Dr Markus Bockmuehl is Professor of Biblical and Early Christian Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK. James Carleton Paget is a Lecturer in New Testament Studies in the Fact Divinity, University of Cambridge. Among his publications is The Epist Barnabas: Outlook and Background (Tubingen 1994).

• Introduction (MB & JCP); Part I: A History of Pre-Christian Messianism; Part II: The Jesus Movement and the New Testament; Part III: Jewish and Christian Messianism in Contact and Controversy.

"Most of them in the US or Britain, biblical scholars explore ancient thinking that combined messianic hopes for redemption with convictions and practices of resistance to political or political oppression. They cover Jewish messianic expectation through the Persian, Hasmonean, Herodian, and Graceo-Roman periods in the first section. The second section turns to the New Testament, considering such topics as resistance and redemption in the Jesus tradition, messiah and resistance in the gospel and epistles of John, the Christ of Paul, and the Apocalypse. Contact and controversy between the two religions is dealt with in the final section. Essays there include Jews and Christians in the Holy Land 135-325, the material remains, messianism in ancient Aramaic and Syriac translations of the Bible, pre-Islamic Byzantium, and the religious scene in seventh-century Jerusalem." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc.