This volume identifies and investigates literary traditions and their implications for the authorship and dating of the Gospels and the letters of the New Testament. Ellis argues that the Gospels and the letters are products of the corporate authorship of four allied apostolic missions and not the creation of individual authors.

Questions about the reliability of the New Testament are commonly raised today both by biblical scholars and popular media. Drawing on decades of research, Craig Blomberg addresses all of the major objections to the historicity of the New Testament in one comprehensive volume. Topics addressed include the formation of the Gospels, the transmission of the text, the formation of the canon, alleged contradictions, the relationship between Jesus and Paul, supposed Pauline forgeries, other gospels, miracles, and many more. Historical corroborations of details from all parts of the New Testament are also presented throughout. The Historical Reliability of the New Testament marshals the latest scholarship in responding to New Testament objections, while remaining accessible to non-specialists.

Because Christianity claims to be a historical revelation, says Bruce, the quesion of the reliability of the documents on which it was founded is a crucial one. Here he presents the most convincing evidence for the historical trustworthiness of the canon of the New Testament.

This collection of freshly translated texts leads to a new appreciation of the richness and variety of the religious world within which Christianity emerged as a powerful new force. Bringing together for the first time under a single cover documents from Jewish, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Syrian, and little-known early Christian sources, the material is arranged to bring out as clearly as possible the ways in which early Christian worship of Jesus Christ as Savior and God both echoed contemporary worship of other savior gods and at the same time stood in sharp contrast to such worship. This revised and enlarged edition contains a new introduction on texts and traditions in late antiquity, a reworked translation of The Gospel of Peter, selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses, plus such documents as Papyrus Egerton 2, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840, and The Apocryphon of James. In addition, the table of contents has been expanded to allow easier access to the documents contained herein.

If everyone writes from a point of view and with an agenda, can we reasonably expect any historical account to be objective—to tell us the truth? In this second edition, Paul Barnett defends the task of the historian and the concept of history, addressing questions about the New Testament that are of importance to people of faith and skeptics alike.