Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice – either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice – either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

The Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels presents essays that push the field beyond the Synoptic Problem and theological themes that ignore the particularities of each Gospel. The first section, "The Problem and Nature of the Synoptics," explores some of the traditional approaches of literary dependence, but primarily engages with alternative ways to understand Synoptic relations and the nature of each Gospel. Interesting questions are raised in these essays regarding the tools used to evaluate literary dependence beyond those of traditional source criticism and redaction criticism (such as performance, orality, rhetoric, ancient publication, literary structures, manuscript variety, and use by non-canonical literature). The second section, "Particular Features in Comparison," treats a variety of historical, literary, and cultural phenomena important to the study of these Gospels (such as gender, violence, power, body, history, sacred space, healing, food, gospel, suffering, sectarianism, itineracy, women, wealth). These essays indirectly reshape traditional theological themes like salvation, Christology, and discipleship, grounding them in the cultural dynamics of the period. The two main sections simultaneously express the current state of the field and push the field forward in unexplored directions.