Followers Of Jesus Research Articles

JOURNEYS TO NEW LIFE, IDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY: EMPOWERING JESUS FOLLOWERS AND JAMAATS IN BANGLADESH. By Peter Kwang‐HeeYun. Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Langham Monographs, 2021 . Pp. xviii + 286. Paperback, £24.99.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 49, Issue 1 p. 60-60 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Theology JOURNEYS TO NEW LIFE, IDENTITY, AND COMMUNITY: EMPOWERING JESUS FOLLOWERS AND JAMAATS IN BANGLADESH. By Peter Kwang-Hee Yun. Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: Langham Monographs, 2021 . Pp. xviii + 286. Paperback, £24.99. First published: 24 April 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16364Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL No abstract is available for this article. Volume49, Issue1Special Issue: Unique Approaches to Christianity in Africa and BeyondMarch 2023Pages 60-60 RelatedInformation

Following the model of Jesus: Rethinking women discipleship in Catholic tradition

In the Synoptic Gospels, women are definitely not called disciples. The term female discipleship exists only in Acts 9:36. According to the Gospel of Mark, the important aspect of discipleship is following (e.g. Mk 1:18; 2:14–15; 3:7; 5:24; 6:1; 8:34; 9:38; 10:21, 28); thus, although Mark in this case does not definitely call the women disciples, they can serve as examples of discipleship. With reference to Jesus’ approach to women, the stories in the gospel can be one of the resources, they show Jesus’ ways of looking and thinking about women. Hence to understand the mission and teaching of Jesus, is to understand the gospel. In such a way though, it is insufficient to understand it literally. In order to transcend the limit of sociological and historical context, a new understanding is needed. This article is a re-reading of the gospel and the Catholic tradition as one way to build further understanding of women and men relations, especially on the issue of women discipleship. By doing this, we can transcend ourselves beyond our socio-cultural, socio-historical even socio-psychological context. Thus, a Christian, especially, who claims to be the follower of Jesus, has more reason to be like Jesus.Contribution: An innovative exercise to develop a theological anthropology, by understanding the dynamics of human personality, and developing a theology of the women-men relationship in Catholic tradition, especially in this case re-reading the Scripture, to re-think the status of woman-man discipleship in the Catholic tradition.

Lotz & Wrights' "Jesus Followers: Real-Life lessons for igniting faith in the next generation" (book review)

Lotz & Wrights' "Jesus Followers: Real-Life lessons for igniting faith in the next generation" (book review)

Los rostros bíblicos de María: Exégesis y hermenéutica bíblica feminista by Mercedes Navarro Puerto

Reviewed by: Los rostros bíblicos de María: Exégesis y hermenéutica bíblica feminista by Mercedes Navarro Puerto Barbara E. Reid mercedes navarro puerto, Los rostros bíblicos de María: Exégesis y hermenéutica bíblica feminista (Estudios Bíblicos; Estella: Verbo Divino, 2020). Pp. 335. Paper €32. This splendid book is the fruit of decades of study by Mercedes Navarro Puerto, beginning with her studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, which resulted in her first publication, María, la mujer: Ensayo psicológico-bíblico (Madrid: Ediciones Claretianas, 1989). This new book aims to give coherence and systematization to the work that has been done in the intervening decades, offering perspectives on Mary that are liberative. Navarro Puerto's method is primarily narrative, while also incorporating the fruits of historical criticism and other newer methods. Her hermeneutical lenses are feminist and psychological. The latter approach is important in that cognitive psychology now recognizes the critical role that narrative plays in the organization of the mind and the ways in which we process reality and construct identity and social interaction. The ways we construct the narrative about Mary are as important, N.P. argues, as how we tell the story of Jesus. N.P. notes that the Mary that most Christians construct is based on cultural memory and a composite of brief mentions of her in the Gospels. Thus, N.P. examines carefully each reference and allusion to Mary in the NT texts, showing quite distinct portraits that emerge. [End Page 504] She pays attention to both the cultural context from which the texts emerge and that into which the texts are inserted now. Throughout, she urges her readers to resist portraits of Mary that serve to advance patriarchy and sexism. Part 1 treats the Gospel of Mark and is titled "Socio-Familiar Ruptures and Transformations." At the outset, Mary is grouped with family members, characterized as mother and the one who heads the family delegation to confront her son (3:31). As Jesus redefines his family (3:33–35), mother is situated with brothers and sisters in a community of equal relations. Mother is no longer defined biologically but is a vocation defined in relation to followers of Jesus. Reading "Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses" in 15:40 and "Mary, the mother of James" in 16:1 as Jesus's mother (in light of 6:3), N.P. sees Mary as having made the choice for discipleship. Part 2 is devoted to Matthew: "At the Crossroads of Life." N.P. gives the bulk of her attention to the infancy narratives. From the genealogy, the reader sees Mary as one in a long line of women whose refusal to remain victimized calls attention the divine presence in the history of God's people, a presence that is not limited by patriarchal structures. The genealogy has an anticipatory function, preparing the reader for categories of discipleship proposed by Jesus that distances his group from familiar structures. Going forward from chap. 2, Matthew orients the characterization of Mary in relation to her son. She is mother above all. As in Mark, Mary moves from being identified as mother to becoming a disciple. The "other Mary" in 28:1 is Jesus's mother, identified as "Mary the mother of James and Joseph" who witnessed the crucifixion (27:56), and the "other Mary" who saw where the body was laid (27:61). In the third part, N.P. treats the works of Luke: "Lights and Shadows of a Woman." Like other feminist scholars, she sees Luke 1:26–38 as both an annunciation of birth and a call story to a prophetic vocation, as exemplified in 1:39–56. Mary's role as interpreter is underscored in 2:19, 51. As one who hears the word and puts it into practice, she moves, as in the other Synoptic Gospels, from mother to disciple. Located in the center of the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 1:14), Mary holds the living memory of Israel, the memory of Jesus, as his mother, and the memory of his new family of followers, for whom she exemplifies...

From in-person to online worship

For too long, the world of theology was separated from the digital world. At present, the church of God is facing a unique moment, in which they have to decide how to act as a community of joyful and engaging followers of Jesus in a world where coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) protocols like wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing are followed and where digital connectivity has become indispensable. Many people refer to this period as the ‘new normal’, while it is actually the interim period between the ‘old normal’ and the ‘new normal’ which is to come. What should the church of God do in this period, first to accommodate her congregants now, and second to prepare herself and them for the time to come? This unique moment should be utilised to its fullest in both instances. This article discusses the three periods indicated above, with the focus on the present time. It only concerns the Christian church and her actions pre-, during, and post-COVID-19. The main source of this article is a book published in 2020 by Heidi Campbell, The distanced church: Reflections on doing church online. The insights gained from this article can be of much help, especially in South Africa, to (re)gain momentum as church of God in a pandemic-struck country during the present time, and afterwards.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Semper reformanda: The church is in constant change/reformation. This article intends to assist pastors and lecturers in the transformation process from in-person to online or hybrid worship, requiring a mental paradigm shift. It involves Church History, the Bible, and Practical Theology. Will the church adapt or die? The debate is on.

When Christians Were Jews

Fredricksen’s prologue identifies a few specific premises that guide her thoughts: 1) The earliest followers of Jesus were expecting an immediate end to the world, 2) Josephus provides the primary historical access to the state of affairs in the Roman world (including Jerusalem), and 3) the dramatic end to Jesus’s life would not have had the impact it did without the involvement of Rome.Fredricksen’s first chapter walks through several individuals/groups in order to examine the attitudes toward the temple in the period before and contemporary to Jesus. She concludes that Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul all frequented the Temple and continued to elevate its place in their religious lives (Essenes are the exception, p. 42).The second chapter examines Jesus and Paul’s attitudes toward the temple. Beginning with John and Mark’s versions of Jesus’ temple cleansing, Fredricksen argues that Jesus’ actions and words are not a condemnation of any function of the temple itself, but rather an apocalyptic announcement of the coming end, which will bring a new temple of God’s final kingdom (pp. 48–49). Fredricksen notes that it is nearly impossible to understand that Jesus’s teachings themselves posed a military or political threat to Roman rule. The real fear for Pilate was the unpredictable nature of the large crowds gathered for Passover (p. 72). By crucifying Jesus alone, Rome put to an end the foment of Jesus’s end time prophecies. This also explains why the disciples did not fear returning to Jerusalem so soon after Jesus’s crucifixion. Jesus incited instability, but not revolution. Therefore, the disciples were not an ongoing threat.Fredricksen’s third chapter examines the resurrection experiences of some of Jesus’s disciples. Fredricksen views the contradictory resurrection experiences as respectively pointing to the same reality that each account was trying to communicate: Jesus’s prophecy about the coming of the kingdom was vindicated by his resurrection (p. 87). Fredricksen’s final section of this chapter tackles the delay in Jesus’s return. Ultimately, Fredricksen argues that the community reread Israel’s Scriptures and came to the belief that Jesus would need to return a second time once “all Israel” was reached with the news that the Kingdom had come. This led to the missionary energy of the community outward from Jerusalem (pp. 100–101).The fourth chapter covers the early community’s explanation of Jesus’s absence. In order to explain why he did not return immediately, the community needed to explain where Jesus was. By looking to the messianic descriptions of David, the community, so Fredricksen argues, made connections that showed Jesus was a king and was therefore seated at God’s right hand in heaven (p. 121). Coordinately, since Jesus had not yet returned, his followers needed a way to explain why. This came from their new understanding that salvation for the Gentiles was not complete, therefore the messiah would not come back yet (p. 136).In her final chapter, Fredricksen argues that the Gospel authors (especially Mark) had experienced the destruction of the temple and then conjoined Daniel’s apocalyptic prophecy with the teachings of Jesus in order to construct Jesus’s predictions of the end of times and the destruction of the temple.Overall, Fredricksen’s underlying goal is to demonstrate that the history of anti-Jewish readings of the NT inappropriately remove Jesus and his followers from their decidedly Jewish context (p. 186); a context which better explains what happened to the earliest followers of Jesus than the later “Christianized” reading. In essence, Fredricksen is critiquing the dialectic initially made prominent in biblical scholarship by F. C. Baur by echoing and expanding on Reimarus. It is not clear how prevalent the use of this Jewish/Christian dialectic is within the current field of biblical studies. Apart from this remix, Fredricksen’s vignettes do provide helpful psychosocial descriptions of how Jewish followers of Jesus could have understood the events surrounding Jesus’ death.

Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Jesus Messiah

The consensus of New Testament scholars that the appellation Χριστός in Paul’s letters is a personal name and devoid of messianic convictions is increasingly questioned. Moving beyond philological, tradition-historical, exegetical, and common-sense arguments, the following can be demonstrated. When we treat Paul as a real person who read and studied the Hebrew Scriptures, who proclaimed the gospel in both Greek and Aramaic, using some Hebrew in the synagogues, who taught in local congregations in both Greek and Aramaic, who maintained contact with the Aramaic-speaking Jesus followers in Jerusalem throughout his ministry, and who sang and prayed in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the assumption that, for Paul, Χριστός always stood for מְשִׁיחָא/הַמָּשִׁיחַ, the Messiah of God and the Messiah of God’s people, is highly plausible.

Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation. By Gabriele Boccaccini. Foreword by David Bentley Hart

Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in works studying ‘Paul within Judaism’. Gabriele Boccaccini’s Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation is a welcome addition to this burgeoning subfield. Simultaneously wide-ranging and concise, Boccaccini’s book sets Paul firmly within Second Temple Judaism. The results are often illuminating and always thought-provoking. One of Boccaccini’s central claims is that Paul must be understood as a first-century Jew who never abandoned his religious heritage. Rather, Paul became a member of and quickly thereafter a leader in a new movement within Judaism, the movement of Jesus followers. To describe Paul’s life in this way is in no way to deny just how radical the effect of his encounter with Jesus was. Rather, it is to acknowledge, as Boccaccini puts it, that ‘the Jesus movement in the first century was a Jewish messianic movement, not a separate religion’ (p. 33). Seen in this light, dramatic though...

Excommunicating the Faithful: Jewish Christianity in the Early Church

Excommunicating the Faithful traces the development of Jewish Christianity from among the earliest Jesus followers through its apparent disappearance in the fourth or fifth century. The author’s thesis is that among Jewish Christians in the early Church, there existed at least one Jewish Christian sect whose theology stood within the acceptable boundaries of orthodoxy at that time and existed through at least the fifth century, at which point it was declared heretical by the Church Fathers and eventually died out despite the fact that it considered itself part of the greater Church. The author’s thesis also suggests that the increasing antipathy of the Church toward Jewish Christianity was the result of a variety of interrelated influences operating over several centuries. Some of these influences included the changing demographics of the Church and the accompanying clash of cultures; the increasing isolation of Jewish Christianity from the predominantly Gentile Church; power struggles between competing Christian communities in Palestine, as well as Rome’s interest in asserting its primacy; and theological and pastoral concerns, which were well-intentioned but resulted in increasingly narrow views of orthodoxy and orthopraxis; and lasting anti-Jewish sentiments throughout the Empire, some of which still exist today.

Kajian Biblika Tentang Amanat Agung Dan Implikasinya Terhadap Misi Kristen

The church has a purpose stated in Matthew 28:19-20, the verse known as the Great Commission, this commandment is related to God's most important commandment, namely to make all nations elect. The process and implementation of God's Great Commission commandments in accordance with Matthew 28:19-20 Substantially and actualized in the context of a changing era and making information on the gospel message spread quickly through technology that continues to develop. The method used in this research is descriptive textual method (biblical) while the data collection used is library research or library research on several relevant literatures with the subject matter discussed. After conducting a literature review and several attempts through the author's contribution in the form of interpretations, assumptions and assumptions about the main points of the Great Commission, the author concludes that the Mission of Jesus is the global mission of the church today, whatever the concept, design, design or color of the church, the main thing is whether the church can defend and maintain these two goals properly even in various crises that hinder doctrine such as differences in the way of disciples and baptism that often occur in our Christianity. The implication for today's Christian missions is that the first is how to answer the great mandate in 3 mission dimensions such as Holistic, Multicultural and Contextual. The development of an intense system of evangelism and discipleship as a form of obedience to God's commands to produce followers of Jesus who grow spiritually.

The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources by Dean Furlong

Reviewed by: The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources by Dean Furlong Christopher W. Skinner dean furlong, The Identity of John the Evangelist: Revision and Reinterpretation in Early Christian Sources (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020). Pp. 191. $95. This reception-historical study is a revision of the author's doctoral research at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (2017), and attends to a number of debates that existed among early Christian writers. Furlong is not concerned with the historicity of the traditions surrounding the evangelist. Instead, he argues that the view that equates John the Evangelist with the son of Zebedee stands at the end, rather than the beginning, of a long and somewhat convoluted evolutionary process; it was not an assumption shared by the earliest sources commenting on the Johannine tradition. The identification of John the Evangelist with the son of Zebedee spawned a number of inconsistencies among early Christian writers discussing the Johannine texts. These include whether "John" was exiled during the reigns of Claudius, Nero, or Domitian—all of which are suggested in early Christian texts—and whether he suffered a martyr's death earlier in the first century or died of natural causes under Trajan's reign after previously recovering from being placed in a vat of boiling oil. According to F., two Johns appear in the earliest texts and they eventually become conflated, giving rise to these inconsistencies. The book is divided into three sections of nearly equal length. The first section is entitled "The Identity of the Evangelist" and consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, F. argues that Papias—the earliest author to discuss the identity of John—is best interpreted as having spoken of two different Johns, both of whom were followers of Jesus. One is identified as the apostle and the other as the elder. In chap. 2, F. examines the competing narratives regarding John's death and seeks to resolve the tension between those authors that narrate John's martyrdom and those that speak of John's natural death. F. concludes that a resolution can be found by recognizing that these two stories originally had reference to two different individuals. The final chapter of the first section is devoted to exploring the earliest presentations of John the Evangelist. The second section of the book is entitled "Conflated Figures, Revised Narratives" and also consists of three chapters. In chap. 4, F. deals with sources that date John's exile and death during the reign of Claudius (41–54 c.e.) and, in chap. 5, looks at the dispute between Hippolytus of Rome—who attributed the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse to the apostle John—and his opponent, Gaius, who attributed them to the heretical teacher Cerinthus. After surveying the evidence, F. concludes that the claim for apostolic authorship by John the son of Zebedee could have been an intentional ploy aimed at (1) establishing the [End Page 136] apostolic authority of the two works, and (2) putting to rest lingering doubts raised by Gaius and others. The final chapter of the second section examines the traditions surrounding John's exile under the reign of Domitian. F. concludes that Eusebius is responsible for creating this "fiction" by misinterpreting and misrepresenting a handful of statements from various early authorities. The third and final section of the book consists of four chapters and represents F.'s own reconstruction of the earliest traditions surrounding John and the authorship of the Johannine literature. As stated above, his substantial concern across these chapters is to establish his thesis that the identification of the evangelist with the son of Zebedee is a late tradition, resulting from a complex process that included an admixture of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, conflation, and apologetic. A great deal of information is found in this volume, and F. should be commended for his detailed engagement with a host of ancient sources. While in places his prose is dense and reads like a dissertation, he ultimately provides a valuable service for advanced students and scholars, first by examining all of this information in one place and, second, by offering a compelling narrative that accounts for the emergence of these contradictory...

یہودیت و عیسائیت میں خواتین کے احکام وراثت کا تنقیدی مطالعہ A Critical Study of Women's Inheritance in Judaism and Christianity

The ancient method of inheritance in early Judaism and other ancient nations was that all the property of the deceased was given to his close blood relatives. Usually, the first son becomes the head of the family and becomes the owner of the family property. If the deceased had no son, he would appoint a friend as his heir. For those Christians who claim to be followers of Jesus (AH), there is no mention in the Bible of any family, social or economic laws, nor any special law of inheritance. Christians have therefore followed Roman and Jewish laws of inheritance, and have used the laws of other religions. This article critically examines the laws and rules of women's inheritance in Judaism and Christianity.

Matt Jackson-McCabe. Jewish Christianity: The Making of the Christianity-Judaism Divide. Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

Matt Jackson-McCabe. <i>Jewish Christianity: The Making of the Christianity-Judaism Divide.</i> Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

The Holy Spirit and Other Spirits in Asia: Discernment of Spirits in Non-Christian Religions

Malaysia is an ethnically diverse and religiously pluralistic nation. Within its population Christians number 9.2% while the remainder is comprised of Muslims (61.3%), Buddhists (19.8%), Hindus (6.3%), and other religions (3.4%) such as Confucianism, Taoism, folk/traditional/animistic religions, and others (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2010). It is thus not surprising that any non-Christian to Christian encounter should implicate followers of Jesus, who are trying to understand whether non-Christians may be following the right path towards truth and also whether the spirits they worship are in any biblical sense the Spirit of truth of which Jesus speaks (Jn. 14:17; 15:26; 16:13) or that of another spirit. If interreligious relationships can be understood in this context, then the task of discerning the spirits, whether it is the Holy Spirit or “other” spirits at work, is of great importance. Biblically, all Christians are called to discern the spirits (1 Jn. 4:1-3) of those at work in this world as well as the truth or error that may be perpetuated behind these spirits.

»We have Found the Messiah« (John 1:41) - The Formation of Disciples in the Gospel of John

The disciple is a seminal topic for every Evangelist. The Johannine image of the followers of the Rabbi from Nazareth diverges from the Synoptic vision. In the Fourth Gospel, the disciples follow and serve the Master – like in Mark, Matthew, and Luke – yet the Johannine Jesus does not ask them to break their family ties or leave anything behind. A narrative analysis of the Fourth Gospel lets Culpepper consider the disciples of Christ from the perspective of their literary functions and determine the criteria of their discipleship. The critic divides their formation process into three stages related to seeing, believing, and continuing in the word. In the eyes of the reader, the followers of Jesus – perceived individually or as a community – perform functions as role models or representatives. To be a disciple is to accept the gift of becoming a child of God (John 1:12), which presumes a broad, universal perspective. For this reason, the author of John uses the term »disciple« as many as seventy-eight times, »Twelve« – only four times, while the word »apostle« is never spoken.

‘Apostles’ in 2 Peter 3.2: Literal Predecessors in Faith or Literary Records of their Witness?

2 Peter typically does not receive much attention within the study of early canon development. This article, however, focuses on the term ἀπόστολοι in 2 Pet. 3.2 and examines whether it points beyond historical followers of Jesus so as to implicitly include the written legacy produced by them or by their close associates. My inquiry consists of three components: (a) a survey of Justin Martyr’s use of ἀπόστολοι in his stock phrase ‘memoirs of the apostles’ as a roughly contemporaneous analogue to 2 Peter, (b) a study of the juxtaposition ‘apostles’ and ‘prophets’ in 2 Pet. 3.2 and (c) an inquiry into 2 Peter’s literary dependence on the canonical gospels.

The radical, righteous and relevant Jesus in a coronavirus disease-defined world

Stephan Joubert has already made his mark in South Africa (and abroad) with his solid way of doing Theology. In this Festschrift, we wanted to accord recognition to him for what he has already made and for what he is currently doing with e-kerk. His book, Jesus Radical, Righteous, Relevant, having initially been written in Afrikaans, was translated in 2012 into English and depicts his heart for the followers of Jesus and the familia Dei, specifically in South Africa. This article is a journey through this book, with the current dilemma in our country and worldwide in the back of our minds, namely, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) starting in 2019.Contribution: This article forms part of the Special Collection which will serve as a Festschrift for Prof Stephan Joubert to honour him for the tremendous work that he has done (and is still doing) in Theology in South Africa. I took his book, Jesus, Radical, Righteous, Relevant as basis and applied it to our current situation with COVID-19.

Embracing Evolution: How Understanding Science Can Strengthen Your Christian Life

EMBRACING EVOLUTION: How Understanding Science Can Strengthen Your Christian Life by Matthew Nelson Hill. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. 152 pages. Paperback; $20.00. ISBN: 9780830852833. *This is a short and very readable book whose main purpose is to connect the average churchgoing Christian with a modern and theologically sympathetic understanding of evolution. The general perspective taken by the book is that human understanding of anything (science, art, theology, politics, and so forth) is significantly contextual. The author takes care in the first chapter to explain his perspective on science/faith issues in general, and organizes the book into three parts. *The first part is that of understanding our "biblical lens," namely, exploring the ways in which we are shaped to read scripture, and how this, in turn, influences our beliefs. Do we read the Bible for formation or for information? The two are not mutually incompatible, but neither are they equivalent, and how we balance the two is pertinent to our theological understanding of evolution. This section of the book addresses what are perhaps the two main questions emerging from the early chapters of Genesis: our understanding of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and the place of predation and death in God's creation. The latter troubles the author much more than the former, and the response presented is not wholly satisfying, even to the author himself. Overall, this section is a good presentation of hermeneutics that focuses on Genesis without bogging down the reader with too much theological weight. *The second part of the book addresses how we understand our "scientific lens." A full chapter is devoted to the basic theory of evolution (its "nuts and bolts") and a subsequent chapter to what is meant by scientific truth and its integration (or not) with faith. The author does a good job of distilling the philosophy of science for the intelligent lay reader without "dumbing it down"--not an easy task. Sometimes, however, the treatment is lacking, particularly concerning the imago Dei in light of evolution. Are we (as appears to be the inference on page 69) special simply because we were evolutionarily lucky to have large brains? *The remainder of the book--its third part--is devoted to how we might integrate an evolutionary understanding of biology with Christian faith. Many books have been written on this subject, and it is difficult for anyone these days to say what has not already been said. The theme running through this section of the book is that an evolutionary perspective can be empowering, primarily because knowledge of fact and truth allows a Christian to better carry out the ministry of Jesus in his/her life and in the world. Knowledge of the roots of our negative genetic urges (for example, the tendency to overeat) can empower us to overcome these urges through a combination of human choice and the grace of God. The final chapter discusses how the Christian church, girded with an appropriate integration of evolutionary knowledge and scriptural foundation, is best positioned to foster the virtues of the kingdom of God through community. *I liked this book, and I think it is definitely one for discussion and use in an adult Sunday school class. It does, however, avoid a number of awkward questions and issues. For example, why does it matter if our negative/positive tendencies are evolutionarily based? Wouldn't we, as Christians, act the same if they had some other origin? There is also an assumption by the author of a transcendent morality--but where does this come from? Are our morals likewise a product of evolution? If so, how does this square with biblical (and other) forms of revelation? And as far as the problem of death is concerned, isn't this a problem of sin in the world? Doesn't it mean that sin is present at the outset of creation? *That said, this is very much a positive contribution to the ongoing evolution/creation issue. Without denying our evolutionary origins, it calls us to transcend them as followers of Jesus. I am sure it will foster interesting discussions in many a church and Sunday school class. *Reviewed by Robert B. Mann, Professor of Physics &amp; Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1.

Voices of fire

Early followers of Jesus and later rabbinical Jews, two divergent branches of Judaism emerging respectively from the Second Temple and Post-Second Temple eras, both drew upon the cultural memory of Sinai to establish their identity. This article examines how the author of Acts used the Sinai imagery of theophanic fire in the Pentecost narrative of Acts 2 to reinforce a continu­ation of Judaism and offer an inclusive expansion of it to gentile believers. Then it looks at how later rabbinic sources used Sinai images of fire and multiple languages to reinforce the authority of the Torah and their exclusive identity within the Sinai relationship.

Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire. By Paul B.Duff. Pp. xii, 263, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2017, £24.99/$30.00.

Jesus Followers in the Roman Empire. By Paul B.Duff. Pp. xii, 263, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2017, £24.99/$30.00.