Jesus' final days were full of risk. Every move he made was filled with anticipation, danger, and the potential for great loss or great reward.

Jesus risked his reputation when he entered Jerusalem in a victory parade. He risked his life when he dared to teach in the Temple. His followers risked everything when they left behind their homes, or anointed him with costly perfume. We take risks as we read and re-read these stories, finding new meanings and new challenges.

In Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner's Guide to Holy Week, author, professor, and biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine explores the biblical texts surrounding the Passion story. She shows us how the text raises ethical and spiritual questions for the reader, and how we all face risk in our Christian experience.

Entering the Passion of Jesus provides a rich and challenging learning experience for small groups and individual readers alike. The book is part of a larger six-week study that is perfect for Lent and includes a DVD, and a comprehensive Leader Guide.

The book's six chapters include:

1. Jerusalem: Risking Reputation
2. The Temple: Risking Righteous Anger
3. Teachings: Risking Challenge
4. The First Dinner: Risking Rejection
5. The Last Supper: Risking the Loss of Friends
6. Gethsemane: Risking Temptation

Everything we do, say, and think is, in some sense, emotional. We describe ourselves and our experiences in terms of how we feel.

In the New Testament, Jesus and Paul displayed a wide range of emotions in their lives and teaching. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and others have recognized the vital importance of emotion in Christian experience. However, in recent times, many preachers and theologians have pushed emotion to the sidelines. The relationship between reason and emotion is often confused or obscure, creating the need for a fresh look at the causes, nature, and role of felt experience in Christian living.

In this significant new study, Matthew Elliott asks, "What is an emotion?" and applies recent studies of emotion to the New Testament. While he discusses the vocabulary of emotion-love, joy, hope, jealousy, fear, sorrow, anger-his primary concern is with emotion itself, how it was perceived by the New Testament writers in their cultural context, and what role they thought it should play in the lives of Christian believers. He argues that our feelings play an essential role in Christian faith, theology, and ethics.

Francis Watson, widely regarded as one of the foremost New Testament scholars of our time, explains that the four gospels were chosen to give a portrait of Jesus. He explores the significance of the fourfold gospel's plural form for those who constructed it and for later Christian communities, showing that in its plurality it bears definitive witness to what God has done in Jesus Christ. Watson focuses on reading the gospels as a group rather than in isolation and explains that the fourfold gospel is greater than, and other than, the sum of its individual parts. Interweaving historical, exegetical, and theological perspectives, this book is accessibly written for students and pastors but is also of interest to professors and scholars.