This thesis will answer, “How do ethnic labels function in the Gospel of John?” In order to answer this question properly, this thesis draws on social-scientific theories on ethnic groups, deviancy, and labeling. The primary examples of ethnic labeling for this thesis are John 4:9 and 8:48. In each instance, members from “the Jews” (ʼΙουδαῖοι) and “Samaritans” label Jesus as a member of each other’s group. The Gospel of John’s dual ethnic labeling of Jesus participates in a history of discourse between “the Jews” and “Samaritans.” Both people groups adhere to an “us” versus “them” mentality because they both identify themselves as Israelites while rejecting the other group’s claim to that identity. The parameters of the discourse are determined by not only how each ethnic group identifies themselves but particularly how they construct the category for the other’s group. Once the parameters of discourse are in place, then we can address the function of ethnic labels in the Gospel of John. On both occasions Jesus is labeled because he deviates from what are deemed to be acceptable practices as a member of “the Jews.” The function of Jesus’s dual ethnic labeling in the Gospel of John is to establish a new pattern of practices and categories for the “children of God” who are a trans-ethnic group united as a fictive-kinship and who are embedded within the Judean ethnic group’s culture and traditions. The Johannine Jesus is portrayed as “the Jews’” Messiah (1:45; 20:31), who brings “salvation from the Jews” (4:22), and who is “the savior of the world” (4:42). The Gospel of John presents Jesus as broadening the more restrictive boundaries within “his own people” (1:11) in order to “draw all people to myself” (12:32).

The prevailing analyses of the structure of the Gospel of Mark represent modifications of the form-critical approach and reflect its tendency to regard the Gospel not as a unified narrative but as an anthology of sayings and acts of Jesus which were selected and more or less adapted to reflect the early Church's theological understanding of Christ. However, a narrative-critical reading of the Gospel reveals that the opening proclamation, the Transfiguration, and the concluding proclamation provide a definite framework for a close pattern of recurring words, repeated questions, interpolated narrative, and inter locking parallels which unfold the basic theme of the Gospel: the person and work of Christ.

The term liturgy itself has many expressions in the Old Testament, New Testament, and in English. Among them the liturgy is used as the term that can be applied to all forms of public worship. There are some elements such as preaching, sacrament, prayer et al., in the liturgy. The liturgy was started from Eden in the Old Testament, the liturgy was continued as the form of altar in the Patriarchal age and by the tent and temple in Moses and king David’s ages. In the age of king David, the liturgy of confession of sin and honesty more than the moral perfection was emphasized. After the Diaspora, the synagogue became the place of liturgy of Israel. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ gave the meaning of another new liturgy through his Holy Supper. In early Christianity, the liturgy was the festival, sharing, and relief with the proclamation of the gospel of Christ’s resurrection and his Second coming, the baptism, offering, professing, and prayer. From the Second century the Lord’s Day liturgy was started. After the fourth century, there was some change until the seventh century in the Eastern Church, and all liturgical rites were fixed after the seventh century. In the Western Church, after the ninth century, the liturgical rite was unified by the Roman rite. At the end of the medieval age, the Mass was a play of priests, the believers were spectators. There was not a liturgy for God, and as well it was the starting point of Reformation. The Reformers rejected the Mass and the Transubstantiation of the Roman church, argued for the reformation of liturgy and the liturgy in the mother language. The greatest Reformer John Calvin claims that the object of the liturgy is only the glory to God, the Scripture and the tradition of the early church as the norm of public liturgical rite, the balance between the Word and Sacrament, the eternal and spiritual liturgy. In the European church, although the reformation of liturgy was started by the first Reformer Luther, nearly all churches in European countries got under Calvin’s influence soon. In Switzerland, Zwingli and Farel led the Reformation, and Geneva, under Calvin’s direction, became the most influential city. In the Anglican Church, the Mass became their liturgy till after the Reformation. In Germany, for thirty years many people had to spill blood for the freedom of liturgy. In Scotland, the reformation of liturgy was led by John Knox. Netherlands obtained freedom of liturgy after a long struggling under the conduct of William, Prince of Orange, In France, the Huguenots had to make many religious wars for getting the freedom of faith and liturgy. Francis Turretin is the greatest Orthodox Reformed theologian. He lived as a professor, minister and theologian in his days. He was a loyal successor of Reformer Calvin and a protector of the Orthodox theology in the seventeenth century, the epitomizer of Reformed theology, and the Scholastic theology. His immortal work, ‘Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Institutio Theologiae Elencticae)’, is the eminent illustration of the theology of the seventeenth century, and polemical. His scholastic theology is positively re-examined. With Turretin, the reason only serves for faith, it never possesses or surpasses the faith, God and his Word is the only basis of Turretin’s theology and liturgy. His theology also is in the Calvinism tradition. To Turretin, the liturgy is the higher school of God’s grace, the teaching in the liturgy, the communication with God, God’s commandment, the life itself, and the gospel liturgy by the spirit and truth. The liturgy of the Korean church was started by Underwood, the first missionary of Korea. In the early period of the Korean church, the Nevius methods influenced the Korean mission decisively. The first Directory of the Korean church was published by Moffett. The liturgical rites of the Free Church in America was introduced mainly in Korea, still those forms are functioning widely as the model of liturgical renewal in Korean church. Many Christians in Korea worship for the blessing and the human’s happiness rather than God, and there are many pagan factors in the Christian’s liturgy, and the sacrament is far from the liturgy. It is difficult to find a Christian worshiping with his whole life. On account of the desire for church growth in the Korean church, if the church can increase its numbers, they think that liturgy does not matter. Because the Korean church is disregarding the tradition, object, nature, content, and reason of liturgy according to Turretin, the Korean church needs the continuous effort for the renewal and reformation of liturgy and the right establishment of the liturgical theology. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Church History and Church Policy / unrestricted

This study’s focus is Jesus’ significant representation of the kingdom of God utilizable for mission today – a topic of importance for contemporary Christianity’s sustainable reaction to a globalizing world. Christianity should not have to be a spectator to globalization but one of its agents, one of the forces at work by extending interconnection between peoples, shared ideas and promoted social, political and cultural links. How should Christian churches conceive of their mission within the context of a globalizing world? It is remarkable that after two millennia of Jesus’ life, ‘mission in the kingdom of God’ is still of great importance for human life on earth. Indeed, contemporary secularists might not commend religion with the custody of such a fundamental burden of responsibility. Yet, considering the times we live in, a foundation of sustainable values for earth are inescapably important. Nevertheless, from what foundational values does Christianity draw to bear witness of the divine in a secular age? When considering all the factors mentioned, what foundational ethics and virtues of Christianity that we bear witness to are still believable in a secular age? The purpose of this study is not to provide a complete response to the question of mission of the church in a globalizing world, but to establish a framework within which answers may be sought. The study is informed from a variety of disciplines such as politics, cultural theory and politics, which are not the usual fields of New Testament Studies. Therefore, this study presents itself in five chapters informing one another. Chapter 1 addresses the issues that surface from current missional reaction and the broader implications that globalization has on changing social and institutional realities and the churches’ response to it. Chapter 2 identifies indispensable characteristics of the early twentieth century Social Gospel movement to implement those values as essential building blocks in globalized mission. In Chapter 3 investigates the potential use of Postcolonial Theory for categorizing postcolonial characteristics of marginalization, oppression, neo-imperialism and neocolonialism. Chapter 4 applies the outcomes of Chapter 1 through 3 with which Richard Horsley’s proposed perspective on Jesus’ mission in Roman Palestine as the ‘renewal of Israel’ is considered to discern about the first century world and the implications it has for the third millennium. The Christian faith, among others, has marginalizing practices derived from centuries old traditions and biased interpretations of Scripture. We see examples of it strewn over two millennia. Chapter 5 concludes this cursory study by summarizing the valuable and constructive characteristics in mission, globalization, postcolonial studies and the Social Gospel. These characteristics can inform the Christian faith in its responsibility of living, and letting others participate, through ‘mission’, in the kingdom of God. Because if we do not, what is still believable today about the significant life of Jesus? / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / tm2015 / New Testament Studies / PhD / Unrestricted

he diploma thesis called "P r e s e n t a t i o n o f F e m a l e C h a r a c t e r s i n t he O l d a n d N e w T e s t a m e n t s " endeavours to examine the depiction of female characters in the texts of the Old and New Testaments. The deuterocanonical books and addictions to Esther and Daniel are taken into account too. A list of the female characters and the interpretation of their names proves not only that there are many of them but also their importance. The classification suggested by this thesis is based on women's role in the story of our salvation and representative examples of these characters show their typical features as well as the personal ones. The characters are further described by means of the theological and historical context. Conclusions of these analyses are confronted with the commonly shared views and stereotypes in particular because of their claim that the Bible strongly promotes the patriarchal life concept. The author has concluded that the female characters in the Bible are much more important than people commonly think. Biblical authors naturally shared the patriarchal view of the world, in spite of it we can assume that they didn't belittle the importance of women. T

What sources informed the resurrection narrative of Jesus in the Gospel of John? Some scholars argue that the author of John used the Synoptic Gospels along with oral traditions as sources, but others maintain that John used only independent traditions to write his resurrection story. This paper argues that John did not use the Synoptics for this narrative because the reconstructed history of the Johannine community provides an adequate basis for postulating independent traditions which succeed at explaining both the similarities and differences between John and the Synoptics. While it does not claim to prove that the author was unaware of the Synoptics, it maintains that the evidence for the use of those Gospels in addition to tradition is too weak, whereas independent traditions alone can account for the material. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Athanasius of Alexandria’s list of canonical scriptures has often been taken as a natural terminus in the long, inevitable process that led to the development of a fixed “New Testament.” Recently, however, a number of scholars have challenged this point of view, arguing instead that citations, canon lists, and manuscript copies must each be placed within their own distinctive social and historical contexts before any judgment about the relationship of a given passage or book to the shifting category “sacred writing” can be made. When this careful attention to social context is applied to the use and reproduction of the work known as the Epistle to the Hebrews, a complex story of the book’s reception emerges. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written about, quoted, and reproduced to a variety of ends throughout the early Christian period. As I show, its reception was influenced not by canonical concerns per se, but instead by the utility of its theological arguments, its shifting relationship to the Pauline corpus, the history of its translation into Latin, and, to a lesser extent, its appearance in lists of sacred scripture produced by fourth- and fifth-century theologians. By placing ancient discussions of Hebrews’ status within bibliographic methodologies, assessing citation patterns in light of broader compositional and citational practices, and situating Christian manuscript evidence within the editorial customs of the time, I argue that the “canonicity” of Hebrews was never seriously questioned. Instead, historical accident, late antique book cultures, changing attitudes toward the function of apostolic authorship, and the varying transmission of scriptures in Greek and Latin conspired to produce a complex textual and material record. As the reception of even this one book shows, the transmission of early Christian writings rarely conformed to the supposedly rational decisions of church leaders about the inclusion or exclusion of certain works.

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In this dissertation we are not only converned in studying the development of the ecumenical movement, but our attention will also be focused upon this question, "In what particulars in the ecumenical movement relevant to the New Testament Church?" Our first concern will be to give an account of this movement noting personnel, places, conferences, emphases, etc. Then we shall compare and contrast the ecumenical movement with the organism called the church, the earliest record of which is in the New Testament.

[pt] Esta pesquisa desenvolve temas que relacionam o cristianismo e a atividade militar no cânon do Novo Testamento e nos Padres da Igreja. Para fornecer um necessário quadro contextual, é realizada uma exposição sobre a atividade militar no Império Romano, investigando a sua evolução ao longo dos séculos e apontando as principais características desse serviço. No cânon do Novo Testamento, investigase o tratamento intencional dispensado aos militares na obra lucana, sob a influência do papel que o centurião Cornélio exercerá no tema teológico do ingresso dos gentios na Igreja. A linguagem militar das cartas paulinas é abordada em seu variado emprego, utilizada em sentido metafórico, como recurso retórico militar e nas imagens que acompanham a escatologia paulina baseada na esperança veterotestamentária. Por fim, esta dissertação apresenta o surgimento da questão militar nos Padres da Igreja, com ênfase em Tertuliano e Orígenes, aprofundando as razões que os levaram a opor-se ao serviço militar. / [en] This research develops questions that relate Christianity and the military in the canon of the New Testament and in the Fathers of the Church. In order to provide a necessary contextual framework, a study was held regarding military activity in the Roman Empire, investigating its evolution over the centuries and referring the main characteristics of this service. In the canon of the New Testament, this work will provide an investigation about the intentional treatment of the military in Lucan s work due to the influence the role of the centurion Cornelius will play in the theological question of the admission of the Gentiles into the Church. The military language in Pauline letters is approached in its varied use, as a metaphorical sense, as a military rhetorical resource and in the images that accompanies the Pauline eschatology based on the Old Testament hope. Finally, this dissertation presents the emerging of the military question on the Fathers of the Church, specially on Tertullian and Origen, deepening the reasons that led them to oppose military service.