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Archive for the ‘Synoptic Gospels’ Category


What John Knew and What John Wrote

In Elizabeth Corsar, Fortress Press, Gospel of John, John, Lexington Books, Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic theories, Wendy E. S. North on January 6, 2023 at 3:00 pm

2023.01.01 | Wendy E. S. North, What John Knew and What John Wrote: A Study in John and the Synoptics (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020).

Review by Elizabeth Corsar; St Padarn’s Institute, Cardiff.

In her monograph, what John knew and what John wrote, North successfully puts forward a positive case for John’s use of the Synoptic Gospels, and her innovative study makes a significant contribution to this perennial New Testament question. Moreover, as the pendulum continues to swing ever more so toward the notion that John was dependent on the work of his Synoptic contemporaries for the composition of his own gospel, North’s timely monograph serves as an important study within this trend. 

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The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels

In Canon, Jordan Almanzar, Marcion, Matthias Klinghardt, New Testament, Peeters, Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic theories on December 23, 2022 at 12:21 pm

2022.12.13 | Matthias Klinghardt. The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels. Biblical Tools and Studies 41; Leuven: Peeters, 2021.

Review by Jordan Almanzar, Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts.

Matthias Klinghardt’s study, The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, is a two-volume work in which he proposes Marcion’s Evangelion as the key to explaining origins of the canonical Gospels. The work was inspired by a certain disharmony Klinghardt sees in 19th-century scholarship existing between two discourses that largely took place in Germany: 1) the so-called synoptic problem and 2) the relationship of Marcion’s Evangelion to canonical Luke. These discourses developed simultaneously yet independently of one another, and Klinghardt seeks to not only bring them together, but to display the results of doing so.

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Modern and Ancient Literary Criticism of the Gospels

In David P. Moessner, Fourfold Gospel, Gospels, Literary Criticism, Mohr Siebeck, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Robert Matthew Calhoun, Synoptic Gospels, Tobias NICKLAS on May 28, 2021 at 3:23 pm

2021.5.12 | Robert Matthew Calhoun, David P. Moessner, and Tobias Nicklas, eds. Modern and Ancient Literary Criticism of the Gospels. WUNT 451. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover,  Columbia Biblical Seminary.

Modern and Ancient Literary Criticism of the Gospels is the product of a conference at Texas Christian University in November 2018. The conference commemorated the 25th year and 3rd edition of Richard A. Burridge’s seminal study, What Are the Gospels? The goal of the conference, and this subsequent volume, was to ask what more could be said about literary criticism and its application to the gospels genre.

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Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus

In Ashe Materou, Fortress Press, Gender Studies, Gospels, Lexington Books, Q, Sara Parks, Synoptic Gospels, Women on August 21, 2020 at 3:00 pm

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2020.08.15 | Sara Parks. Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus: Women in Q. Lanham/Boulder/New York/London: Lexington/Fortress, 2019. ISBN 978-1-9787-0198-4.

Review by Ashe Materou, KU Leuven.

In Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus Sara Parks investigates the parallel parable pairs of Q. The book illustrates how Q gendered pairs pays equal attention to both male and female characters as agents for the basileia movement. Parks situates her work as a contribution to the reconstruction of the position of women in early Jewish and early Christian Antiquity. She argues that there has not been much research done so far on the earliest evidence of the historical Jesus’ attitude towards women. Accordingly, Parks aims to fill this gap with the analysis of “parallel gender pairs” (p. 2), where men and women characters are addressed explicitly or implicitly through a rhetorical literary device reflected in Jesus’ sayings material. Parks holds that this literary device has not yet caught the attention of many feminist scholars and advocates for a deeper study of Q gendered pairs. Read the rest of this entry »


Jesus Becoming Jesus

In Catholic University of America Press, Gospels, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, NT Theology, Synoptic Gospels, theological Interpretation of Scripture, Thomas G. Weinandy on April 16, 2020 at 1:00 pm

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2020.04.07 | Thomas G. Weinandy, Jesus Becoming Jesus: Theological Interpretation of the Synoptic Gospels. Washington: CUA, 2018. 

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover, Columbia International Seminary.

Thomas G. Weinandy is an author of more than fifteen books and recently completed his appointment with the Vatican International Theological Commission. The following volume initially started as Weinandy’s attempt at a one-volume systematics text suggested through the gentle nudges of John Webster. Weinandy worried that starting in the Synoptics would obscure his plan to stress God’s saving activity but felt it was extremely important to begin with the first recordings of the incarnation/infancy narratives. As Weinandy admits, what initially was perceived as a problem became an opportunity to write a thorough theological and doctrinal interpretation of the New Testament. Read the rest of this entry »


Jesus the Priest

In Baker Academic, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Nicholas Perrin, Priest, Synoptic Gospels on February 27, 2020 at 2:00 pm

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2020.02.05 | Nicholas Perrin. Jesus the Priest. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover, Columbia International Seminary.

Nicholas Perrin is the president of Trinity International University, Deerfield, IL. Previously, he was the Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical Studies and associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL. Jesus the Priest is the second installment in a planned three-part series. Following the 2010 release of Jesus the Temple, the current volume forms the lynchpin to the expected Jesus the Sacrifice.

Jesus the Priest is Perrin’s argument concerning Jesus’s mission to invigorate the priestly role in conjunction with the predictive prophecies of Ezekiel 36. In so doing, Jesus takes on priestly functions in creating a cultic space of renewal for the final temple where his people will worship. Read the rest of this entry »


Memory and the Jesus Tradition

In Alan KIRK, Bloomsbury, Fourfold Gospel, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Synoptic Gospels on September 20, 2019 at 2:00 pm

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2019.9.10 | Alan Kirk. Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 2. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. ISBN 978-0-56-768024-2.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover.

Alan Kirk is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University. Kirk provides the second installment in the newly minted Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuriesseries with Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The following volume is the culmination of 15 years of research concerning the Jesus tradition and memory. Kirk’s work analyzes how memory traces the Jesus tradition from its inception to its codification. Each essay contained in the book is from previously published work, but ingeniously arranged under four rubrics: Part I: “Formation of the Jesus Tradition,” Part II: “Memory and Manuscript,” Part III: “Memory and Historical Jesus Research,” and Part IV: “Memory in Second-Century Gospel Writing.” Read the rest of this entry »


Jesus the Eternal Son

In Christology, Eerdmans, Gospels, Michael F. BIRD, Michael Kok, New Testament, review, Synoptic Gospels on November 3, 2017 at 4:00 pm

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2017.11.22 | Michael F. Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christologies. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017. ISBN: 978-0-8028-7506-8

Reviewed by Michael Kok, The King’s University in Alberta, Canada.

The Christian doctrine of the hypostatic union aimed to articulate how Jesus’s human and divine natures were united in one person. Over-emphasizing Jesus’s humanity at the expense of his divinity, or vice versa, was ruled out of bounds. One of the christological conceptions that was censured for falling short of the orthodox consensus on the incarnation has been labelled by modern scholars as “adoptionism,” which Michael F. Bird defines as “reducing Jesus to a human figure who had acquired divine status by merit” (7).

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New Studies in the Synoptic Problem

In Andrew GREGORY, Dan Batovici, John S. KLOPPENBORG, Joseph VERHEYDEN, New Testament, Paul FOSTER, Peeters, Q, Synoptic Gospels, Synoptic theories on February 16, 2015 at 1:00 pm

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2015.02.04 | P. Foster, A. Gregory, J.S. Kloppenborg, J. Verheyden. New Studies in the Synoptic Problem. Oxford Conference, April 2008. Essays in Honour of Christopher M. Tuckett. BETL 239; Leuven/Paris/Walpole: Peeters, 2011.

Reviewed by Dan Batovici, KU Leuven.

Many thanks to Peeters for providing a review copy.

This volume grew out of the conference organised in April 2008 in Oxford at Lincoln College and, as the title indicates, it is the Festschrift offered to Prof. Christopher Tuckett. It is also meant to commemorate on the centenary of, and bring up to date, the volume Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem, edited in 1911 by William Sanday, the then Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford. This book gathers thirty-three commissioned contributions, grouped in five parts of varying size. I have presented elsewhere the twenty two papers offered at the conference in 2008 (here). In the following I shall be presenting the remaining commissioned contributions, largely in the same manner. Read the rest of this entry »


Miracle Discourse in the New Testament

In Brandon Walker, Duane F. WATSON, Gospel of John, Gospels, John, Miracle discourses, New Testament, Paul, Society of Biblical Literature, Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation, Synoptic Gospels on April 2, 2013 at 11:30 pm

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2013.04.03 | Duane F. Watson, ed. Miracle Discourse in the New Testament. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012. ISBN 1589831187.

Reviewed by Brandon Walker, University of Nottingham.

Many thanks go to SBL for kindly providing us with a review copy.

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Miracle Discourse in the New Testament is a collection of essays that were originally presented at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in 2001.  Miracle discourse itself has been analyzed and critiqued since the Enlightenment and has come to the fore with the publication of the works of Wendy Cotter, Graham Twelftree and most recently Craig Keener. The papers presented in this particular volume dialogue with Cotter’s Miracles of Greco-Roman Antiquity and her latest work, The Christ of the Miracle Stories: Portrait through Encounter.  The book follows a canonical order and shows the advantages of examining miracle discourse from a socio-rhetorical method (15).

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