An earlier version of this work was produced as a Ph.D. thesis for the University of Glasgow. I appreciate greatly the rigorous questioning of my examiners, Professors John Riches and John Webster, and indeed their subsequent support. As this work moved to its present format Dr John Court was of great assistance, and Dr Katharina Brett a source of much patience.

Over the course of my studies I received financial support from the University of Glasgow, the Cross Trust (Perth) and my parents, Ronan and Lesley Paddison. To all these individuals and committees I am very grateful. My current post at the University of Gloucestershire has afforded me much-appreciated time to prepare this monograph and continue thinking about theological hermeneutics.

A host of people, far too many to mention, have been willing to talk theology and hermeneutics with me, and have been a constant source of provocation. Postgraduate friends – especially Marije Altorf, Mark Brummitt and Karen Wenell – broadened my reading and knowledge immeasurably, and assuaged the isolation of Ph.D. research. My supervisor, Professor John M. G. Barclay, was an endlessly generous source of scholarship, patience, guidance and enthusiasm. It is very fitting that he should be writing the foreword to this monograph.

There are, thankfully, people outside the ranks of New Testament studies and hermeneutics. Three in particular – Lesley Paddison, Dimitri Vastardis and Ben Leney – proved themselves to be superbly diligent and interested readers of the typescript, for which I am extremely thankful.