Publisher Description

Sin was an extremely important and serious concern for the earliest Christians and the authors of the New Testament writings. Early Christians came to see the life and ministry of Jesus as challenging presumptions about the meanings of sin and faithfulness. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of different understandings of sin in early Christianity. Jeffrey S. Siker describes how the earliest Christian voices represented in the New Testament writingsunderstood "sin" not only as a theological abstraction, but also as a real reflection upon human thought and behavior that violated right relationships with both other human beings and with God. Sikerexplores language about sin in relation to the Jewish and Greco-Roman contextual worlds of the New Testament writings, and examines the development and change of these worlds in relation to the modern concept of sin.

Author Biography

Dr. Jeffrey S. Siker has taught at Loyola Marymount University since 1987 in the areas of New Testament, early Jewish/Christian relations, the Bible and Ethics, and the history of biblical interpretation. Dr. Siker has been awarded research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Catholic Biblical Association, the Wabash Center, and has been a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. Dr. Siker isan active Presbyterian minister. He is married to Judy Siker, herself a biblical scholar and PCUSA minister, and together they have five grown children.

Table of Contents

PrefaceChapter 1: Whatever Happened to Sin?Chapter 2: A Taxonomy of Sin in the New Testament WorldsChapter 3: Sin in the Gospel of MarkChapter 4: Sin in the Gospel of MatthewChapter 5: Sin in Luke-ActsChapter 6: Sin in the Gospel of John and the Johannine EpistlesChapter 7: Sin in the Letters of Paul and Deutero-PaulChapter 8: Sin in Hebrews, James, and 1 & 2 PeterChapter 9: Sin in Jude, Revelation, and BeyondChapter 10: Sin Then and NowBibliographyIndex

Review

In this volume Siker, professor of NT at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, examines what the NT writings have to say about sin, with attention to the distinctive and diverse voices we find there, attending to both continuities and discontinuities across the writings, while placing them within their larger Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. * NT WORLD *
This book is crisply and lucidly written...The book includes a substantial bibliography, along with indexes of Scripture passages and topics. * Greg Carey, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly *

Long Description

Sin was an extremely important and serious concern for the earliest Christians and the authors of the New Testament writings. Early Christians came to see the life and ministry of Jesus as challenging presumptions about the meanings of sin and faithfulness. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of different understandings of sin in early Christianity. Jeffrey S. Siker describes how the earliest Christian voices represented in the New Testament writingsunderstood "sin" not only as a theological abstraction, but also as a real reflection upon human thought and behavior that violated right relationships with both other human beings and with God. Sikerexplores language about sin in relation to the Jewish and Greco-Roman contextual worlds of the New Testament writings, and examines the development and change of these worlds in relation to the modern concept of sin.

Review Text

"This book is crisply and lucidly written...The book includes a substantial bibliography, along with indexes of Scripture passages and topics." -- Greg Carey, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Review Quote

"This book is crisply and lucidly written...The book includes a substantial bibliography, along with indexes of Scripture passages and topics." -- Greg Carey, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly

Feature

Selling point: First book-length analysis of sin in the New TestamentSelling point: Gives a thoroughly contextual approach to sin in light of first century Jewish and Greco-Roman attitudesSelling point: Highlights the Gospel-writers, Paul, and other New Testament authors' different attitudes towards sin

Details