Robert W. Funk

Can the authentic words and deed of Jesus identified by the Jesus Seminar furnish a sufficient basis for a credible profile of the Jesus of history? That is the challenge faced by the contributors to this volume. Their efforts have resulted in a unique collection of studied impressions of Jesus. Here readers will see not Jesus the icon of myth and creed, but a provocative young man of first-century Palestine whose vision and determination to live the vision gave birth to a new form of faith and changed the course of history.

The voice of Jesus has for centuries been obscured and his vision skewed even by well-intended gospel writers, who transmitted his words to serve their own concerns. The Gospel of Jesus frees Jesus’ voice from the accretions of time and lets his challenging wisdom stand out as never before. This single composite gospel, created out of the sayings and reports that were deemed probably historical by the Jesus Seminar, is an essential resource for anyone seeking to detect the words of Jesus as they were heard by his earliest listeners.Features of the new edition:New introductionUpdated translation and notesExpanded index of sayings and storiesUser-friendly format

"What if the purpose or function of a parable is not to instruct but to haunt?" So begins Listening to the Parables of Jesus, edited by Edward F. Beutner, who suggests that, from time to time, even scholars scratch their heads in puzzlement over the yin and yang of Jesus' parables. This concise, well-edited book brings together insights from world-renowned scholars into the interpretation of parables. Lane McGaughy's opening essay provides high fidelity earphones that let readers hear the vivid and distinctive nature of the language of parable. Robert Miller offers an original treatment of two parables from the gospels of Matthew and Thomas, parables that he renames, "The Overpriced Pearl" and "The Treasure of Immorality." With his eye for narrative structure, film Director Paul Verhoeven identifies fault lines in Matthew's version of the Vineyard Laborers and proposes an alternative version in which the first will be first. In his essay on the Leased Vineyard, Brandon Scott demonstrates how rabbinic parables can illuminate the otherwise shadowy nooks and crannies of a dark parable of violence found in Mark's gospel. The final three essays describe the parables globally as artful language events as fulcrums, so to speak, upon which our understanding of the world gets overturned and undermined. According to Robert Funk, Jesus parables are a knothole in the cosmic fence through which we glimpse the world as Jesus saw it. In Listening to the Parables of Jesus, leading scholars of the parables help readers find the knothole. The rest is up to them.

The Once and Future Jesus Conference took the quest of the historical Jesus to a new level. At this unprecedented gathering, leading thinkers turned their attention from the past to the future and asked: What do new understandings of Jesus mean for the church, the faith, and the world of tomorrow? Their answers can be found in the pages of this book.

Traditional Greek grammars are based on the philological method that assumes meaning resides in single words and that learning a language consists of memorising vocabulary and nominal and verbal paradigms. The linguistic method, developed during the twentieth century, argues that meaning resides in units of speech, like sentences, not in single words, and that what is needed to learn a language is familiarity with its basic sentence patterns (its syntax), not memorisation of vocabulary lists.Originally published in three volumes in 1973, Robert Funk’s classic Beginning-Intermediate Grammar of Hellenistic Greek utilises the insights of modern linguistics in its presentation of the basic features of ancient Greek grammar. Since modern linguistics aims to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive, Funk’s Grammar highlights the bread-and-butter features of New Testament Greek, rather than how it deviates from classical Greek. Now redesigned and reformatted for ease of use, this single-volume third edition makes Funk’s ground-breaking work available once more. Students who use this Grammar will learn how to read Greek in one year, rather than having to depend on ponies or interlinear editions of the Greek New Testament.

Jesus saw the extraordinary in the ordinary. His extraordinary vision comes to us in bits and pieces, in random stunning insights, embedded in the everyday language of his parables, aphorisms, and dialogues. In A Credible Jesus, Robert Funk sorts and assembles these fragments and examines ways in which the vision they preserve can serve twenty-first century people searching for meaning in a very different world than the one Jesus inhabited. The resuslts and both unsettling and reassuring.

Many ideas once thought to be foundational to Christianity are now known to be false due to scientific discoveries regarding the nature of the universe and historical findings about how Christianity began. Is Christianity doomed to irrelevance or even extinction? How might Christianity reinvent itself so that it can address the real concerns of people in today's world? This collection of essays from such leading thinkers as Karen Armstrong and John Shelby Spong addresses questions such as life after death, the meaning of God, apocalypticism, and the significance of Jesus' death.Contributors: Karen Armstrong, Don Cupitt, Arthur J. Dewey, Robert W. Funk, Lloyd Geering, Roy W. Hoover, Robert J. Miller, Stephen J. Patterson, Bernard Brandon Scott, John Shelby Spong

A pioneering work that answers the question: What do we do when we tell a story? Using examples from the Bible and popular literature, Robert Funk examines the structure of stories to uncover the underlying grammar of the narrative.

A concise and readable introduction to the parables for all readers, this first report of the Jesus Seminar reviews the authenticity of all gospel versions of the thirty-three parables attributed to Jesus. Individual versions of each parable are grouped together and arranged for easy reference and comparison.

Contains a number of valuable insights. The introductory material on Johannine criticism is some of the clearest exposition for students available anywhere.

Contains a number of valuable insights. The introductory material on Johannine criticism is some of the clearest exposition for students available anywhere.