Combining trenchant criticism with careful analysis, Luke Johnson calls for a radically new direction in New Testament studies, one that can change the way we view the entire phenomenon of early Christianity. In three fascinating probes of early Christianity—examining baptism, speaking in tongues, and meals in common—Johnson illustrates how a more wholistic approach opens up the wolrd of healings and religious power, of ecstasy and spirit—in short, the religious experience of real persons. Early Christian texts, he finds, reflect lives caught up in and defined by a power not in their control but engenedered instead by the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus.
Author
Luke Timothy Johnson is an American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Johnson's research interests encompass the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of early Christianity (particularly moral discourse), Luke-Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Epistle of James.
