, and social contexts to better understand how gender roles, family life, and women’s responsibilities for spreading the gospel changed over time. While some essays envision the lived realities of women as wives, mothers, and widows—both the free and the enslaved, others examine the rhetorical and theological function of female metaphors. Contributors include Bernadette Brooten, Christine Gerber, Annette Bourland Huizenga, Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, Beate Kowalski, Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, Peter Lampe, William R. G. Loader, Elisa Estévez López, Heidrun E. Mader, Marinella Perroni, Silke Petersen, Uta Poplutz, María José Schultz Montalbetti, Michael Sommer, Angela Standhartinger, Miklós Szabó, Korinna Zamfir, and Silvia Zanconato.

Children’s Bibles are often the first encounter people have with the Bible, shaping their perceptions of its stories and characters at an early age. The material under discussion in this book not only includes traditional children’s Bibles but also more recent phenomena such as manga Bibles and animated films for children. The book highlights the complex and even tense relationship between text and image in these Bibles, which is discussed from different angles in the essays. Their shared focus is on the representation of “others”—foreigners, enemies, women, even children themselves—in predominantly Hebrew Bible stories. The contributors are Tim Beal, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Melody Briggs, Rubén R. Dupertuis, Emma England, J. Cheryl Exum, Danna Nolan Fewell, David M. Gunn, Laurel Koepf, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Jeremy Punt, Hugh S. Pyper, Cynthia M. Rogers, Mark Roncace, Susanne Scholz, Jaqueline S. du Toit, and Caroline Vander Stichele.

The Gospel of John is a story that claims to speak about the past; however, in order to say something about the past, storytellers must know something of that past. In this follow-up to How John Works: Storytelling in the Fourth Gospel, a team of international scholars moves beyond genre, style, and character to examine the types of knowledge the Fourth Evangelist drew upon to write his gospel. Contributors Paul N. Anderson, Richard Bauckham, Jo-Ann A. Brant, Andrew J. Byers, Douglas Estes, Edward H. Gerber, Stan Harstine, Wendy E. S. North, George L. Parsenios, Christopher A. Porter, Tyler Smith, and Catrin H. Williams focus on a range of topics, including memory, tradition, spirit, rhetoric, imagination, and more. Together the twelve essays build a narrative epistemology that establishes what a writer must know in order to craft a narrative about the past. This collection is sure to become an essential textbook for students of the gospels in general and John in particular.