Bell & Howell Information and Learning: Foreign text omitted Der Name Gottes and der Name Jesu: Eine neutestamentliche Studie, by Adelheid RuckSchroder. WMANT 80. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999. Pp. xvi + 304. DM 98.00. In this revision of her 1998 Berlin Ph.D. thesis, Ruck-Schroder offers a very helpful study of the theological meanings involved in NT references to the names of God and Jesus. In this she fills a niche that was conspicuously vacant. There are studies of the religionsgeschichtliche background that focus on comparisons of the ritual use of divine names in the biblical traditions and Roman-era religious environment, of which probably the most important (and the most recent!) are Wilhelm Heitmuller's Im Namen Jesu and Benno Jacob's Im Namen Gottes, both published in 1903. There are general discussions of the biblical concept of names in, for example, TDNT by H. Bietenhard and the studies by G. Delling (1961) and, more recently, by L. Hartman (1992) focused on the use of Jesus' name in baptism. Ruck-Schroder conducts here an analysis of all references to the name of God and/or the name of Jesus in the NT, and characterizes her study as a contribution to NT theology. The approach is close exegesis of each passage with a view toward teasing out the theological meanings involved in references to the name of God or Jesus, and with little discussion of either extra-canonical or of the actual religious rituals and practices in which the names were used. She takes as given (1) that the NT shares the notion widespread in the ancient world that a name partakes of and manifests in some way the figure it names, (2) that the NT presupposes the OT view that God is made known through God's name, and (3) that the Tetragrammaton was greatly revered in the Jewish matrix of earliest Christianity. These things amount to what she refers to as the name-concept (ona-Begriff. The key question, then, is whether, and if so how, this name-concept is extended to the name of Jesus in the NT. That is, the key impetus and relevance of Ruck-Schroder's study has to do with NT Christology. After setting out her aims in a short introduction, Ruck-Schroder provides a helpful critical survey of previous research (pp. 11-63). The remainder of the book gives exegesis of the relevant NT passages in rough chronological order: undisputed Pauline epistles (pp. 65-94) and deutero-Paulines (pp. 95-107), three chapters on the Synoptics and Acts (pp. 108-202), John and the Johannine epistles (pp. 203-19), Hebrews (pp. 220-31), the General Epistles (pp. 232-41), and Revelation (pp. 242-58). There follows a cogently developed set of reflections which form her concluding chapter (pp. 259-72). Given its aim, an exegesis of NT texts focused on the theological content of references to the name of God or Jesus, the study succeeds very well. It should certainly be included in any research library. It amounts to a noteworthy contribution to the study of NT Christology in its own right and will also be of use to anyone pursuing research on the topic. This focus on theological questions means, however, that she does not devote much attention to questions about what religious practices were actually involved in the NT references. …