The Bible took shape over the course of centuries, and today Christian groups continue to disagree over details of its contents. The differences among these groups typically involve the Old Testament, as they mostly accept the same 27-book New Testament. An essential avenue for understanding the development of the Bible are the many early lists of canonical books drawn up by Christians and, occasionally, Jews. Despite the importance of these early lists of books, they have remained relatively inaccessible. This comprehensive volume redresses this unfortunate situation by presenting the early Christian canon lists all together in a single volume. The canon lists, in most cases, unambiguously report what the compilers of the lists considered to belong to the biblical canon. For this reason they bear an undeniable importance in the history of the Bible. The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity provides an accessible presentation of these early canon lists. With a focus on the first four centuries, the volume supplies the full text of the canon lists in English translation alongside the original text, usually Greek or Latin, occasionally Hebrew or Syriac. Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade orient readers to each list with brief introductions and helpful notes, and they point readers to the most significant scholarly discussions. The book begins with a substantial overview of the history of the biblical canon, and an entire chapter is devoted to the evidence of biblical manuscripts from the first millennium. This authoritative work is an indispensable guide for students and scholars of biblical studies and church history.

Jesus in the Jewish Wold represents some of the seminal aspects of the lifelong research of Geza Vermes focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Bible interpretation and the historical study of Jesus and the New Testament. Taken together the fifteen essays, the oldest of which dates from 1970 and the most recent from 2010, constitute an evocative cross section of the contribution to scholarship by Vermes who is equally celebrated as a pioneering Jesus In The Jewish World represents a synopsis of the most significant and Scrolls expert and, according to the Sunday Telegraph, the greatest Jesus scholar of his generation. Readers of the present volume are offered lively and often humorous accounts of the impact of Jesus the Jew on Christian and Jewish readers; of the value of Josephus as a historical source regarding John the Baptist, James the brother of the Lord, and Jesus; the historical implications of ancient Jewish biblical exegesis; of the inside story of the monumental recasting by Vermes and his friends of Emil Schurer's History of the Jewish People; and of the sacrifice of Isaac and the story of the first-century Galilean rabbi, Hanina ben Dosa. The final two essays, written in 2007 and 2010, are particularly noteworthy, the first propounding a fresh and revolutionary approach to methodology in the study of the historical Jesus and the second restating and reinforcing Vermes's stance in the half -a-century long Son of Man debate. Geza Vermes is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford but continues to teach at the Oriental Institute in Oxford.

This book examines the use of older biblical texts in Isaiah 40-66, notably the writings attributed to Deutero-Isaiah. Its discussion of allusions, influence, and intertextuality generates significant questions for both biblicists and literary critics: Why do authors allude? How does the presence of older material in a text affect readers? How can critics identify genuine cases of allusion? Are contemporary theories of intertextuality applicable to ancient texts? The author defends the controversial historical questions asked by scholars of inner-biblical exegesis, modifying some of the dominant (and, in some ways, misleading) categories other biblical scholars have created. In sum, the book aims to refine the study of inner-biblical exegesis through an extensive examination of the use of older texts in one corpus. The redactional complexity of the Book of Isaiah has rendered it central to discussions of canon formation and the final shaping of biblical material. The author demonstrates that Deutero-Isaiah situated himself in a wide stream of tradition by no means limited to an Isaianic school, and that his most important literary precursor was not First Isaiah but Jeremiah. This finding necessitates a trenchant reappraisal of recent work on the unity of the Book of Isaiah. Further, the author shows that the strikingly consistent poetics of allusion running throughout all of Isaiah 40-66 testifies to the coherence of those chapters as a single corpus, arguing against multiple authorship. Close readings of the use of borrowed material in Isaiah 40-66 sharpen our appreciation of Deutero-Isaiah’s originality and artistry, highlighting his attempts to convince Judean exiles that God had neither abandoned nor failed them. The prophet’s heavy dependence on earlier prophets illuminates the changes classical Israelite prophecy underwent in the Babylonian exile. These changes led to the disappearance of prophecy and the rise of exegetical forms of religious expression known from Qumran, early Christianity, and rabbinic Judaism.