Like Philo and Josephus, as well as those who earlier produced the Septuagint and the Hellenistic Jewish fragmentary texts, the writers of the New Testament were Jews writing in Greek. They may have been articulating and promoting a particular form of Jewish messianism that eventually became a distinctive form of religious belief, but in the first and early second centuries, those Christ-followers who were writing in various genres operated with many of the same assumptions as their Jewish counterparts in the land of Israel and in other places such as Alexandria and Rome. This collection of essays, spanning the scholarly career of Carl R. Holladay, investigates the Hellenistic Jewish writings in their own contexts and explores how they illuminate the writings of the New Testament. Included are six new essays on such topics as Hellenistic Judaism, the Beatitudes, and Luke-Acts.

Born 1943; 1975 PhD University of Cambridge; 1975-80 Yale Divinity School; 1980-2019 Emory University's Candler School of Theology; 1983-91 Associate Dean; 1990-2002 Professor of New Testament; 1992-94 Dean of the Faculty and Academic Affairs; 2002-19 Charles Howard Candler Professor of New Testament; since 2019 Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of New Testament.