Adela Yarbro Collins

Professor Adela Yarbro Collins brings to bear on the text of the first Gospel the latest historical-critical perspectives, providing a full treatment of such controversial issues as the relationship of canonical Mark to the "Secret Gospel of Mark" and the text of the Gospel, including its longer endings. She situates the Gospel, with its enigmatic portrait of the misunderstood Messiah, in the context of Jewish and Greco-Roman literature of the first century. Her comments draw on her profound knowledge of apocalyptic literature as well as on the traditions of popular biography in the Greco-Roman world to illuminate the overall literary form of the Gospel. The commentary also introduces an impressive store of data on the language and style of Mark, illustrated from papyrological and epigraphical sources. Collins is in constructive dialogue with the wide range of scholarship on Mark that has been produced in the twentieth century. Her work will be foundational for Markan scholarship in the first half of the twenty-first century.

A fascinating reception history of the theological, ethical, and social themes in the letters of Paul In the first decades after the death of Jesus, the letters of the apostle Paul were the chief written resource for Christian believers, as well as for those seeking to formulate Christian thought and practice. But in the years following Paul's death, the early church witnessed a proliferation of contested—and often opposing—interpretations of his writings, as teaching was passed down, debated, and codified. In this engaging study, Adela Yarbro Collins traces the reception history of major theological, ethical, and social topics in the letters of Paul from the days of his apostleship through the first centuries of Christianity. She explores the evolution of Paul’s cosmic eschatology, his understanding of the resurrected body, marriage and family ethics, the role of women in the early church, and his theology of suffering. Paying special attention to the ways these evolving interpretations provided frameworks for church governance, practice, and tradition, Collins illuminates the ways that Paul’s ideas were understood, challenged, and ultimately transformed by their earliest audiences.

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice – either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

The essays gathered here provide a panoramic view of current thinking on biblical texts that play important roles in contemporary struggles for social justice – either as inspiration or impediment. Here, from the hands of an ecumenical array of leading biblical scholars, are fresh and compelling resources for thinking biblically about what justice is and what it demands. Individual essays treat key debates, themes, and texts, locating each within its historical and cultural settings while also linking them to the most pressing justice concerns of the twenty-first century. The volume aims to challenge academic and ecclesiastical complacency and highlight key avenues for future scholarship and action.

This book traces the history of the idea that the king and later the messiah is Son of God, from its origins in ancient Near Eastern royal ideology to its Christian appropriation in the New Testament. Both highly regarded scholars, Adela Yarbro Collins and John J. Collins argue that Jesus was called "the Son of God" precisely because he was believed to be the messianic king. This belief and tradition, they contend, led to the identification of Jesus as preexistent, personified Wisdom, or a heavenly being in the New Testament canon. However, the titles Jesus is given are historical titles tracing back to Egyptian New Kingdom ideology. Therefore the title "Son of God" is likely solely messianic and not literal. King and Messiah as Son of God is distinctive in its range, spanning both Testaments and informed by ancient Near Eastern literature and Jewish noncanonical literature.

For the first time in complete form, the results of recent analyses of the Apocalypse are presented in a way that is easily understood by the beginning student and challenging to the scholar looking for a fresh approach. In a clear and vivid manner, Adela Yarbro Collins discusses the authorship of the book of Revelation, when it was written, the situation it addressed, the social themes it considered, and the psychological meaning behind apocalyptic language.

In this volume of collected essays, Adela Yarbro Collins provides a wide-reaching insight into her work on the Apocalypse that spanned her professional career from 1973 to 2021. Emphasizing the variety in form and content of the early and late antique Christian apocalypses within the genre, she focusses on the apocalyptic Son of Man sayings in the Synoptic Gospels and raises questions about the impact of Revelation on its ancient and modern audiences regarding ethical norms and the problem of violence. Also examined in detail are a range of themes in the Apocalypse, feminine symbolism, the role of the city of Pergamon in the work, its use of vivid description (ekphrasis), its millennial themes, portraits of rulers, and time and history, especially the author's contemporary history. The collection is rounded off with a discussion of the challenge of apocalypticism to the project of creating a New Testament theology.

This volume presents essays by Adela Yarbro Collins on the Gospel of Mark originally published between 1993 and 2021. The earlier ones were written while preparing to write the Hermeneia commentary on Mark, published in 2007. The later ones reflect the author's continuing interest in the interpretation of this Gospel. Major foci of the collection are the genre of Mark and of the passion narrative, and the meaning of the death of Jesus. She approaches the portrayal of Jesus in Mark by analyzing a particularly striking miracle-story, the walking on the water; the title Son of God; Jesus's action in the temple; the messianic secret; and particular aspects of Jesus's Jewishness. Another important topic is the significance of the empty tomb, that is, how the author of Mark envisioned the resurrected life of Jesus. Clues to this are found in the cultural contexts in which the Gospel was written.

This edition of The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation by Adela Yabro Collins is a digital scan of the 1976 Harvard Theological Review edition. Adela Yarbro Collins is the Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at the Yale University Divinity School. She was Professor of New Testament in the faculty of the University of Chicago Divinity School from 1991 to 2000; Professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame from 1985 to 1991; and a member of the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary from 1973 to 1985. She holds the Ph. D. from Harvard University in New Testament and Christian Origins and was awarded an honorary doctorate in Theology by the University of Oslo, Norway, in 1994. Professor Collins was awarded a Fellowship for University Teachers by the National Endowment for the Humanities for 1995-96. In addition to her first book, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation, she has published Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism; The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse, and The Apocalypse (New Testament Message series). Her current research project is a commentary on the Gospel according to Mark for the Hermeneia commentary series. Professor Collins is serving as a member of the Committee of the Society of New Testament Studies and as the delegate of the Society of Biblical Literature to the American Council of Learned Societies. She was the Editor of the Society of Biblical Literature's Monograph Series from 1985-1990. She has also served on the editorial boards of The Journal of Biblical Literature, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, New Testament Studies, The Journal for the Study of the New Testament, The Journal of Religion, and Biblical Interpretation.

Misunderstanding abounds concerning this strange and complex book of the New Testament. This interpretation is written in the conviction that the key to understanding this work is its literary form: revelatory narrative and allegorical narrative. It reveals the structure of the narrative and its basic underlying pattern of persecution, judgment and salvation. It shares with us the message that even as Christ passed through suffering and death to the resurrection beyond, so too may we.