What John Knows: Storytelling in the Fourth Gospel
Douglas Estes, editor
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.
Armenian Apocrypha: The Short Questionnaire from Adam to Moses
Michael E. Stone
Short Questionnaire, an Armenian question-and-answer text that survives in a seventeenth-century manuscript, draws on Armenian parabiblical traditions to systematically explore biblical events from creation to the exodus. The volume includes Michael E. Stone’s translation, extensive commentary, and twenty-seven essays that trace the history of parabiblical concepts and events from the Second Temple and early Christian periods down to the second millennium. Including stories of Satan’s fall from the garden, the raven’s role in Abel’s murder, the burial places of Adam and Eve, and Noah’s fourth son, the book forms a dictionary of Armenian parabiblical traditions for scholars and students interested in reception history in early Judaism and Christianity.
Babylonian Chronographic Texts from the Hellenistic Period
R. J. van der Spek, Irving L. Finkel, Reinhard Pirngruber, Kathryn Stevens
Babylonian Chronographic Texts from the Hellenistic Period gathers in a single volume previously unpublished tablets together with those that have appeared before, including the Babylonian chronicles, the historical sections of the Astronomical Diaries, the Babylonian and Uruk King Lists, and the Antiochus Cylinder from Borsippa. The volume offers new descriptions, transliterations, and translations of each tablet, together with full linguistic and historical commentary. This comprehensive collection brings these important historiographic tools to a broader audience of scholars of history, biblical studies, and the ancient world. An appendix with entries on political institutions, temples, important persons, and Babylonian and Greek words makes this an indispensable tool for students.