The strength of this study lies in the combination of expertise in biblical studies and art history. This book's methodology is both historical and hermeneutical. Each chapter begins with an overview of the biblical passage, noting significant rhetorical features and the overarching theological argument. Next, the selected work of art is contextualized by a brief biography of the artist, placing the work within the artist's own oeuvre, discussing what is known of the patronage of the specific image, and discussing important social, political, and religious factors that may facilitate our understanding of the painting. A formal and iconographic analysis (which also briefly traces the visual and literary sources and precedents for the work) is followed by a comparison between the biblical scene and the work of art, noting the ways in which the artist's (or patron's) cultural context has provided a basis for the "textual expansion" of the biblical story, that is, adding material not found in the story itself but which, given the social, religious, and historical context of the artist, is a natural extension of the story.

Illuminating Luke, Volume 3: The Passion and Resurrection Narratives in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Painting

Arts & Photography

Hornik, Heidi J.

Parsons, Mikeal C.

History & Criticism

Bloomsbury T&T Clark

Advanced college students, seminarians, and graduate students will appreciate this broadly accessible introduction to Christianity's first historian and his work. Parsons examines Luke as a storyteller within the context of ancient rhetorical criticism as practiced in the Hellenistic world and as represented by the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition. Moving on to Luke as an interpreter of traditional materials and social conventions, he ends with an exploration of Luke the evangelist, and his view of Jesus as alight for revelation to the Gentiles and for the glory of the people of Israel. Considering these three angles of vision and the clarity each one provides for understanding Luke and Acts, Parsons offers a significant contribution to the overall appreciation for Luke's literary and theological accomplishments.

Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist

Religion & Spirituality

Baker Academic

Uncover the truth about the scandal that shook the Texas Baptist community, buried for over a century.\nIn 1894 Steen Morris raped Antônia Teixeira. Both had been guests in the house of Baylor University president Rufus Burleson. The assault took place in Burleson’s backyard and was the first of a series of assaults that eventually left the young Baylor student pregnant. Rather than hold the guilty party accountable, Rufus Burleson and other prominent members of the Baptist community in Waco launched a campaign of intimidation, victim-blaming, and cover-up to preserve the virtuous image of their institution.\nIn Remembering Antônia Teixeira, Mikeal C. Parsons and João B. Chaves painstakingly peel back the layers of concealment that have accumulated over a century of enforced silence about the case. Beginning with Antonia’s father Antônio Teixeira, a priest who had renounced Catholicism and become a pillar of the Baptist community in Brazil, Parsons and Chaves uproot romanticized and hagiographical accounts of the Southern Baptist Convention’s foreign missions. They then follow Antônia’s journey north, her assault, and the subsequent scandal that shook Texas—until it was intentionally erased.\nIconoclastic and meticulous, Remembering Antônia Teixeira calls attention to how religious institutions have used selective memory to maintain power. In doing so, this book takes a first step toward dismantling those structures of oppression.

Remembering Antônia Teixeira: A Story of Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy

Chaves, João B.

Eerdmans

Crawford Howell Toy (1836-1919) was professor of Old Testament at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1869-1879. In 1879, Toy was forced to resign from the Seminary over his views of evolution and biblical higher criticism. In 1880, he was hired by Harvard University as the Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages; Toy remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life (1880-1919).
Parsons narrates Toy's life in two parts. The first, chronologically arranged, tells the story of Crawford Toy from his childhood in Norfolk, Virginia, to his formal education (University of Virginia, Southern Seminary, and the University of Berlin), experiences as a Confederate Chaplain, and teaching career at several institutions in the South. The second part, thematically arranged, examines Toy's Harvard career as a teacher and scholar with special attention to two significant relationships--with his spouse, Nancy Saunders Toy, and with his former student and Harvard colleague, David Gordon Lyon.
Along the way, Parsons examines some of the persisting myths surrounding Toy in light of newly discovered or previously understudied evidence: Toy's supposed engagement(s) to missionary icon, Charlotte "Lottie" Moon, the events surrounding his resignation from Southern Seminary, and his alleged dismissal from membership in the Old Cambridge Baptist Church. Toy was the first, but certainly not the last, casualty in the struggle between the academic study of the bible in denominational theological education and the confessional commitments of the sponsoring SBC denomination that continues to this day.

Crawford Howell Toy (Perspectives on Baptist Identities)

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

Mercer University Press

While more recent commentaries have focused on questions of the social values, rhetorical conventions, and narrative strategies, Parsons and Culy provide the textual, philological, and grammatical essentials to any act of interpretation. By working through this text systematically, readers will gain a firmer grasp of the peculiar shape of the grammar of the book of Acts and become equipped to approach the other New Testament documents with increased confidence.

Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament)

Culy, Martin M.

Baylor University Press

The Acts of the Apostles Through the Centuries (Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries)

Charting the theological and cultural potency of Acts across the timespan of Christian history, this work of profound scholarship reveals the full extent of the New Testament book's religious, artistic, literary, and political influence. <ul> <li>Reveals the influence of Acts at key turning points in the history of the Christian church</li> <li>Traces the rich and varied artistic and cultural heritage rooted in Acts, from music to literature</li> <li>Analyzes the political significance of the book as a touchstone in the church's external relations</li> <li>Provides detailed commentary on the exegesis of Acts down the centuries</li> </ul>

Wiley/Blackwell

Charting the theological and cultural potency of Acts across the timespan of Christian history, this work of profound scholarship reveals the full extent of the New Testament book’s religious, artistic, literary, and political influence. <ul>
<li>Reveals the influence of Acts at key turning points in the history of the Christian church</li> <li>Traces the rich and varied artistic and cultural heritage rooted in Acts, from music to literature</li> <li>Analyzes the political significance of the book as a touchstone in the church’s external relations</li> <li>Provides detailed commentary on the exegesis of Acts down the centuries</li> </ul>

In this volume Mikeal C. Parsons provides an overview of Luke and Acts, reading Luke and Acts in the context of ancient rhetorical criticism as practiced in the Hellenistic world. Parsons first compares Luke's storytelling with narrative techniques of ancient rhetoric. He next compares Luke's interpretation of Jewish sources within the social conventions of Luke's day. Finally, Parsons profiles Luke's specific evangelistic theological artistry, one in which Luke creatively uses Isaiah to call for the conversion of the Gentiles. The depth and breadth of Parson's chapters root Luke's narrative strategy, interpretive moves, and theological imagination in the pagan, Jewish, and Christian contexts of the period.

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, eloquence was essential to public life and identity, perpetuating class status and power. The three-tiered study of rhetoric was thus designed to produce sons worthy of and equipped for public service. Rhetorical competency enabled the elite to occupy their proper place in society.
The oracular and literary techniques represented in Greco-Roman education proved to be equally central to the formation of the New Testament. Detailed comparisons of the sophisticated rhetorical conventions, as cataloged in the ancient rhetorical handbooks (e.g., Quintilian), reveal to what degree and frequency the New Testament was shaped by ancient rhetoric’s invention, argument, and style.
But Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament breaks new ground. Instead of focusing on more advanced rhetorical lessons that elite students received in their school rooms, Michael Martin and Mikeal Parsons examine the influence of the progymnasmata―the preliminary compositional exercises that bridge the gap between grammar and rhetoric proper―and their influence on the New Testament.
Martin and Parsons use Theon’s (50–100 CE) compendium as a baseline to measure the way primary exercises shed light on the form and style of the New Testament’s composition. Each chapter examines a specific rhetorical exercise and its unique hortatory or instructional function, and offers examples from ancient literature before exploring the use of these techniques in the New Testament.
By studying the rhetoric of beginners rather than experts, Martin and Parsons demonstrate that the New Testament was not simply the product of an elite scholastic culture. "Rhetoric was in the air," acting as a stock feature of the public discourse from which the New Testament arose. Martin and Parsons demonstrate that attention to the intimate relationship between medium (the how) and message (the what) is not new. The New Testament used common strategies to communicate its uncommon Gospel.

Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament: The Influence of Elementary Greek Composition

Martin, Michael Wade

In Acts 1–14: A Handbook on the Greek Text, Martin Culy, Mikeal Parsons, and Josiah Hall provide a foundational examination of the Greek text of Acts. The analysis is distinguished by the detailed yet comprehensive attention paid to the text. The authors’ exposition is a convenient pedagogical and reference tool that explains the form and syntax of the biblical text, offers guidance for deciding between competing semantic analyses, engages important text-critical debates, and addresses questions relating to the Greek text that are frequently overlooked or ignored by standard commentaries. Beyond serving as a succinct and accessible analytic key, Acts also reflects the most up-to-date advances in scholarship on Greek grammar and linguistics. This handbook proves itself an indispensable tool for anyone committed to a deep reading of the biblical text. This revised and expanded handbook on the Greek text of Acts, unlike its predecessor, includes comments on the grammar and syntax of every word in the text and incorporates insights from the Editio Critica Maior, now the standard critical Greek text for the Acts of the Apostles.

Acts 1-14: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament)

Hall, Josiah D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parsons, Mikeal C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Parsons, Mikeal C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parsons, Mikeal C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Illuminating Luke, Volume 3: The Passion and Resurrection Narratives in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Painting

Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist

Remembering Antônia Teixeira: A Story of Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy

Crawford Howell Toy (Perspectives on Baptist Identities)

Acts: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament)

The Acts of the Apostles Through the Centuries (Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries)

The Acts of the Apostles Through the Centuries (Wiley Blackwell Bible Commentaries)

Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist

Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament: The Influence of Elementary Greek Composition

Acts 1-14: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament)