Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman Antiquity

This volume contains a collection of twenty-two of David E. Aune's essays focusing on a variety of issues in the interpretation of the Gospels, Gospel traditions, Paul and the Pauline letters. Most essays center on the exegesis of particular problematic passages in the Gospels, Acts and the Pauline letters. In some essays the author discusses Pauline anthropology, in others he investigates the phenomenon of oral tradition in the ancient world and the Gospels or deals with the problem of the genre of the Gospels (Mark and Matthew) and Romans. He critically reviews recent research on justification by faith in Paul and investigates the meaning of euaggelion in the titles of the Gospels. He also deals with such historical and contextual problems as the proposed relationship between Jesus and Cynicism in first century Palestine, evaluating Jesus tradition in the Gospel of Thomas and dualism in the Fourth Gospel. The relevance of cognitive dissonance in the reconstruction of Christian origins and the relevance of apocalyptic in the interpretation of the Lord's Prayer are also discussed.