{"title":"Dennis R Macdonald","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"homeric-epics-and-the-gospel-of-mark-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9780300172614","title":"The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark","description":"In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognize the Homeric antecedents in Mark’s story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes.   Much like Odysseus, Mark’s Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark’s minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal Entry, and Gethsemane. The book concludes with a discussion of the profound significance of this new reading of Mark for understanding the gospels and early Christianity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49777203740945,"sku":"CIN0300172613G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50817978532113,"sku":"GOR013211101","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52426471112977,"sku":"NLS9780300172614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300172613.jpg?v=1750812961"},{"product_id":"homeric-epics-and-the-gospel-of-mark-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9780300080124","title":"The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark","description":"In this groundbreaking book, Dennis R. MacDonald offers an entirely new view of the New Testament gospel of Mark. The author of the earliest gospel was not writing history, nor was he merely recording tradition, MacDonald argues. Close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognise the Homeric antecedents in Mark's story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes. Much like Odysseus, Mark's Jesus sails the seas with uncomprehending companions, encounters preternatural opponents, and suffers many things before confronting rivals who have made his house a den of thieves. In his death and burial, Jesus emulates Hector, although unlike Hector Jesus leaves his tomb empty. Mark's minor characters, too, recall Homeric predecessors: Bartimaeus emulates Tiresias; Joseph of Arimathea, Priam; and the women at the tomb, Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache. And, entire episodes in Mark mirror Homeric episodes, including stilling the sea, walking on water, feeding the multitudes, the Triumphal Entry, and Gethsemane. The book concludes with a discussion of the profound significance of this new reading of Mark for understanding the gospels and early Christianity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50509660061969,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50509662093585,"sku":"CIN0300080123VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52578721956113,"sku":"GOR005166293","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300080123.jpg?v=1751164268"},{"product_id":"luke-and-vergil-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781442230545","title":"Luke and Vergil","description":"These two volumes of The New Testament and Greek Literature are the magnum opus of biblical scholar Dennis R. MacDonald, outlining the profound connections between the New Testament and classical Greek poetry. MacDonald argues that the Gospel writers borrowed from established literary sources to create stories about Jesus that readers of the day would find convincing. In Luke and Vergil MacDonald proposes that the author of Luke-Acts followed Mark's lead in imitating Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but greatly expanded his project, especially in the Acts, but adding imitations not only of the epics but also of Euripides' Bacchae and Plato's Socratic dialogues. The potential imitations include spectacular miracles, official resistance, epiphanies, prison breaks, and more. The book applies mimesis criticism and uses side-by-side comparisons to show how early Christian authors portrayed the origins of Christianity as more compelling than the Augustan Golden Age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50832096723217,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50832097411345,"sku":"GOR014089488","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51553550958865,"sku":"NIN9781442230545","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52145381671185,"sku":"NLS9781442230545","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1442230541.jpg?v=1751209949"},{"product_id":"dionysian-gospel-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781506423456","title":"The Dionysian Gospel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.\" Dennis R. MacDonald offers a provocative explanation of those scandalous words of Christ from the Fourth Gospelan explanation that he argues would hardly have surprised some of the Gospel's early readers. John sounds themes that would have instantly been recognized as proper to the Greek god Dionysos (the Roman Bacchus), not least as he was depicted in Euripides's play \u003cb\u003eThe Bacchae\u003c\/b\u003e. A divine figure, the offspring of a divine father and human mother, takes on flesh to live among mortals but is rejected by his own. He miraculously provides wine and offers it as a sacred gift to his devotees, women prominent among them, dies a violent deathand returns to life. Yet John takes his drama in a dramatically different direction: while Euripides's Dionysos exacts vengeance on the Theban throne, the Johannine Christ offers life to his followers. MacDonald employs mimesis criticism to argue that the earliest evangelist not only imitated Euripides but expected his readers to recognize Jesus as greater than Dionysos.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51031926112529,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031927980305,"sku":"NIN9781506423456","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52584905670929,"sku":"NLS9781506423456","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1506423450.jpg?v=1755599921"},{"product_id":"two-shipwrecked-gospels-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781589836907","title":"Two Shipwrecked Gospels","description":"Dennis MacDonald is one of the most creative and intellectually innovative New Testament scholars of his generation. In this bold new book, MacDonald dares to re-imagine the textual landscape of early Gospel traditions. Attention is focused on reconstructing two lost Gospel texts, the Logoi of Jesus (the so-called Q source) and Papias' The Exposition of Logia about the Lord. MacDonald develops a new paradigm for reconstructing Q, and in the process generates a text nearly twice as long as traditional reconstructions. This he calls Q+. In relation to Papias' Exposition, MacDonald argues that work was a commentary on three gospel texts - Matthew, Mark and the Logoi of Jesus. Here MacDonald seeks to re-assemble the surviving fragments of Papias' work in their original order and he speculates concerning the material that would have filled the gaps between these fragments. MacDonald's work is brave, challenging, and stimulating. If his ideas prove correct the implication for New Testament scholarship and current understandings of the transmission of the Jesus tradition would be truly revolutionary.--Paul Foster, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51038468440337,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51038471422225,"sku":"NIN9781589836907","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52537483297041,"sku":"NLS9781589836907","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1589836901.jpg?v=1751088579"},{"product_id":"gospels-and-homer-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781442230521","title":"The Gospels and Homer","description":"These two volumes of The New Testament and Greek Literature are the magnum opus of biblical scholar Dennis R. MacDonald, outlining the profound connections between the New Testament and classical Greek poetry. MacDonald argues that the Gospel writers borrowed from established literary sources to create stories about Jesus that readers of the day would find convincing. In The Gospels and Homer MacDonald leads readers through Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, highlighting models that the authors of the Gospel of Mark and Luke-Acts may have imitated for their portrayals of Jesus and his earliest followers such as Paul. The book applies mimesis criticism to show the popularity of the targets being imitated, the distinctiveness in the Gospels, and evidence that ancient readers recognized these similarities. Using side-by-side comparisons, the book provides English translations of Byzantine poetry that shows how Christian writers used lines from Homer to retell the life of Jesus. The potential imitations include adventures and shipwrecks, savages living in cages, meals for thousands, transfigurations, visits from the dead, blind seers, and more. MacDonald makes a compelling case that the Gospel writers successfully imitated the epics to provide their readers with heroes and an authoritative foundation for Christianity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51687894090001,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51687894974737,"sku":"NIN9781442230521","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52145383637265,"sku":"NLS9781442230521","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1442230525.jpg?v=1753787249"},{"product_id":"from-the-earliest-gospel-q-to-the-gospel-of-mark-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781978703391","title":"From the Earliest Gospel (Q+) to the Gospel of Mark","description":"In this book, Dennis R. MacDonald argues that the intertextuality of the Synoptic Gospels is best explained not as the redaction of sources but more flexibly as the imitation of literary texts, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52354290483473,"sku":"NLS9781978703391","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52758738632977,"sku":"NIN9781978703391","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781978703391.jpg?v=1759399943"},{"product_id":"does-the-new-testament-imitate-homer-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9780300097702","title":"Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?","description":"In this provocative challenge to prevailing views of New Testament sources, Dennis R. MacDonald argues that the origins of passages in the book of Acts are to be found not in early Christian legends but in the epics of Homer. MacDonald focuses on four passages in the book of Acts, examines their potential parallels in the Iliad, and concludes that the author of Acts composed them using famous scenes in Homer’s work as a model. Tracing the influence of passages from the Iliad on subsequent ancient literature, MacDonald shows how the story generated a vibrant, mimetic literary tradition long before Luke composed the Acts. Luke could have expected educated readers to recognize his transformation of these tales and to see that the Christian God and heroes were superior to Homeric gods and heroes. Building upon and extending the analytic methods of his earlier book, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, MacDonald opens an original and promising appreciation not only of Acts but also of the composition of early Christian narrative in general.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52432961929489,"sku":"NLS9780300097702","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52456876343569,"sku":"GOR014528045","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780300097702.jpg?v=1759176493"},{"product_id":"luke-and-the-politics-of-homeric-imitation-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781978701380","title":"Luke and the Politics of Homeric Imitation","description":"Luke and the Politics of Homeric Imitation: Luke-Acts as Rival to the Aeneid argues that the author of Luke-Acts composed not a history but a foundation mythology to rival Vergil's Aeneid by adopting and ethically emulating the cultural capital of classical Greek poetry, especially Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Euripides's Bacchae. For example, Vergil and, more than a century later, Luke both imitated Homer's account of Zeus's lying dream to Agamemnon, Priam's escape from Achilles, and Odysseus's shipwreck and visit to the netherworld. Both Vergil and Luke, as well as many other intellectuals in the Roman Empire, engaged the great poetry of the Greeks to root new social or political realities in the soil of ancient Hellas, but they also rivaled Homer's gods and heroes to create new ones that were more moral, powerful, or compassionate. One might say that the genre of Luke-Acts is an oxymoron: a prose epic. If this assessment is correct, it holds enormous importance for understanding Christian origins, in part because one may no longer appeal to the Acts of the Apostles for reliable historical information. Luke was not a historian any more than Vergil was, and, as the Latin bard had done for the Augustine age, he wrote a fictional portrayal of the kingdom of God and its heroes, especially Jesus and Paul, who were more powerful, more ethical, and more compassionate than the gods and heroes of Homer and Euripides or those of Vergil's Aeneid.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52594044207377,"sku":"NLS9781978701380","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781978701380.jpg?v=1761068737"},{"product_id":"mimesis-and-intertextuality-in-antiquity-and-christianity-book-dennis-r-macdonald-9781563383359","title":"Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity","description":"In a riveting and groundbreaking collection of essays, a distinguished group of scholars examines the ways in which early Christian writers practiced mimesis the conscious imitation of literary models from the Greco-Roman world. While the study of intertextuality has influenced deeply the study of the Synoptic Gospels and other early Christian texts, few scholars of early Christian literature have enriched their observations with studies of mimesis. The apocryphal Acts of Andrew, for instance, contains extensive imitation of Homeric and Euripidean poetry, and both Luke-Acts and Mark contain extensive imitation of the Homeric epics. These essays examine the phenomenon of mimesis and intertextuality through an in-depth examination of particular texts, ranging from the apocryphal book of Tobit to Luke-Acts and the Synoptic Gospels. Contributors include: Francois Bovon (Harvard Divinity School); Thomas Louis Brodie (Dominican House of Study, Dublin, Ireland); Ellen Finkelpearl (Scripps College); Ronald F. Hock (University of Southern California); George W. E. Nickelsburg (University of Iowa); Judith Perkins (Saint Joseph College); and Gregory J. Riley (Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University). Dennis R. MacDonald teaches at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University and Director of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. He is the author of Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew and Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. For: Graduate students; general audience; professors; literary scholars\u0026gt;","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52659483181329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52659483934993,"sku":"NLS9781563383359","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781563383359.jpg?v=1762263145"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-dennis-r-macdonald.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}