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The Book of Acts brings together leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical theologians to read and interpret the book of Acts from within their ecclesial tradition, while simultaneously engaging one another in critical dialogue. Combining both theological exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, each chapter is uniquely structured to facilitate a rich reading of Scripture and an engaging though critical dialogue across the traditions. Each chapter begins with a main essay by either a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical theologian on a section of the book of Acts; the main essay is followed by responses from theologians of the other two traditions. The chapter concludes with a final response from the main author. Readers are thus provided with not only a deep and engaging reading of the book of Acts but also the unfolding of a rich theological-ecumenical dialogue centered on Scripture. Anyone interested in understanding how our ecclesial traditions inform our reading of Scripture would do well to read this book, as would anyone interested in the book of Acts, ecumenical dialogue, and the theological interpretation of Scripture

Luke’s Gospel plays a significant role in transmitting the majority of the kingdom of God sayings directly associated with Jesus. Karl C. H. Leung offers a new explanation of the semantics of the phrase from a cognitive model of polysemy and provides alternative interpretations of the kingdom teachings in Luke’s Gospel as a whole. Leung departs from the more common twentieth-century interpretation of an inaugurated eschatology in which God’s reign has arrived and will be consummated at the end of the age. Instead, he demonstrates that Jesus’s teaching on the kingdom of God exhibits the notions of gathering the eschatological Israel, restoring the ownership of the promised land to the chosen people of God, and attaining the continual expansion of God’s new world on earth in the eschatological age.

A close look at how Strauss's engagement with popular and scholarly controversies influenced his study of the Gospels

David Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus Critically Examined is known as a monumental contribution to the critical, scientific study of religion and Christian origins. It was widely read and influenced literary and historical research on the Bible as well as critical philosophy between Hegel and Nietzsche. Less well-known are Strauss's writings from the same period on "the nocturnal side of nature," paranormal phenomena such as demon possession, animal magnetism, and the ghost-seeing of Frederike Hauffe, the famous "Seeress of Prevorst."

Features:

• Illuminates unfamiliar features of early nineteenth-century theology, philosophy, and medicine showing how spirituality and science blended together in these fields
• Demonstrates the importance of Western esotericism and popular religion in the history of modern biblical studies
• Sheds new light on Strauss’s study of the Gospels as myths, his critique of miracles and his account of the historical Jesus

In this book, Eric C. Smith uses the postcolonial theory of necropolitics to interpret the Acts of the Apostles. Necropolitics, a way to account for how power makes claims on the lives of persons especially in colonial or imperial circumstances, is particularly relevant for the study of Acts because of its attention to those specific imperial situations and the way coercion, violence, intimidation, imprisonment, and fear show up in the lives of its characters. Necropolitics reveals a useful perspective for understanding Acts and its account of the aftermath of Jesus’s death, the expansion of the Jesus movement across the Mediterranean basin, and the movement’s many encounters with representatives of cultural, religious, and political power.

With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.