In this series of reflections on the mystery of Jesus and the questions that surround him, noted New Testament scholar Wayne Meeks redirects the course of the Jesus debates. Insisting that we cease focusing on who the historical Jesus was and ask instead, who is Christ? Meeks demonstrates with electric and lucid prose that Jesus is not a permanent artifact whose precise nature can be traced back through history but, rather, a figure whose identity continues to emerge as contemporary persons engage him in their daily lives.

Childs contends that within the New Testament the Pauline corpus stands as a unit bookended by Romans and the Pastoral Epistles. He assigns an introductory role to Romans, examining how it puts the contingencies of Paul's earlier letters into context without sacrificing their particularity. At the other end, the Pastoral Epistles serve as a concluding valorization of Paul as the church's doctrinal model. By considering Paul's works as a whole, Childs offers a way to gain a fuller understanding of the individual letters.

Despite its rather austere appearance, the Codex Sinaiticus is a treasure beyond price. Produced in the middle of the fourth century, its bound parchment pages hold the full canon of the Christian Bible and more the handwritten Greek text of the earliest surviving copy of the complete koine New Testament; the earliest and best copies of some Septuagint texts, the Old Testament Scriptures as they were adopted by the first-century church; and two late fi rst-century Christian texts, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas. The sections are heavily marked by early correctors.

Told here is the compelling story of how the Codex Sinaiticus was created and used in the ancient church; how it was preserved for centuries at the monastery of St. Catherine s, Mount Sinai; its subsequent history and how its pages came to be divided and dispersed; and how it has been compiled again and made accessible to a worldwide audience for the first time.

D. C. Parker s outstanding research and excellent storytelling skills simultaneously illuminate the chronology of bookmaking in Western culture and the effects of that technology on the presentation of the biblical canon. Offering a fascinating look at the task of making a Bible in the year, AD 350, he discusses how included books were chosen or not; physical elements of production layout, ink, parchment, binding, and budget; the jobs of scribes and correctors; and the role of annotators. As readers follow the travels of the pieces of the Codex Sinaiticus through the twentieth century, they ll discover key personalities and places, and absorb the details of the current production of the Internet electronic edition of this singular document. Full-color illustrations and suggestions for further reading add much to the journey.

New York Times best-selling author Darrell Bock teams with Daniel Wallace to help lay readers separate fact from fiction and help from hype in the recent best-selling Jesus books and television specials.

There is a quest going on. It's the quest to reduce Jesus to a mythic legend or to nothing more than a mere man. Scholars such as Elaine Pagels and James Tabor are using such recent discoveries as the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas to argue that the Christ of Christianity is a contrived figure and that a different Christ-one human and not divine-is the "true" Christ.

In his trademark easy-to-understand style Darrell Bock takes on these attempts to redefine Jesus in a convincing, winsome way that will help readers understand that the orthodox understanding of Christ and his divinity is as trustworthy and sure as it ever was. Joining Bock for the first time is fellow scholar Daniel Wallace.