In the first half of the nineteenth century, changes in philosophy and aesthetics as well as the increasing prominence of ‘pure’ instrumental music brought to a head questions over the meaning and value of music. While the merit of most of the fine arts (literature, painting, sculpture) was beyond serious doubt, instrumental music’s supposed lack of content posed a peculiar problem to writers. This chapter presents four main Romantic strategies used to argue for music’s meaning, including the use of programmes as well as the rethinking of the relations between music and feeling, music and words, and between content and form. Covering the first half of the nineteenth century, it encompasses the view of philosophers and composers as well as writers and critics, from Schopenhauer, Hoffmann, and Tieck to Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brendel, and Hanslick.

An introduction to the volume with rationale for the second edition and chapter summaries.

In a detailed study of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Stephen Barton examines the character of God in each narrative. He shows that controversial claims about God are implied at every point in the gospel stories of Jesus, shaped as they are by an apocalyptic worldview and by the parting of the ways between the synagogue and the church.

Provides an analysis of historical Jesus studies and the key interpretative issues scholars seek to address. Surveying scholarship from the eighteenth century on, Fowl disentangles the guiding assumptions of historical Jesus research in its quest for a dispassionate assessment of historical ‘facts’ and interpretative frameworks. As case studies, Fowl compares the major accounts of Jesus offered by John Dominic Crossan, N. T. Wright and Luke Timothy Johnson.

Narrates a shift in reading methods from notions of objectivity and authorial intent to a reader-oriented approach which emphasizes the reader as the subject who interprets the text. Drawing upon the philosophical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer, Schneiders argues that reading scripture is an event with the potential to transform the reader through the transcendent reality mediated by the text.

The author of the Gospel of Luke writes his story of Jesus against the widest possible backdrop. It is the story of the salvation of Israel and the nations in fulfilment of the promises of God in the scriptures. The new kingdom community which Jesus inaugurates by word and deed is one which challenges his contemporaries by transforming values and offering forgiveness and welcome to people of every condition and status.

Provides an overview of current hypotheses about the sources used in the creation of the gospels and the implications source-critical theories have for gospels interpretation. After a discussion of the relation of the Gospel of John to the synoptics, attention is given to relations between the synoptics, and an account is given of the ongoing scholarly debate surrounding the ‘Q hypothesis’ and its rivals.

McCarthy builds on a trend in the theology of scripture according to which the truth of the text is discovered in the ‘performance’ of the text in the lives of individuals and communities. On this basis, he offers a series of cameos in which the ‘exegesis’ of a gospel text takes biographical form, and the lives of saints and martyrs become a kind of extension of the scriptural canon.

Frances Young explores the changing relationship in the history of the early church between the gospel texts and the determination of true doctrine. She shows that, even when the four gospels had been accepted as canonical, what shaped doctrine most was the overarching sense of what scripture as a whole was about, epitomized in the ’Rule of Faith’ and the creeds.

The Gospel of Mark unites ideas of christology and discipleship within a hermeneutical framework of Jewish apocalyptic. Mark’s story of Jesus, characterized by urgency, action and conflict, tells of the anointed warrior king who comes to establish his kingdom and liberate the oppressed from powers imperial and satanic. He does so, paradoxically, by submitting to death on a Roman cross, a death interpreted in the light of the scriptures as a ransom for many.

Simon Gathercole surveys the various non-canonical gospels and their respective christologies. He first orients the reader to the field of research, noting the competitive positioning of non-canonical gospels relative to the four canonical gospels. He then shows how more recent scholarship has sought either to blur the canonical boundary or to compare and contrast the canonical gospels with their non-canonical counterparts in respect of history, theology and ethics.

Reads the Gospel of Matthew for its main content and themes. Deines shows how the gospel reveals Jesus’ universal significance by means of his Jewish particularity, signalled by his reformulation of Davidic messiahship and Abrahamic heritage. In this light, Matthew is interpreted as a gospel for all Christians, a new scripture for a new time and a new people whose life is shaped by Jesus’ life and teaching.

Studies the ‘afterlife’ of the gospels into the public realm – the realm of morality and politics. According to Bader-Saye, the gospels are misunderstood if they are confined to the realm of the personal. Rather, the gospels are a summons to a moral life expressive of shared ‘deep themes’ of liberation, dispossession and love. He elaborates on this through a critical appreciation of the way these gospel themes have been taken up in modern discussions of ethics and politics from Immanuel Kant to Romand Coles.

Examines the reception of the canonical gospels and of their ‘effects’ in particular times and places. Here, the first part gives an account of reception history as a relatively new discipline in gospel studies, while the second part offers as a case study some of the ways in which the synoptic stories of the women who visit the tomb of Jesus have been represented in the visual arts.