In this engaging introduction to the New Testament, Professor Dale B. Martin presents a historical study of the origins of Christianity by analyzing the literature of the earliest Christian movements. Focusing mainly on the New Testament, he also considers nonbiblical Christian writings of the era.

Martin begins by making a powerful case for the study of the New Testament. He next sets the Greco-Roman world in historical context and explains the place of Judaism within it. In the discussion of each New Testament book that follows, the author addresses theological themes, then emphasizes the significance of the writings as ancient literature and as sources for historical study. Throughout the volume, Martin introduces various early Christian groups and highlights the surprising variations among their versions of Christianity.

Dale B. Martin is Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University. His previous books include The Corinthian Body and Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity, both published by Yale University Press. He lives in New Haven, CT.

The Bible: The New Revised Standard Edition
No Assigned Publisher
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The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th Ed.
Bart D. Ehrman
Oxford University Press
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In this intriguing discussion of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, Dale Martin contends that Paul's various disagreements with the Corinthians were the result of a fundamental conflict over the ideological construction of the human body.

According to Martin, most Corinthian Christians and Paul himself saw the body as an entity that could be permeated by different pollutions. Other members of the Corinthian church, however, viewed the body as hierarchical—as a microcosm of the universe—and were not particularly concerned about body boundaries or pollution. These differing views of the human body (and also of the church as the body of Christ) led to differing opinions on a variety of subjects—including the role of rhetoric and philosophy in a hierarchical society, the eating of meat sacrificed to idols, prostitution, sexual desire and marriage, and the resurrection of the body. Martin explores these conflicts by drawing on ancient medical writings, modern anthropological approaches, and feminist and ideological methods of critical analysis. He shows how Paul's understanding of the body prevailed among the less well-educated inhabitants of the Roman Empire, who occupied relatively low socioeconomic levels. The minority who espoused the ideas of hierarchy, on the other hand, were usually of higher social status and were better educated. And it was along these same class lines, Martin argues, that the Corinthian church itself was divided.

Dale B. Martin, assistant professor of religion at Duke University, is also the author of Slavery as Salvation, published by Yale University Press.

Pedagogy of the Bible: An Analysis and Proposal
Westminster John Knox Press
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Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation
Westminster John Knox Press
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Inventing Superstition: From the Hippocratics to the Christians
Harvard University Press
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Long an admirer of the King James Bible, celebrated critic Harold Bloom here offers a singular appreciation of its beauty and importance as a literary masterpiece.

Long an admirer of the King James Bible, celebrated critic Harold Bloom here offers a singular appreciation of its beauty and importance as a literary masterpiece.

In this unique book, one of the most original voices in biblical studies today focuses on the themes of marriage, sexuality, fertility, impurity, creation, and love in the Bible to illuminate the remarkable subtlety and sophistication of biblical views about sex and religion.

This stimulating history of early Christianity, the first full account for over forty years, revisits the extraordinary birth of a world religion, and gives a new slant on a familiar story.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity’s highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies...

An acclaimed scholar presents a fundamentally new conception of the relationship between Christianity and the Paganism of Greece and Rome.