Cara is one of my Ph.D. students and has become a good friend. She writes this at a popular level but provides uncanny insights into the questions Jesus asked those who listened to him.
She is vulnerable in disclosing situations in her life that were illuminated in her own research, and she turns serious scholarly study into low-hanging fruit that anyone can enjoy and benefit from.
She is also an elegant writer, and her book is a page-turner. It was a joy to read; I did not want to put it down, and despite her being the age of my daughters, Cara spoke to issues in my life as I now navigate the meaning of retirement!
Know Jesus more deeply by exploring twelve questions He used to bring us closer to Him.
There is an incredible truth about the nature of Christ: the Son of God is a curious God who asks. And His questions are life changing. The answer to your need for connection, to your spiritual doubt and restlessness, can be found by examining God's questions.
Scripture reveals that Jesus asked over 300 questions to teach, engage, and invite us closer. Now, experience an intimate and transformative conversation with the Son of God by exploring twelve of the most powerful questions from the Gospels.…
Brandon is a former student, a colleague in ministry, and a good friend. As an African American, others have told him he should abandon evangelicalism because it is too white, conservative, and racist. He has been tempted to do so.
Instead, he has written this manifesto of what is deeply wrong in the movement and what is even more profoundly life-giving, and why he remains a part of it.
For anyone who cares about this wing of the Christian church and how it is perceived by many non-whites (and many non-Christians, for that matter), this book is essential reading.
Despite the civil rights progress he fought for and saw on the horizon in the 1950s and '60s, Martin Luther King Jr.-increasingly concerned by America's moral vision, admitted-"I've come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house."
In A Burning House, Brandon Washington contends that American Evangelicalism is a house ablaze: burning in the destructive fires of discrimination and injustice. The stain of segregation remains prevalent, not only in our national institutions, but also in our churches, and this has long tarnished the witness of Christianity and hampered our progress toward a Christ-like vision of Shalom-peace, justice, and…
Many people claim these days that many gospels outside the New Testament are just as old and valuable as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if not more so.
Simon, a friend who is a professor at the University of Cambridge, analyzes these four books in detail alongside another seven that well represent ancient gospels not in the canon and shows that only the canonical four closely conform to the earliest known Christian creed (1 Corinthians 15:3-5), which stressed Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, his atoning death and bodily resurrection, both according to the Hebrew Scriptures.
The depth with which Simon knows these books and all the relevant scholarship is simply stunning, and the book is very faith-affirming.
A robust scholarly defense of the distinctiveness of the canonical Gospels.
Do the four New Testament gospels share some essence that distinguishes them from noncanonical early Gospels? The tendency among biblical scholars of late has been to declare the answer to this question no—that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were grouped together by happenstance and are defended as canonical today despite there being no essential commonalities between them.
Simon Gathercole challenges this prevailing view and argues that in fact the theological content of the New Testament Gospels distinguishes them substantially from noncanonical Gospels. Gathercole shows how the Gospels of Matthew,…
The first part of this book surveys the various quests for the historical Jesus in the last 250 years or so. It describes the major players and their key contributions, along with ways in which they have sometimes been misrepresented.
The second part builds on the resurgence of interest in the Gospel of John as a valuable source for the Jesus of history, despite its differences. One method for recovering historical material involves the criterion of what with its predecessors.
Using the criterion of focusing on what cuts against the grain of a Gospel writer’s main emphases, it identifies the role of purity, which is also a minor motif in the first three Gospels, and explores its implications for Christianity today.
