This collection of essays by Robert Gundry shows the weaknesses of many novel interpretations of the New Testament as well as the superiority of older interpretations. The author defends the essential reliability of earliest traditions concerning the New Testament, and the essential reliability of New Testament traditions themselves.

Current study of the New Testament features many new interpretations. Robert Gundry's book finds them largely wanting and defends traditional ones. Several of its essays have never been published before. Most of the rest, though previously published, have been updated and otherwise revised, sometimes heavily. Topics include theological diversity, symbiosis between theology and genre criticism, pre-Papian tradition concerning Mark and Matthew as apostolically Johannine, Secret Mark as secondary, mishnaic jurisprudence as compatible with Jesus' blasphemy, Matthew as not Christian Jewish, Matthean soteriology, criticism of H. D. Betz on the Sermon on the Mount, P. Oxy. 655 as secondary to Q 12:22b-31, resurrection as uniformly physical, criticism of nonreductive physicalism, criticism of the new perspective on Paul, nonimputation of Christ's righteousness, puberal sexual lusts in Romans 7:7-25, cruciform rather than incarnational emphasis in Philippians 2:6-11, Thessalonian eschatology, John's sectarianism, the pervasiveness of John's Word-Christology, Revelation's angelomorphic Christology, and the New Jerusalem.

Autorentext
Born 1932; 1954 B.A., 1957 B.D., Los Angeles Baptist College & Seminary; 1961 Ph.D., Manchester University; Professor emeritus of New Testament & Greek and Scholar-in-residence at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.