Handbook on the Gospels (Handbooks on the New Testament)
A leading New Testament scholar provides an easy-to-navigate resource for studying and understanding the Gospels. Written with classroom utility and pastoral application in mind, this accessibly written volume summarizes the content of each major section of the biblical text to help students, pastors, and laypeople quickly grasp the sense of particular passages. The series, modeled after Baker Academic's successful Old Testament Handbook series, focuses primarily on the content of the biblical books without getting bogged down in historical-critical questions or detailed verse-by-verse exegesis. The book covers all four Gospels and explores each major passage, showing how Jesus is the central figure of each plot. It also unpacks how the Old Testament informs the Gospels.
Endorsements
"Introductions to the New Testament often spend time on issues such as authorship, dating, and audience of the Gospels and provide only thumbnail sketches of what is most important, the text. Benjamin Gladd provides in this volume what teachers, students, and interested laypersons want and need. In this one volume, he admirably delineates the four Gospels' shared and unique perspectives on Jesus's ministry, death, and resurrection. The interpretation of the Gospel texts is comprehensive without getting tangled in the underbrush of modern debates. Gladd admirably gets to the heart of the matter, the narrative's roots in the Old Testament, historical veracity, context in Jewish life, and, most importantly, theological significance. The additional bibliography makes this book a marvelous resource for a wide variety of settings." - David E. Garland, professor of Christian Scriptures, George W. Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University
"Benjamin Gladd's Handbook on the Gospels provides an accessible and theologically rich guided tour through the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to Jesus the Messiah, Son of God and Savior of the world. In a style that is both engaging and clear, Gladd shows how the four evangelists' selection, arrangement, and presentation of Jesus's deeds and words, in fulfillment of Old Testament promises and patterns, display the many-faceted glory of Christ's person and his redemptive mission." - Dennis E. Johnson, professor emeritus of practical theology, Westminster Seminary California
"Benjamin Gladd has provided students of all stages and pastors with a useful resource for reading, interpreting, and understanding the four Gospels. Offering a hybrid between big-picture introductions and technical commentaries, Handbook on the Gospels guides the reader through the rich contours of each Gospel in a way that skillfully unites the larger, canonical context of every passage with the specific nuances of its own narrative account. Avoiding an approach that talks about the Gospels from the outside or gets entangled in their debated details from too deep inside, Gladd offers a prudent text-based exploration of all four Gospels by walking the readers through the trails of their specific stories and sacred subject matters. A welcome guide for pastor and parishioner, student and scholar." - Edward W. Klink III, senior pastor, Hope Evangelical Free Church, Roscoe, Illinois; author of John in ZECNT
Benjamin L. Gladd (PhD, Wheaton College) is professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He is the author or coauthor of several books, including The Story Retold: A Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament (with G. K. Beale) and Making All Things New (with Matthew S. Harmon).
