James Dunn
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Neither Jew Nor Greek
$72.99Add to cartThe third and final installment of James Dunn’s magisterial history of Christian origins through 190 C.E., Neither Jew nor Greek: A Contested Identity covers the period after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. through the second century, when the still-new Jesus movement firmed up its distinctive identity markers and the structures on which it would establish its growing appeal in the following decades and centuries.
Dunn examines in depth the major factors that shaped first-generation Christianity and beyond, exploring the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism, the Hellenization of Christianity, and responses to Gnosticism. He mines all the first- and second-century sources, including the New Testament Gospels, New Testament apocrypha, and such church fathers as Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, showing how the Jesus tradition and the figures of James, Paul, Peter, and John were still esteemed influences but were also the subject of intense controversy as the early church wrestled with its evolving identity.
Comprehensively covering an important, complex era in Christianity that is often overlooked, this volume is a landmark contribution to the field.
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Jesus Remembered : Christianity In The Making, Volume 1
$77.99Add to cartJames Dunn is regarded worldwide as one of today’s foremost biblical scholars. Having written groundbreaking studies of the New Testament and a standard work on Paul’s theology, Dunn here turns his pen to the rise of Christianity itself. Jesus Remembered is the first installment in what will be a monumental three-volume history of the first 120 years of the faith.
Focusing on Jesus, this first volume has several distinct features. It garners the lessons to be learned from the “quest for the historical Jesus” and meets the hermeneutical challenges to a historical and theological assessment of the Jesus tradition. It provides a fresh perspective both on the impact made by Jesus and on the traditions about Jesus as oral tradition — hence the title “Jesus Remembered.” And it offers a fresh analysis of the details of that tradition, emphasizing its characteristic (rather than dissimilar) features. Noteworthy too are Dunn’s treatments of the source question (particularly Q and the noncanonical Gospels) and of Jesus the Jew in his Galilean context.
In his detailed analysis of the Baptist tradition, the kingdom motif, the call to and character of discipleship, what Jesus’ audiences thought of him, what he thought of himself, why he was crucified, and how and why belief in Jesus’ resurrection began, Dunn engages wholeheartedly in the contemporary debate, providing many important insights and offering a thoroughly convincing account of how Jesus was remembered from the first, and why.
Written with peerless scholarly acumen yet accessible to a wide range of readers, Dunn’s Jesus Remembered, together with its successor volumes, will be a sine qua non for all students of Christianity’s beginnings.
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Jesus According To The New Testament
$38.50Add to cartA senior biblical scholar’s concise guide to how Jesus is described across the New Testament
New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn has written numerous commentaries, books, and essays sharing his thought with the world. In this small, straightforward book designed for a lay audience, Dunn focuses his fifty-plus years of scholarship on the central question posed by the New Testament-who is Jesus?
Dunn surveys the New Testament books from Matthew to Rev-elation, exploring and unpacking what they actually say about Jesus. Dunn’s Jesus according to the New Testament points to the wonder of those first witnesses and enriches our understanding of who Jesus is to us today.
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Acts Of The Apostles
$42.99Add to cartAuthored by one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, this commentary on the Acts of the Apostles was originally published in 1996. James Dunn first takes the reader through questions of authorship, audience, date, purpose, and literary structure. He then considers the kind of history writing that we find in the narrative of Acts, delineates the book’s theological teaching, and offers bibliographic comments on sources and selected studies, including work published between 1996 and 2016. This commentary as a whole provides the information and perspective necessary for reading to best effect what Dunn believes is the most exciting book in the New Testament.
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Oral Gospel Tradition
$48.99Add to cartThe traditions about Jesus and his teaching circulated in oral form for many years, continuing to do so for decades following the writing of the New Testament Gospels. James Dunn is one of the major voices urging that more consideration needs to be given to the oral use and transmission of the Jesus tradition as a major factor in giving the Synoptic tradition its enduring character.
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4 Views On The Role Of Works At The Final Judgment
$19.99Add to cartThrough a discussion of Biblical texts, this book presents four perspectives on the role of works at the final judgment including: Robert N. Wilkin: Works will determine rewards but not salvation: At the Judgment Seat of Christ each believer will be judged by Christ to determine his eternal rewards, but he remains eternally secure even if the judgment reveals he failed to persevere in good works (or in faith). Thomas R. Schreiner: Works will provide evidence that one actually has been saved: At the final judgment works provide the necessary condition, though not the ground for final salvation, in that they provide evidence as to whether one has actually trusted in Jesus Christ. James D. G. Dunn: Works will provide the criterion by which Christ will determine eternal destiny of his people: Since Paul, Jesus, and the New Testament writers hold together ‘justification by faith and not by works’ with ‘judgment according to works’, we should not fall into the trap of playing one off against the other or blend them in a way that diminishes the force of each. Michael P. Barber: Works will merit eternal life: At the final judgment, good works will be rewarded with eternal salvation. However, these good works will be meritorious not apart from Christ but precisely because of the union of the believer with him.
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Baptism In The Holy Spirit (Anniversary)
$44.99Add to cartBaptism in the Holy Spirit is one of James Dunn’s most influential books and has become a classic. Forty years after its original publication it still sparks debate and appears on many Reading lists. In an extensive Preface to this fortieth anniversary edition, James Dunn engages with the debates about the book since it was first published. In Baptism in the Holy Spirit James Dunn argues that water baptism is only one element in the New Testament pattern of conversion and initiation. The gift of the Spirit, he believes, is the central element. For the writers of the New Testament only those who had received the Holy Spirit could be called Christians. For them, the reception of the Spirit was a very definite and often very dramatic experience–the decisive and climactic experience in conversion and initiation–to which Christians were usually recalled when reminded of their Christian faith and experience. James Dunn uncovers the place of the gift of the Holy Spirit in the total complex event of becoming a Christian.
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Did The First Christians Worship Jesus
$32.00Add to cartTo answer the title question effectively requires more than the citing of a few texts; we must first acknowledge that the way to the answer is more difficult than it first appears, bravely facing the possibility that the answer may be less straightforward than many would like.
The author raises some fascinating yet vexing questions: What is worship? Is the fact that worship is offered to God (or a god) what defines him (or her) as “G/god?” What does the act of worship actually involve? The conviction that God had exalted Jesus to his right hand obviously is central to Christian recognition of the divine status of Jesus. But what did that mean for the first Christians as they sought to reconcile God’s status and that of the human Jesus? Perhaps the worship of Jesus was not an alternative to worship of God but another way of worshipping God.Yes, the questions are challenging but readers are ably guided in their quest for answers by James Dunn, one of the world’s top New Testament scholars.
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New Testament Theology
$24.99Add to cartIn this volume in the Library of Biblical Theology series, James D.G. Dunn ranges widely across the literature of the New Testament to describe the essential elements of the early church’s belief and practice. Eschatology, grace, law and gospel, discipleship, Israel and the church, faith and works, and most especially incarnation, atonement, and resurrection; Dunn places these and other themes in conversation with the contemporary church’s work of understanding its faith and life in relation to God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
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New Perspective On Paul (Revised)
$49.99Add to cartThis collection of essays highlights a dimension of Paul’s theology of justification which has been rather neglected in earlier decades, specifically that his teaching emerged as an integral part of his understanding of his commission to preach the gospel to non-Jews and that his dismissal of justification “by works of the law” was directed not so much against Jewish legalism but rather against his fellow Jews’ assumption that the law remained a dividing wall separating Christian Jews from Christian Gentiles. The long opening essay interacts with critiques of this new perspective on Paul. Dunn seeks to carry forward the debate on Jewish soteriology, on the relation of justification by faith to judgment “according to works,” on Christian fulfillment of the law, and on the crucial role of Christ, his death and resurrection. Full of detail and intriguing thought, Dunn’s collection will make brilliant reading for any scholar of the New Testament.
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Unity And Diversity In The New Testament (Revised)
$68.99Add to cartUnity and Diversity in the New Testament is a thorough investigation into the canon of the New Testament, and Christianity’s origins. It assumes the reader is familiar with the basic question of who wrote the books, when, why etc and it moves on to look in detail at what were the various emphases in the gospel proclaimed by Jesus, Luke, Paul and John. It also examines primitive Christianity’s preaching and teaching, confessional formulae, oral traditions, organisation and worship, concepts of ministry and community, and ritual acts.
In the second half of the book, the author maps out the scope of the diversity he found in the fist half’s investigation. Here he identifies and traces the major currents within the stream of first and second generation Christianity which includes a study of Jewish Christianity, Hellenistic Christianity, Apocalyptic Christianity and Early Catholicism. The book concludes with a consideration of the repercussions of such findings, for how Christians understand the New Testament, and what it means to be Christian, today.
This new edition is further enhanced with the author’s consideration of these same themes, 25 years after he first wrote about them. The final chapter is the authors “critical refinement” of the ideas and issues that remain relevant and important for any realistic theology of canon to be considered today.
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Partings Of The Ways
$60.99Add to cartThe Parting of the Ways is James Dunn’s classic exploration of the important questions that surround the emergence of Christian distinctiveness and the pulling apart of Christianity and Judaism in the first century of our era. The book begins by surveying the way in which questions have been approached since the time of F C Baur in the nineteenth century. The author then presents the four pillars of Judaism: monotheism, election and land, Torah and Temple. He then examines various issues which arose with the emergence of Jesus: Jesus and the temple; the Stephen affair; temple and cult in earliest Christianity; Jesus, Israel and the law; ‘the end of the law’; and Jesus’ teaching on God. The theme of ‘one God, one Lord’, and the controversy between Jews and Christians over the unity of God, lead to a concluding chapter on the parting of the ways. The issues are presented with clarity and the views and findings of others are drawn together and added to his own, to make up this comprehensive volume.
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Soul Freedom : Baptist Battle Cry
$16.00Add to cartThe Baptist tradition stands in great peril of losing the cherished principles of the free exercise of religion, the freedom from political interference with faith, and the right of self-determination in all matters related to religion.
The authors discuss the importance of the Bible in the Baptist faith and the responsibility of people for their actions regarding church, family, and beliefs. Our relationship with God is an individual responsibility. It is God to whom we are ultimately responsible. Soul freedom, all freedom, and responsibility is God’s supreme gift to humanity. The dignity and respect afforded to persons comes from God as revealed in Scripture.
Soul Freedom is composed of a series of essays that examine considerably controversial issues. This book comes at a time when the Baptist commitment to soul freedom feeds the deeper hunger of the hearts of millions of persons seeking authenticity in religion
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Jews And Christians
$53.99Add to cartThis volume contains papers from the second Durham-Tubingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism that help clarify the extent to which we can speak of the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism. Twelve internationally respected scholars carefully analyze the chief Jewish and Christian documents and traditions from the period A.D. 70-135, drawing out what they say about the mutual relations between early Christianity and Judaism and the light they shed on the diverging trajectories of these two major religious traditions.
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Christology In The Making (Reprinted)
$48.99Add to cartThe New Testament documents cover an intense period of innovation and development in what we now call “Christology.” Before Jesus, “Christology” either did not exist, or existed, properly speaking, only in different forms of “messianic expectation.” At the end of that period, however, an advanced and far-reaching Christology is already in place that does not hesitate to speak of Jesus as “God.”
This excellent study of the origins and early development of Christology by James D. G. Dunn clarifies in rich detail the beginnings of the full Christian belief in Christ as the Son of God and incarnate Word. By employing the exegetical methods of “historical context of meaning” and “conceptuality in transition,” Dunn illumines the first-century meaning of key titles and passages within the New Testament that bear directly on the develop-ment of the Christian understanding of Jesus.
Chosen by Christianity Today as one of the year’s “Significant Books” when it first appeared in 1980, this second edition of Christology in the Making contains a new extended foreword that responds to critics of the first edition and updates Dunn’s own thinking on the beginnings of Christology since his original work.
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Jesus Paul And The Law
$50.00Add to cartHere is a master new Testament scholars decade of research – along with new material – on a major issue on the study of Christian origins. Extended international debate has been concerned with this question: What were the attitudes toward the Jewish law within earliest Christianity?
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Evidence For Jesus
$30.00Add to cartAn acknowledged New Testament authority, James D. G. Dunn here makes an important contribution to contemporary thought. He looks at the origins of Christianity in the light of modern scholarship, demonstrating why Christians should “welcome the critically inquiring and investigative skills of scholars.”
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Baptism In The Holy Spirit
$40.00Add to cartThis classic, now in paperback edition, introduces the reader to the most distinctive aspect of Pentecostal theology–baptism in the Holy Spirit. James Dunn sees water-baptism as only one element in the New Testament pattern of conversion and initiation. The gift of the Spirit, he believes, is the central element.
