Baylor New Testament Backgrounds Collection (4 vols.)

by Terence L. Donaldson; Craig A. Evans; Jacob Neusner; Bruce Chilton

and

3 more

Publishers:

Baylor University Press; De Gruyter

, 2003–2012

Overview

This collection offers the most recent and extensive scholarship on several important issues relating to the background of the New Testament and the Greco-Roman world around the first century. In Jesus and the Ossuaries, Craig Evans examines recent archaeological discoveries that shed light on the question of the historical Jesus. In Judaism and the Gentiles, Terence Donaldson offers extensive primary-source information on Jew-Gentile relationships in the first century. Associations in the Greco-Roman World is an extensive reference work on inscriptions and papyri from the Greco-Roman world. Finally, In Quest of the Historical Pharisees provides readers with an excellent compilation of scholarship on the identity and nature of the Jewish sect called the Pharisees. These volumes are a must for anyone interested in delving deeper into New Testament backgrounds.

With the Logos edition of these volumes, all scripture and ancient text citations are linked to the other resources in your Logos library. Fully searchable and integrated into the Logos softeware, these resources will yield a wealth of information on relevant topics whenever you research subjects or key ideas they address.

Key Features

• New translations and introductions to first-century Greco-Roman inscriptions and papyri
• Extensive primary-source material on the historical Pharisees
• Recent scholarship on New Testament backgrounds research

Product Details

• Title: Baylor New Testament Backgrounds Collection (4 vols.)
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Volumes: 4
• Pages: 1,742

Jesus and the Ossuaries: What Jewish Burial Practices Reveal about the Beginning of Christianity

• Author: Craig A. Evans
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Publication Date: 2003
• Pages: 178

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

In Jesus and the Ossuaries, Craig A. Evans helps all readers, expert and layperson alike, understand the importance of recent archaeological finds have for the quest for the historical Jesus and a historical reconstruction of early Christianity. Evans does this by providing an overview of the most important archaeological discoveries and examining nine inscriptions—six on ossuaries, three on stone slabs—that pertain in one way or another to the historical Jesus. He then surveys the arguments for and against the authenticity and identification of the recently discovered James Ossuary. Evans concludes his volume with a discussion of the historical value of the archaeological data afforded by the several inscriptions.

‘If my disciples were silent,’ said Jesus, ‘the very stones would cry out.’ In this excellent book, they do exactly that. Evans’ clear and thorough presentation emphasizes the need to read stone as well as papyrus, to do archaeology as well as exegesis, and to understand that incarnation involves both flesh as well as spirit.

—John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus, DePaul University

An important contribution to the study of the material culture of biblical times... The volume is informative, well written, well organized, and easy to read... Highly recommended.

—CHOICE

Craig A. Evans is the Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the author or editor of more than 30 books on the New Testament and its Jewish backgrounds.

Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE)

• Author: Terence L. Donaldson
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Pages: 580

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

In the Second-Temple period, non-Jews were attracted to Judaism’s communal life, religious observance, and theological imagination. On the Jewish side, this was matched by the development of several discrete “patterns of universalism”—ways in which Jews were able to conceive of a positive place for Gentiles within their symbolic world. In this book, Terence Donaldson collects and comments on all of the texts— up to the end of the second Jewish rebellion in AD 135—that deal with Gentile sympathizers, proselytes, ethical monotheists and participants in end-time redemption. In impressive detail, Donaldson identifies, defines, and describes these “patterns of universalism.”

Donaldson has taken on an immense task surveying Jewish salvation and Gentile universalism through a broad sweep of literature and continually testing his conclusions against the text. I find this to be the most complete collection of relevant documents and quotations I have ever encountered. This volume deserves to be in every university and seminary library and on the shelf of every scholar whose research touches on this critical developmental period for both Judaism and Christianity.

—Victor Matthews, professor of religious studies, College of Humanities and Public Affairs, Missouri State University

Terence L. Donaldson (Th.D. Wycliffe College and University of Toronto) is Lord and Lady Coggan Professor of New Testament Studies at Wycliffe College and the director of advanced degree programs at the Toronto School of Theology.

Associations in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook

• Author: Richard S. Ascough, Philip A. Harland, and John S. Kloppenborg
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 436

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Associations in the Greco-Roman World provides students and scholars with a clear and readable resource for greater understanding of the social, cultural, and religious life across the ancient Mediterranean. The authors provide new translations of inscriptions and papyri from hundreds of associations, alongside descriptions of more than two dozen archaeological remains of building sites. Complemented by a substantial annotated bibliography and accompanying images, this sourcebook fills many gaps and allows for future exploration in studies of the Greco-Roman religious world, particularly the nature of Judean and Christian groups at that time.

This collection is quite extensive and contains considerably more than most New Testament scholars are aware of. A very welcome resource from a powerhouse of research.

—Abraham Malherbe, Buckingham Professor Emeritus of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation, Yale Divinity School

Indispensable. A splendid resource for students at several levels, not merely in religious studies, but for anyone exploring the society and culture of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.

—Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Yale University

This book provides an illuminating collection of a wide range of sources, bringing together, perhaps for the first time, epigraphic evidence about associations in the Greco-Roman world. I look forward to using it.

—Ilias Arnaoutoglou, senior researcher, Research Centre for the History of Greek Law, Academy of Athens

This is a valuable sourcebook that makes available in English a representative and comprehensive collection of texts on the associations in the Greco-Roman world.

—Everett Ferguson, distinguished scholar in residence, Abilene Christian University

Richard S. Ascough is associate professor and director of the School of Religion, Queen's University, Kingston.

Philip A. Harland is associate professor of religion and ancient history at York University, Toronto.

John S. Kloppenborg is professor and chair, Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto. He is a specialist in Christian origins and Second Temple Judaism, and the social world of the early Jesus movement in Jewish Palestine and in the cities of the eastern empire. He has written extensively on the Synoptic Sayings Gospel (Q) and the synoptic problem.

In Quest of the Historical Pharisees

• Editors: Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Pages: 548

Sample Pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

This work sketches the many portraits of the Pharisees that emerge from ancient sources. Based upon the Gospels, the writings of Paul, Josephus, the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and archeology, the volume profiles the Pharisees and explores the relationship between the Pharisees and the Judaic religious system foreshadowed by the Qumran library. A great virtue of this study is that no attempt is made to homogenize the distinct pictures or reconstruct a singular account of the Pharisee. Instead, by carefully considering the sources, the chapters allow different pictures of the Pharisees to stand side by side.

Whether as parents, foils, or both, the Pharisees have always been a focus of interest for anyone interested in the genesis of Christianity or of rabbinic Judaism. This volume allows serious readers an opportunity to learn the sources, to follow the debates, and so to understand and assess a revolution in historical and theological scholarship.

—Daniel R. Schwartz, professor of ancient Jewish history, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This is an important book in so many ways. It demonstrates eloquently that “what we can’t show, we don’t know”—that much of what we assert about Pharisees is simply not supported by the evidence. But it also reminds us that “objective” description is not a matter of either choosing or amalgamating sources, but of realizing that how the Pharisees were perceived and presented is indeed also some part of who they were. We also see how interpretation reveals the interpreter as well as the text: in these assured and well-informed analyses, we also discern the moral and intellectual character of the scholar. Not least, we are confronted with those other Pharisees of Jewish and Christian mythology and contemporary critical controversy, who long outlived their historical counterparts but who still haunt and fascinate us.

—Philip Davies, professor emeritus, Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield

This is a provocative and engaging study that invites the reader to wrestle with the complexity of the sources and to come to their own synthetic conclusions. In the hands of ordinary most-modernists, such a de-centered approach to a historical question might be counterproductive, but in the hands of the learned colleagues Neusner and Chilton have here assembled, the exercise becomes a very effective way of enabling contemporary students to wrestle with difficulties of the ancient sources.

—Harry Attridge, Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament, Yale University, the Divinity School

Jacob Neusner (Ph.D. Columbia and Union Theological Seminary) is research professor of theology and senior fellow of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College.

Bruce D. Chilton (Ph.D. Cambridge University) is Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion, rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, and executive director of the Institute of Advanced Theology at Bard College.