Evangelicalism in America

The Mind in Another Place

My Life as a Scholar Luke Timothy Johnson

Luke Timothy Johnson is one of the best-known and most influential New Testament scholars of recent decades. In this memoir, he draws on his rich experience to invite readers into the scholar’s life—its aims, commitments, and habits.

In addition to sharing his own story, from childhood to retirement, Johnson reflects on the nature of scholarship more generally, showing how this vocation has changed over the past half-century and where it might be going in the future. He is as candid and unsparing about negative trends in academia as he is hopeful about the possibilities of steadfast, disciplined scholarship. In two closing chapters, he discusses the essential intellectual and moral virtues of scholarly excellence, including curiosity, imagination, courage, discipline, persistence, detachment, and contentment.

Johnson’s robust defense of the scholarly life—portrayed throughout this book as a generative process of discovery and disclosure—will inspire both new and seasoned scholars, as well as anyone who reads and values good scholarship. But The Mind in Another Place ultimately resonates beyond the walls of the academy and speaks to matters more universally human: the love of knowledge and the lifelong pursuit of truth.

“Biblical scholars rarely write books of the ‘I couldn’t put it down’ variety. But Johnson has done so. It is entertaining. It is informative (documenting, among other things, a field’s changes over the last half century). And it is wise, above all regarding the moral and intellectual virtues.” — DALE C. ALLISON JR.

Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary

“The Mind in Another Place takes readers into the ‘passionate detachment’ of a life devoted to what the author admits is scholarship with a contrarian streak. A great read for anyone ‘discerning’ if scholarship is the Mount Everest to climb.”

— PHEME PERKINS

Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality at Boston College

Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

978-0-8028-8011-6 • Jacketed Hardcover • 272 pages • $27.99 US • $37.99 CAN • £21.99 UK

AVAILABLE MARCH 2022

Cruciformity

Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Michael J. Gorman

Foreword by Nijay K. Gupta When it was first published in 2001, Cruciformity broke new ground with a vision of Pauline spirituality that illuminated what it meant to be a person or community in Christ. Beginning with Paul’s express desire to “know nothing but Christ crucified,” Gorman showed how true spirituality is telling the story, in both life and words, of God’s self-revelation in Jesus, so that we might practice “cruciformity”—the impossible possibility of conformity to the crucified Christ.

Two decades later, Gorman’s seminal work is still a powerful model for combining biblical studies and theological reflection to make Paul’s letters more immediately relevant to contemporary Christian life. This twentiethanniversary edition includes a new foreword by Nijay Gupta—a nextgeneration Pauline scholar heavily influenced by Gorman—as well as an afterword by the author, in which he reflects on the legacy of Cruciformity in the church and the academy, including his own subsequent work in Pauline theology.

“Thanks to Michael J. Gorman, ‘cruciform’ has come to describe the architecture of Christian community even more than the architecture of Christian buildings, with the term becoming an essential lens through which we view the apostle Paul’s pastoral theology. Cruciformity is an indispensable resource because Gorman’s careful scholarship and pastoral concern mirror the apostle Paul’s own efforts to illuminate the implications of Jesus’s ignominious public lynching. Bible teachers and students should keep Cruciformity nearby as a handy reference whenever studying Paul’s writings.” — DENNIS R. EDWARDS

North Park Theological Seminary

Michael J. Gorman holds the Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he has taught since 1991. A highly regarded New Testament scholar, he has also written Inhabiting the Cruciform God, Becoming the Gospel, and Apostle of the Crucified Lord, among other significant works.

978-0-8028-7912-7 • Paperback • 471 pages • $40.00 US • $53.99 CAN • £32.99 UK

AVAILABLE NOW

Paul, Then and Now

Matthew V. Novenson Reckoning with the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of Paul as both a historical figure and a canonical muse

Matthew Novenson has become a leading voice advocating for the continuing relevance of historical-critical readings of Paul even as some New Testament scholars have turned to purely theological or political approaches. In this collection of a decade’s worth of essays, Novenson puts contextual understandings of Paul’s letters into conversation with their Christian reception history. After a new, programmatic introductory essay that frames the other eleven essays, Novenson explores topics including: • the relation between theology and historical criticism • the place of Jews and gentiles in Paul’s gospel • Paul’s relation to Judaism • the relevance of messianism to Paul’s Christology • Paul’s eschatology in relation to ancient Jewish eschatologies • the aptness of monotheism as a category for understanding antiquity • the reception of Paul by diverse early Christian writers • the peculiar place of Protestantism in the modern study of Paul • the debate over the recent Paul-within-Judaism movement • anti-Judaism in modern New Testament scholarship • disputes over Romans and Galatians • the meta-question of what it would mean to get Paul right or wrong Engaging with numerous schools of thought in Pauline studies—Augustinian, Lutheran, New Perspective, apocalyptic, Paul-within-Judaism, religious studies, and more—while also rising above partisan disputes between schools, Novenson illuminates the ancient Mediterranean context of Paul’s letters, their complicated afterlives in the history of interpretation, and the hermeneutical struggle to make sense of it all.

Matthew V. Novenson is senior lecturer in New Testament and Christian origins at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins. He is the author of Christ among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism and The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users and editor of Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity.

978-0-8028-8171-7 • Jacketed Hardcover • 265 pages • $44.00 US • $58.99 CAN • £35.99 UK

AVAILABLE MAY 2022

The Word of the Cross

Reading Paul Jonathan A. Linebaugh

Foreword by John M. G. Barclay This collection of Jonathan Linebaugh’s most important work on Paul explores the merciful surprise at the heart of Paul’s gospel: a grace that, while strange and weak in worldly terms, is nothing less than the power of God, full of comfort and promise. Through twelve essays—two of them new—Linebaugh contextualizes and interprets key Pauline passages, does comparative readings of Paul in conversation with early Jewish texts, and enters into dialogue with Reformation theologians such as Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer.

Thorough and multifaceted, Linebaugh’s work is at once exegetical, historical, and theological in scope. Accordingly, The Word of the Cross is a rigorous scholarly enterprise that takes seriously Paul’s claim that the good news of Jesus Christ, despite appearing scandalous and foolish, in fact contradicts and overcomes the conditions of the possible through the power of God.

“Those who have read or heard the scholarly work of Jonathan Linebaugh will know his trademark qualities: incisive analysis of texts, arresting turns of phrase, and a deep resonance with the theology of Paul. . . . There are few people today who can trace the contours of Paul’s theology with such sensitivity or utilize the history of theological interpretation with such creativity, and I am confident that everyone will come away from reading this book both enriched and provoked to think harder about the theology of Paul.” — JOHN M. G. BARCLAY

from the foreword

Jonathan A. Linebaugh is lecturer in New Testament at the University of Cambridge and fellow at Jesus College. He is the author of God, Grace, and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, editor of God’s Two Words: Law and Gospel in the Lutheran and Reformed Traditions, and the coeditor, with Michael Allen, of Reformation Readings of Paul: Explorations in History and Exegesis.

978-0-8028-8167-0 • Jacketed Hardcover • 288 pages • $45.00 US • $60.99 CAN • £36.99 UK

AVAILABLE MARCH 2022

BIBLICAL STUDIES

Five Models of Scripture

Mark Reasoner

The Bible can be read in many different ways. A Christian never gains all that it offers by reading it with just one approach. This book helps those studying or proclaiming Scripture to enrich their understanding of it through five models: documents, stories, prayers, laws, and oracles. To illustrate each, Mark Reasoner uses examples from throughout the history of interpretation. While Reasoner concedes that certain books of the Bible will naturally lend themselves to particular models, he shows how an appreciation for all five will open up greater scriptural insights while also bridging divides between the various branches of the Christian family.

“Alongside a wealth of information about scriptural interpretation—its complex history, its nuances, its contemporary implications and significance—Reasoner offers practical advice to those in ministry and those studying Scripture in an academic environment. Yet this book is more than a reservoir of information. It is also an invitation to see Scripture as an abundant communal feast that sustains and delights.” — LISA M. BOWENS

Princeton Theological Seminary

“Every chapter in this book flows from years of personal Bible reading and the insights gained from classroom teaching.” — SCOT McKNIGHT

Northern Seminary

“This is an ecumenically sensitive presentation of five different models for reading the Bible. Reasoner’s familiarity with a wide range of approaches within the Christian tradition is matched by his deeply respectful approach to positions other than his own.” — GARY A. ANDERSON

University of Notre Dame

Mark Reasoner is professor of biblical theology at Marian University. He is the author of Romans in Full Circle: A History of Interpretation and coauthor of The Abingdon Introduction to the Bible.

978-0-8028-7682-9 • Paperback • 311 pages • $29.99 US $39.99 CAN • £23.99 UK • AVAILABLE NOW

What Is a Gospel?

Francis Watson

What if noncanonical gospel writings—including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, and the Protevangelium of James—aren’t fundamentally different from the four canonical gospels? In this follow-up to Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective, noted biblical scholar Francis Watson makes the case that viewing early gospel literature as a unified genre—sharing significant similarities in sources, content, and goals—allows us to discern important interrelated aspects that are lost amid the usual categories. Watson’s critical approach enables modern readers of the Bible to break free of fraught scholarly assumptions in order to better understand early Christian identity formation and beliefs.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. What Is a Gospel? 2. Seven Ways to Dispose of Judas Iscariot 3. How Did Mark Survive? 4. Does Luke Need Q? 5. Q and the Logia: On the Discovery and

Marginalizing of P.Oxy.1 6. Luke Rewriting and Rewritten 7. The Gospel of the Apostles: The Epistula

Apostolorum and the Johannine Tradition 8. Jesus versus the Lawgiver: Narratives of Apostasy and Conversion 9. Making Sense of the Betrayer: The Gospel of

Judas and Its Predecessors 10. Reception as Corruption: Tertullian and Marcion in Quest of the True Gospel 11. Toward a Redaction-Critical Reading of the Diatessaron Gospel 12. Lindisfarne and the Gospels: The Art of Interpretation 13. Eschatology and the Twentieth Century: On the Reception of Schweitzer in English 14. A Reply to My Critics

Francis Watson is professor of New Testament at Durham University, England. His other books include Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective.

978-0-8028-7292-0 • Jacketed Hardcover • 356 pages $49.00 US • $65.99 CAN • £39.99 UK

AVAILABLE APRIL 2022

The Destruction of the Canaanites

God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation Charlie Trimm

In this short, accessible offering, Charlie Trimm provides the resources needed to make sense of one of the Bible’s most difficult ethical problems—the Israelite destruction of the Canaanites in the Old Testament. After surveying important background issues, Trimm explores four approaches to reconciling biblical violence: reevaluating either God, the Old Testament, the interpretation of the Old Testament, or the nature of the violence itself.

“Anyone who is disturbed by the violent depictions of God in Scripture (and how could any follower of Jesus not be?) will find much to chew on in this informative and engaging work.”

— GREGORY A. BOYD

author of Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance Its Divine Authority

“Charlie Trimm’s The Destruction of the Canaanites takes some very difficult verses from the Old Testament and deals with them in an intellectually and theologically fair-minded way. He presents different views in an even-handed manner, mentioning their strengths and weaknesses, all the while staying away from one-sided advocacy. Trimm doesn’t tell readers how to think; he gives them different, competing views that allow them to think for themselves and to discuss with others. Too often Christians want to shut debates down; Charlie Trimm wants to elevate them, and in this book he does.” — PETER WEHNER

senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic

Charlie Trimm is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. He is the coauthor, with Brittany Kim, of Understanding Old Testament Theology and the author of Fighting for the King and the Gods: A Survey of Warfare in the Ancient Near East.

978-0-8028-7962-2 • Paperback • 136 pages • $14.99 US $19.99 CAN • £11.99 UK

AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2022

Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority Angela N. Parker

Foreword by Lisa Sharon Harper A challenge to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy that calls into question how Christians are taught more about the way of Whiteness than the way of Jesus

Angela Parker wasn’t just trained to be a biblical scholar; she was trained to be a White male biblical scholar.

She is neither White nor male.

Dr. Parker’s experience of being taught to forsake her embodied identity in order to contort herself into the stifling construct of Whiteness is common among American Christians, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. This book calls the power structure behind this experience what it is: White supremacist authoritarianism.

Drawing from her perspective as a Womanist New Testament scholar, Dr. Parker describes how she learned to deconstruct one of White Christianity’s most pernicious lies: the conflation of biblical authority with the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility. As Dr. Parker shows, these doctrines are less about the text of the Bible itself and more about the arbiters of its interpretation—historically, White males in positions of power who have used Scripture to justify control over marginalized groups.

This oppressive use of the Bible has been suffocating. To learn to breathe again, Dr. Parker says, we must “let God breathe in us.” We must read the Bible as authoritative, but not authoritarian. We must become conscious of the particularity of our identities, as we also become conscious of the particular identities of the biblical authors from whom we draw inspiration. And we must trust and remember that as long as God still breathes, we can too.

“What does it mean to follow Jesus when we strip Whiteness and westernness from his skin and the Brown colonized context from which he rose? What happens when those at the bottom read the words of those at the bottom? What suppressed, covered over, hidden, and obliterated meanings rise again? That is the project of the next five hundred years. Angela Parker’s If God Still Breathes takes us one step further on the journey.”

— LISA SHARON HARPER

from the foreword

“I’ve been waiting for this book! If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? brings a fresh perspective to the biblical text that makes it come alive with hope of liberation for all people. Dr. Angela Parker calls us past the superficial into a deep engagement with a contextual theology that is relevant and life-giving.”

— BRENDA SALTER McNEIL

author of Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now

“Dr. Parker understands the power of testimony to speak truth. This book marks a path away from death-dealing forms of scholarly formation in evangelical biblical studies and toward thriving life in a field and for a field. Parker’s powerful text adds greatly to a growing number of theologically rich antiracist and antisexist resources for addressing our current struggles. Now we have yet another weapon of righteousness.”

— WILLIE JAMES JENNINGS

author of After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging

“This book invites readers to embrace justice and Black Lives Matter by taking them on a journey of personal re-membering and critical reflection toward a womanist consciousness. Dr. Parker employs the metaphorical language of God-breath (inspired scriptures) and breathing (liberating interpretation that embraces all bodies and blackness) unobstructed by the suffocating, breath-taking authoritarian claims of whiteness-centered biblical scholarship buttressed by doctrinal claims of inerrancy and infallibility.”

— MITZI J. SMITH

author of Womanist Sass and Talk Back: (In)Justice, Intersectionality, and Biblical Interpretation 978-0-8028-7926-4 • Paperback • 133 pages • $16.99 US • $22.99 CAN £13.99 UK • AVAILABLE NOW

Angela N. Parker is assistant professor of New Testament and Greek at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology. In 2018, Dr. Parker received the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion’s ESF New Scholar Award for her article “One Womanist’s View of Racial Reconciliation in Galatians.”

“What might the church be like if we were a people who walked with each other so well that we all ‘made it home’? In this spirit (ruach)–filled book, Dr. Angela Parker calls with courage for us to release the white supremacist authoritarianism of inerrancy and infallibility. She invites with vision for us to journey into a living relationship with the Bible, one in which we need not—and, in fact, must not—leave our embodied experiences and identities behind. This book offers womanist air, as vital as it is ‘God-breathed.’” — JENNIFER HARVEY

author of Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation

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