{"title":"Shelly Matthews","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"acts-of-the-apostles-an-introduction-and-study-guide-book-shelly-matthews-9780567671233","title":"The Acts of The Apostles: An Introduction and Study Guide","description":"The book of Acts opens with the dramatic story of tongues of flame descending upon believers at Pentecost and the prophecy of an egalitarian dispensation of the Spirit being fulfilled. Yet, as the narrative unfolds, we become aware of a tension between the socially egalitarian promise of the Pentecost story and the author’s underlying concern to provide reassurance for his elite patron Theophilus that Jesus followers do not disturb the existing social order.  In this guide, Acts is read as a struggle to tame the tongues of fire. Acts mutes the egalitarian promise of the Spirit through presenting an ‘orderly account’ (as its author calls it) of the Jesus movement that appeals to elite sensibilities. And, at the same time, the narrative contains contradictions, gaps and fissures that suggest the outlines of a more complex, and even subversive, religious movement.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49536653230353,"sku":"GOR010063048","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51087900475665,"sku":"NIN9780567671233","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51449688424721,"sku":"GOR014284437","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0567671232.jpg?v=1750879655"},{"product_id":"violence-in-the-new-testament-book-shelly-matthews-9780567025005","title":"Violence in the New Testament","description":"New Testament passages suggesting that early Christ-believers were violently persecuted (the 'stone throwing' passages from John, the 'persecuted from town to town' passages in Matthew, the stoning of Stephen in Acts, Paul's hardship catalogue in II Corinthians, etc.) are frequently read positivistically as windows onto 1st century persecution; at the other extreme, they are sometimes dismissed as completely a-historical. In either case, scholars up until now have provided little in the way of methodological reflection on how they have reached such conclusions. A further problematic issue in previous readings of passages suggesting such violence is that the perpetrators of violence are frequently cast as 'Jews' while the violated are cast as 'Christians,' in spite of the growing consensus that it is impossible to tease out these two distinct and separate religious identities, Jew and Christian, from first century texts. This volume takes up crucial methodological questions about how to read passages suggesting violence among Jews in texts that eventually became part of the New Testament canon. It situates this intra-religious violence within the violence of the Roman imperial order. It provides new readings of these texts that move beyond the 'Jew as violator'\/'Christian as violated' binary.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50032043458833,"sku":"CIN0567025004G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52104266285329,"sku":"CIN0567025004VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52481529872657,"sku":"NLS9780567025005","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0567025004.jpg?v=1751986577"},{"product_id":"perfect-martyr-book-shelly-matthews-9780195393323","title":"Perfect Martyr","description":"This book analyzes Stephen's perfection, both in terms of rhetorical fittingness, and Christian tradition concerning the significance of his dying forgiveness prayer. It questions the event's historicity, underscores Acts' rhetorical violence, and reads Acts against narratives of the martyrdom of James as a means to a richer history of early Jewish-Christian relations.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52433213915409,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52433214603537,"sku":"NLS9780195393323","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780195393323.jpg?v=1759177300"},{"product_id":"perfect-martyr-book-shelly-matthews-9780199924653","title":"Perfect Martyr","description":"Recent studies have examined martyrdom as a means of constructing Christian identity, but until now none has focused on Stephen, the first Christian martyr. For the author of Luke-Acts, the stoning of Stephen-- even more than the death of Jesus-- underscores the perfidy of non-believing Jews, the extravagant mercy of Christians, and the inevitable rift that will develop between these two social groups. Stephen's dying prayer that his persecutors be forgiven-the prayer for which he is hailed in Christian tradition as the \"perfect martyr\" plays a crucial role in drawing an unprecedented distinction between Jewish and early Christian identities.  Shelly Matthews deftly situates Stephen's story within the emerging discourse of early Christian martyrdom. Though Stephen is widely acknowledged to be an actual historical figure, Matthews points to his name, his manner of death, and to other signs that his martyrdom was ideally suited to the rhetorical purposes of Acts and its author, Luke: to uphold Roman views of security and respectability, to show non-believing Jews to disadvantage, and to convey that Christianity was an exceptionally merciful religion. By drawing parallels between Acts and stories of the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, Matthews challenges the coherent canonical narrative of Acts and questions common assumptions about the historicity of Stephen's martyrdom. She also offers a radical new reading of Stephen's last prayer, showing the complex and sometimes violent effects of its modern interpretations.    Perfect Martyr illuminates the Stephen story as never before, offering a deeply nuanced picture of violence, solidarity, and resistance among Jews and early Christians, a key to understanding the early development of a non-Jewish Christian identity, and an innovative reframing of one of the most significant stories in the Bible.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52486702694673,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52486703710481,"sku":"NLS9780199924653","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780199924653.jpg?v=1759859657"},{"product_id":"walk-in-the-ways-of-wisdom-book-shelly-matthews-9781563384066","title":"Walk in the Ways of Wisdom","description":"When she published In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins in 1983, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza revolutionized the world of New Testament studies. She offered in that book a method for interpreting early Christian history that recovers the role of women in pre-Pauline Christian communities. She then painted a portrait of the early Christian ekklesia of women as a point of departure for a feminist biblical spirituality. Later works engaged subjects such as hermeneutics, the book of Revelation, and rhetoric and ethics.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52673652916497,"sku":"NLS9781563384066","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781563384066.jpg?v=1762297601"},{"product_id":"first-converts-book-shelly-matthews-9780804735926","title":"First Converts","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt has often been said that rich pagan women, much more so than men, were attracted both to early Judaism and Christianity. This book provides a new reading of sources from which this truism springs, focusing on two texts from the turn of the first century, Josephus's \u003ci\u003eAntiquities\u003c\/i\u003e and Luke's \u003ci\u003eActs\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe book studies representation, analyzing the repeated portrayal of rich women as aiding and\/or converting to early Judaism in its various forms. It also shows how these sources can be used in reconstructing women's history, thus engaging current feminist debates about the relationship of rhetorical presentation of women in texts to historical reality.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBecause many of these texts speak of high-standing women's conversion to Judaism and early Christianity, this book also engages in the current debate about whether early Judaism was a missionary religion. The author argues that focusing on these stories of women converts and adherents, which have been largely ignored in previous discussions of the missionary question, sets the missionary question in a new, more adequate framework.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe first chapter elucidates a story in Josephus's \u003ci\u003eAntiquities\u003c\/i\u003e of the mishaps of two Roman matrons devoted to Isis and Jewish cults by considering the common Hellenistic topos linking high-standing women, promiscuity, and religious impropriety. The remaining chapters demonstrate that in spite of this topos, Josephus, Luke, and other religious apologists did tell stories of rich women's associations with their communities for positive rhetorical effect. In so doing, the book challenges the widespread assumption that women's association with \"foreign\" religious cults was always derided, questions scholarly arguments about public and private roles in antiquity, and invites reflection on issues of mission and conversion within the larger framework of Greco-Roman benefaction.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53014021374225,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53014021800209,"sku":"NIN9780804735926","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780804735926.jpg?v=1768142892"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-shelly-matthews.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}