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Devotion to Artemis dominated the religious culture of ancient Ephesos. But she was not alone. The city of Ephesos and its environs offered a rich panoply of religious options, domestic and public. Structures, statutes, coins, inscriptions, and texts testify to the remarkable diversity of religious ideas and practices in Ephesos. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Jewish religious traditions found loyal adherents among residents and visitors. Gods, goddesses, heroes, and emperors were worshipped. The contributions in this volume demonstrate that ancient Ephesos was a vibrant and competitive religious environment.

Alexandria was one of the main hubs of the Hellenistic world and a cultural and religious "kaleidoscope." Merchants and migrants, scientists and scholars, philosophers, and religious innovators from all over the world and from all social backgrounds came to this ancient metropolis and exchanged their goods, views, and dreams. Accordingly, Alexandria became a place where Hellenistic, Egyptian, Jewish, and early Christian identities all emerged, coexisted, influenced, and rivaled each other. In order to meet the diversity of Alexandria's urban life and to do justice to the variety of literary and non-literary documents that bear witness to this, the volume examines the processes of identity formation from a range of different academic perspectives. Thus, the present volume gathers together twenty-six contributions from the realm of archaeology, ancient history, classical philology, religious studies, philosophy, the Old Testament, narratology, Jewish studies, papyrology, and the New Testament.

After a century of neglect, Johannine ethics has enjoyed a recent surge in interest inspired by new theoretical insights in analysing ethical data in John's Gospel. By closely re-reading the text on the basis of this fresh research, Jan G. van der Watt's aim in the present volume is to reveal ethical data within its structural interrelatedness. The result is a comprehensive overview of basic questions related to ethics, such as what the basis or source of ethics actually is, whether identity plays a role in ethical decision making, how values and ethical requirements are to be recognised, what is expected of an ethical agent, and what ethical behaviour looks like. As a coherent guide to getting deeds done ethically, this first volume on the grammar of the apostle's ethics focuses on his Gospel, while a second is set to concentrate on his letters.

This edited volume brings together important scholars of religion in the ancient world to honor the impact of Karen L. King's scholarship in this field. Her work shows that Christianity was diverse from its first moments - even before the word "Christian" was coined - and insists that scholars must engage both in deep historical work and in ethical reflection. These essays honor King's intellectual impact by further investigating the categories that scholars have used in their reconstructions of religion, by reflecting on the place of women and gender in the analysis of ancient texts, and by providing historiographical interventions that illuminate both the ancient world and the modern scholarship that has shaped our field.

The present volume contains the proceedings of an international conference meant to further the dialogue between New Testament scholars and epigraphists with an interest in NT matters. After the more general approach of a previous conference, it was decided to focus on a particular writing. The Letter to the Colossians, though a relatively short work, was chosen because it contains some very interesting material worthy of study from an epigraphical angle and also offers opportunities to open up towards a broader perspective on Pauline literature. The essays that make up this collection offer insights into the world of the intended addressees, show ways for contextualising epigraphical material, and demonstrate from case studies how this material, in combination with literary and archaeological evidence, can be made to use in interpreting specific concepts or motifs in the letter.

An epicenter in present-day Pauline scholarship is the issue of the Law. The interpretation of this contentious issue started before Paul's letters and found its way into them by his citing how others perceived of his theology, and in Paul rendering rumors and criticism, and also interacting with them. To this reception-oriented perspective belong also punitive actions taken against Paul by synagogues. As a reception of Paul, Acts is included, leaving a more complex picture than argued by advocates of Paul within Judaism. Thus Karl Olav Sandnes uncovers the first interpretation or reception of Paul's view on Torah. It is limited in its scope, but provides a critical and necessary view on common trends in Pauline scholarship. Paul's decentering of the Torah was considered endangering for morality, for Jews and Gentiles alike. Perceptions of Paul's theology must be accounted for in Pauline studies.

This volume contains seventeen essays written by Eckhard J. Schnabel, written over the past 25 years. The essays focus on the realities of the work of Jesus, Paul, John, and the early church, exploring aspects of the history, missionary expansion, and theology of the early church including lexical, ethical, and ecclesiological questions. Specific subjects discussed include Jesus' silence at his trial, the introduction of foreign deities to Athens, the understanding of Rom 12:1, Paul's ethics, the meaning of baptizein , the realities of persecution, Christian identity and mission in Revelation, and singing and instrumental music in the early church.

This interdisciplinary volume originates from talks given at the international conference "Memory and Memories in Early Christianity", held at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva in June 2016. Exploring a fresh problem in the study of the origins of Christianity and of the New Testament, namely the "work of memory" undertaken in the discourses and practices of the believers in Jesus, these studies not only apply a heuristic analytical tool - "social memory theory" - to the literature and history of Christian beginnings, but also endeavour to show the socio-religious resonance of this "work of memory" in the language and ideology of the first believers. Contributors:Celilia Antonelli, Simon Butticaz, Adriana Destro, Andreas Dettwiler, Jörg Frey, Sandra Huebenthal, Judith M. Lieu, Christoph Markschies, Daniel Marquerat, Enrico Norelli, Mauro Pesce, Jens Schröter, Claudio Zamagni, Jean Zumstein

The authors of this volume discuss the relevance and influence of various Old and New Testament documents, and early Christian and Jewish texts in terms of their impact in shaping the moral character, identity, and behaviour of the specific communities in which they were produced as well as their ethical application throughout the centuries. Against a narrow understanding of ethics, the term "application" is not used to analyse the texts of the Bible as step-by-step manuals for moral conduct. Rather, the contributors engage with biblical texts within the framework of a complex hermeneutical process of application of the relevance of these texts in contemporary ethical discourse. Contributors: Paul N. Anderson, Robert L. Brawley, Cilliers Breytenbach, Ulrich Busse, R. Alan Culpepper, Jan Willem van Henten, Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Stephan Joubert, Craig R. Koester, Bart J. Koet, Michael Labahn, Tobias Nicklas, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Udo Schnelle, Michael Theobald, D. Francois Tolmie, Joseph Verheyden, Ben Witherington, III, Ellen van Wolde, Michael Wolter, Mirjam Zimmermann, Ruben Zimmermann

The essays by Heikki Räisänen (1941-2015) collected in this volume deal with a broad array of topics, ranging from early Christian identities to bibliodrama and other modern-day approaches to the scriptures. The exegetical studies in the first part explore issues related to early Christian eschatology, virginal conception, and Paul's complex argumentation about the Jews and their salvation in Romans 9-11. The essays on ancient and modern interpretations of the Bible in the second part pay special attention to ethical issues, address the "dark sides" of its reception, and discuss the biblical interpretations of Marcion and Joseph Smith. The third section comprises studies on the Bible and Qur'an, while the concluding chapter provides a comprehensive description of the Bible as scripture from a comparative perspective.

The Gospel of Luke has long been known for its variation between good, educated Greek and Semitic influences. In the last century, five theories have attempted to explain the Semitic influence: Semitic sources; imitation of the Greek Bible; the Greek of the ancient synagogue; literary code-switching between standard Greek and semitized Greek; and the social background of bilingualism. Albert Hogeterp and Adelbert Denaux revisit Luke's Greek and evaluate which alleged Semitisms of vocabulary and syntax are tenable in light of comparative investigation across corpora of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, literary as well as documentary, texts. They contend that Semitisms in Luke's Greek are only fully understood in light of a complementarity of linguistic backgrounds, and evaluate them in diachronic respect of Synoptic comparison and in synchronic respect of their place in Luke's narrative style and communicative strategy.

Patricia A. Duncan examines the fourth-century Christian novel traditionally known as the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (but here referred to as the Klementia) in order to show how the lengthy and complex narrative coheres as a rhetorical whole and works to initiate the reader into a revised, esoteric vision of the origins of Christianity. The novel is well known for its distinctive doctrine of "false pericopes" in the scriptures of the Jews, but equally important is the way it capitalizes on its narrative genre to correct false pericopes in the Gospels of the New Testament. Key to the novel's project is a construction of the apostle Peter as the chief tradent and the fully authorized interpreter of the words and deeds of the True Prophet Jesus. This Peter offers up of a law-abiding, monotheistic "Christianity" that is fully continuous with the religion of the followers of Moses.

Pious Jews of the Second Temple period sought to conform their lives to Torah, the law God had given Israel. Their different sects disagreed, however, on how to interpret particular laws and even on the question of who had the authority to interpret them. Jesus and his earliest followers, while focusing primarily on what they believed God was doing in their own day, were repeatedly confronted with issues raised by its relation to God's prior revelation in Torah. This volume contains studies by Stephen Westerholm devoted to the meaning and place of Torah in Early Judaism as well as to New Testament understandings, particularly those of the gospels and Pauline literature. Attention is also given to the "New Perspective on Paul," to recent discussions of justification and Paul's relation to Judaism, and to aspects of the transmission of Jesus tradition among his earliest followers.

This volume contains thirty-one essays by Richard Bauckham, a well-known New Testament scholar, most of which have been previously published in journals or in multi-authored volumes. Many aspects of early Christianity in the New Testament and early patristic periods are covered. Major topics include Gospel audiences and Gospel traditions, Christian apocryphal literature, and early Christian people. The collection reflects the author's conviction that the historical study of early Christianity should not isolate the New Testament literature from other early Christian literature, but must take full account of such sources as the apostolic fathers and Christian apocryphal literature.

The contributions in this volume critically engage with Mogens Müller's work on ancient Judaism, the Septuagint, the New Testament gospels, and the reception history of the Bible, covering a variety of topics within the field of biblical rewriting and reception. Rewriting and reception are parts of a continuous process that began within biblical literature itself and have continued in the history of interpretative communities where the Bible has been received and cherished in innumerable ways until today. The present volume aims to further the scholarly debate on important topics within biblical studies. It demonstrates that the notion of reception can be addressed from very different angles and from diverse hermeneutical and methodological viewpoints, all of which offer fresh insights into ancient texts and their afterlife. Contributors:Gitte Buch-Hansen, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Tilde Bak Halvgaard, Ingrid Hjelm, Thomas Hoffmann, Jesper Høgenhaven, Martin Karrer, Siegfried Kreuzer, Michael Labahn, Martin Meiser, Halvor Moxnes, Jesper Tang Nielsen, Heike Omerzu, Christina Petterson, Frederik Poulsen, John Strange, Thomas Thompson, Francis Watson

Why did the early followers of Jesus call themselves "Christians"? What was their social and religious capital? Why did Christianity attract both poor widows and wealthy women? What did pagans think of early Christians? Integrating the major apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the study of Christianity and the ancient world, Jan N. Bremmer illustrates their prominence of women and their, sometimes surprising, usage of magic as well as establishing a new chronology and place of composition for these Acts. He also shows that the early Christian tours of hell derive from both Jewish and Greek models, although they become increasingly Christianised. The author concludes by decoding the intriguing visions in the Passion of Perpetua by placing them in the contemporary world, thereby compelling us to sympathize with the hopes and fears of young Christian martyrs. It is the close attention to both pagan and Christian traditions that make these papers, which have all been updated and some of them revised, an exciting read for scholars and advanced students alike.

The impetus for this collection of essays on canonical and non-canonical Acts is to honor the scholarly achievements of Richard I. Pervo. Pervo pioneered the view that canonical Acts is comparable to ancient fiction - the various episodes about Peter, Paul, and the other apostles composed to entertain, even as they inform. In the spirit of this work, contributors prod and provoke readers, traveling at different speeds and with notable variation from the center of the broad orbit of canonical Acts. The hope is that the essays foster conversation about the things discussed, offering no small measure of delight along the way. Contributors:Harold W. Attridge, Clayton N. Jefford, Amy-Jill Levine, Dennis R. MacDonald, Troy W. Martin, Shelly Matthews, David Moessner, Mikeal C. Parsons, Mark Reasoner, Clare K. Rothschild, Melissa Harl Sellew, Janet E. Spittler, Angela Standhartinger

This volume comprises fifteen new essays on the Apostolic Fathers with a focus on 1 and 2 Clement. An introductory essay investigates the role of seventeenth-century librarians in the origination of the collection's title. Five essays concern 1 Clement, exploring its relationship to 1 Corinthians, its generic classification, the discussion of "Christian education" (1 Clem. 21:8), the golden calf tradition, and the well-known legend of the regeneration of the phoenix. Three essays treat 2 Clement, including problems with recent translations of chapter 1, the motif of the barren woman in chapter 2, and the analogy of faith as a race in chapter 7. The volume ranges widely within and beyond early Christian literature-from the streets of ancient Achaean and Asian the early modern libraries of Europe.

The present volume aims at a comparative study of the processes of reception, rewriting and interpretation between canonical and apocryphal texts in early Jewish and early Christian literature. A closer look at the respective developments in both corpora of literature can open up new perspectives for understanding the developments and changes between texts that were already considered authoritative and their reception in new, 'parabiblical' or 'apocryphal' compositions. The way of reception may also influence the perspective on canonical texts. The range of texts considered includes the LXX, Targumim and Pesharim, books such as Jubilees, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Gospel of Thomas, and Apocryphal Acts, traditions about Esther, Ezra, Manasseh, Peter and Paul, depictions of hell from Enoch to the Apocalypse of Paul, and the development of miracle stories. Contributors:Veronika Bachmann, Michael Becker, Claire Clivaz, Jörg Frey, Wolfgang Grünstäudl, David Hamidovic, Meghan Henning, Alberdina Houtman, Jutta Jokiranta, Stefan Krauter, Martin Meiser, Simon Mimouni, Tobias Nicklas, Karl-Heinz Ostmeyer, Enno-Edzard Popkes, Jörg Röder, Julia Snyder, Michael Sommer, Janet Spittler

This volume consists of previously published articles by Frances Young, a scholar of early Christianity, well-known for her work Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, together with a few newly composed additions. The studies collected here are concerned with the New Testament, but their approach is often not in the modern historico-critical mode. Rather, they bring new insight through being informed by the author's patristic specialism, by methodological enquiries, by her interest in doctrinal and theological reading, and by exploration of the very nature and function of sacred scriptures. The significance of this volume lies in the way it exemplifies the extraordinarily interesting changes which have taken place in biblical hermeneutics during the last 50-60 years. Many of the essays could be useful, not only to research specialists, but to advanced undergraduates as well as clergy and preachers.

A key to understanding the Gospel of John is, in many respects, its prologue; yet questions regarding its origin and background, its structure, use of Greek philosophical terms, and indeed its relationship to the rest of the gospel still remain open. The papers in this volume address each of these questions and were presented at the first meeting of the Colloquium Ioanneum, a group of distinguished international Johannine scholars broadly representing different nationalities, religious traditions and approaches to the gospel. The first part offers differing assessments of the background, literary, and theological elements of the prologue, while the second examines presuppositions, methods, and perspectives involved in philosophical interpretation of the Gospel of John. Contributors:John Ashton, R. Alan Culpepper, Jörg Frey, Christos Karakolis, Craig R. Koester, William R. G. Loader, George L. Parsenios, Udo Schnelle, Michael Theobald, Marianne Meye Thompson, Jan G. van der Watt, Catrin H. Williams, Ruben Zimmermann, Jean Zumstein

This collection of essays contains the papers given at the Sixth International East-West Symposium of New Testament Scholars in Belgrade, Serbia. The symposium was a project of the Eastern Europe Liaison Committee of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Main subject matters of the volume are the Holy Spirit in New Testament writings (particularly Luke-Acts, the Gospel of John and Paul), the reception and interpretation of biblical texts about the Holy Spirit in patristic theology, ancient Christian liturgy and iconography, and reflection on the role of the Holy Spirit in church life. Contributions from seminars are devoted to extra-biblical ancient Jewish and early Christian sources. All topics are discussed from a "Western" (Protestant and Roman-Catholic) theological and exegetical perspective as well as from an Orthodox point of view. An introduction reflects the results of the symposium, sketches recent research on the Holy Spirit in the New Testament scholarship and briefly points to texts and problems belonging to the topic but not dealt with in the volume. Contributors: Demetrios Bathrellos, Katharina Bracht, Harald Buchinger, Andreas Dettwiler, Predrag Dragutinovi¿c, John Fotopoulos, Oksana Gubareva, Carl R. Holladay, Bishop Irinej of Novi Sad and Bachka, Christos Karakolis, Taras Khomych, Rodoljub S. Kubat, Joel Marcus, Daniel Marguerat, Tobias Nicklas, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Armand Puig i Tàrrech, Volker Rabens, Vladan Tatalovi¿c, Ekaterini Tsalampouni, Manuel Vogel, James Buchanan Wallace, Nicholas Thomas Wright