Mark Luke

Abandoned by their American GI fathers and Korean mothers, four young boys live under a bridge as a family with Matthew, the oldest, serving as the father. Sam, an American soldier invites them to the Christmas party on the base, where the boys begin a new life. Sam and his wife adopt Matthew who continues to worry about all those left behind. An inspiring story of self-reliance, compassion and moral courage in the face of daunting odds, this book deals with racial prejudice, abandonment and the responsibility of being a father to a family. 125th Author's Birthday Edition and 50th Anniversary of First Edition

Following a life-changing accident that left him paralyzed at age 51, Arthur Ullian began to realize that not only did life in a wheelchair make him feel "different," but he had always felt like an outsider to some degree, having grown up Jewish in the elite WASP world of prep schools, cotillion classes, sailing yachts, and restricted clubs.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul takes you on a journey through the Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles providing a new solution to a literary puzzle that has vexed biblical scholars for over two-hundred years--The Synoptic Problem. When the Synoptic evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke sat down to write their gospels did they have copies of some of the epistles? This book examines the Synoptic Gospels, Hebrews, and Paul's Epistles finding many intriguing similarities, suggesting that the Synoptic evangelists used extensive parts of the epistles to weave into their stories of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. David Oliver Smith then compares these epistle-based passages to the theoretical lost gospel Q and finds that a large portion of what many New Testament scholars consider to be contained in Q may have its inspiration in the Epistles.

This groundbreaking study poses a solution to what one scholar has called "one of the most difficult research problems in the history of ideas"—the Synoptic problem. The phenomenon and mystery of three similar but different Synoptic Gospels has for centuries challenged some of the best minds of academia and the church. How can we explain the differences and similarities among Matthew, Mark and Luke? Which Gospel was written first? To what extent did the Evangelists depend on oral tradition, written sources or each other? John Wenham courageously opposes the reigning two-document theory-that Mark was the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke independently using Mark and a lost source of sayings of Jesus labeled Q. Through careful argument and analysis, he seeks to defend an alternative theory that satisfactorily accounts for what he argues is some degree of structural dependence but nevertheless a surprising degree of verbal independence among the Synoptics. This brave new revisioning of the writing of the Synoptics redates Matthew, Mark and Luke prior to A.D. 55. Insightful and provocative, Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke offers a fresh look at a hard problem as well as an interesting perspective on the inner workings of the early church. It is a book to be reckoned with—and sure to stir up scholarly controversy.

With characteristic boldness and careful reassessment of the evidence, MacDonald offers an alternative reconstruction of Q and an alternative solution to the Synoptic Problem: the Q+/Papias Hypothesis. To do so, he reconstructs and interprets two lost books about Jesus: the earliest Gospel, which was used as a source by the authors of Mark, Matthew, and Luke; and the earliest commentary on the Gospels, by Papias of Hierapolis, who apparently knew Mark, Matthew, and the lost Gospel, which he considered to be an alternative Greek translation of a Semitic Matthew. MacDonald also explores how these two texts, well known into the fourth century, shipwrecked with the canonization of the New Testament and the embarrassment at outmoded eschatologies in both the lost Gospel and Papias’s Exposition.

The life of Jesus is at the heart of the Christian faith, and is one of the great works of Western literature. This book presents the story in a new form, more accessible than ever before. It weaves the four separate gospel accounts into one continuous story. And it presents the story in a new translation: traditional, but clear. Here the reader can find the episodes laid out in an understandable narrative sequence. The nativity at Bethlehem is followed by the visit of the wise men. And for each scene the rich details are collected from all the gospel accounts, giving a complete picture of complex events like the Sermon on the Mount or Jesus' climactic encounter with Pilate. The new language is clear as well. It is traditional scripture inconspicuously updated for modern readers, supplemented with contemporary language for difficult concepts, and using the grand and familiar language of the King James where appropriate. Low-key explanations fill in the details. Short footnotes explain the key concepts, and longer endnotes provide additional depth. This book opens the gospels to everyone--Christians who want to better understand their faith, and general readers who want to rediscover a great work of literature.

The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today examines oral tradition and its role in shaping the stories about Jesus we encounter in the New Testament—and ultimately in our understanding of Christianity. Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally—including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament—how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus’ message but helped shape it. A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman draws on a range of disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, to examine the role of memory in the creation of the Gospels. Explaining how oral tradition evolves based on the latest scientific research, he demonstrates how the act of telling and retelling impacts the story, the storyteller, and the listener—crucial insights that challenge our typical historical understanding of the silent period between when Jesus lived and died and when his stories began to be written down. As he did in his previous books on religious scholarship, debates on New Testament authorship, and the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman combines his deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship in a compelling and eye-opening narrative that will change the way we read and think about these sacred texts.

When world-class biblical scholar Bart Ehrman first began to study the texts of the Bible in their original languages he was startled to discover the multitude of mistakes and intentional alterations that had been made by earlier translators. In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman tells the story behind the mistakes and changes that ancient scribes made to the New Testament and shows the great impact they had upon the Bible we use today. He frames his account with personal reflections on how his study of the Greek manuscripts made him abandon his once ultraconservative views of the Bible. Since the advent of the printing press and the accurate reproduction of texts, most people have assumed that when they read the New Testament they are reading an exact copy of Jesus's words or Saint Paul's writings. And yet, for almost fifteen hundred years these manuscripts were hand copied by scribes who were deeply influenced by the cultural, theological, and political disputes of their day. Both mistakes and intentional changes abound in the surviving manuscripts, making the original words difficult to reconstruct. For the first time, Ehrman reveals where and why these changes were made and how scholars go about reconstructing the original words of the New Testament as closely as possible. Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our cherished biblical stories and widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself stem from both intentional and accidental alterations by scribes -- alterations that dramatically affected all subsequent versions of the Bible.