Book Review: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 2nd ed. (eds. Green, Brown, Perrin)

The first edition of this dictionary was published in 1992, backed by scholarship from the 1980s. Scholarship has continued moving forward, finding new avenues, methodologies, and lenses in which to study and understand the Gospels. As scholarship advances and understands these four important works from different angles, questions still remain. How do we make sense of Jesus’ parables? What is the significance of Jesus’ female followers? Do minor characters in the Gospels play an important role? What does it mean that Jesus is God’s Son? Why did Jesus have to die? Not to mention, What actually is a “Gospel”?

Yet studies on these subjects (and many more) are innumerable, expensive, and usually quite technical. Local church pastors and even academic professors and researchers have a hard time staying informed of the newest advances in Gospel studies (not that all that is new is good). Yet there is much that is good and helpful, and this dictionary helps synthesize that information. Most of the articles are new (99% of the original material has been replaced, with most entries being assigned to different scholars), and the bibliographies are up-to-date (as of 2013). New articles have been added, and some articles from the first edition have been updated. The scholarship here is more diverse with articles written by men, women, asians, and african-Americans. 

• “Archaeology and Geography” (15 pages; R. Riesner); 
• “Birth of Jesus” (13 pages; S. Young); 
• “Death of Jesus” (22 pages; J. Dennis); 
• “Disciples and Discipleship” (12 pages; M. Wilkins); 
• “God” (14 pages; M. Thompson); 
• “John, Gospel of” (18 pages; C. Keener); 
• “Kingdom of God/Heaven” (14 pages; J. Green); 
• “Law” (11 pages; J. Dunn); 
• “Luke, Gospel of” (13 pages; J. Green); 
• “Mark, Gospel of” (14 pages; N. Perrin); 
• “Matthew, Gospel of” (15 pages; J. Brown); 
• “Miracles and Miracle Stories” (11 pages; G. Twelftree); 
• “Old Testament in the Gospels” (11 pages; D. Pao); 
• “Parables” (13 pages; G. Anderson); 
• “Quest of the Historical Jesus” (39 pages; C. Brown); 
• “Rabbinic Traditions and Writings” (11 pages; D. Instone-Brewer); 
• “Resurrection” (16 pages; K. Anderson); 
• “Revolutionary Movements” (11 pages; W. Heard and K. Yamazaki-Ransom); 
• “Rich and Poor” (11 pages; C. Hays); 
• “Sermon on the Mount/Plain” (11 pages; S. A. Yang).

What are some of the articles?

Apocalypticism and Apocalyptic Teaching

Brant Pitre distinguishes between three uses of the term apocalyptic: (1) a genre of literature in written works from the Second Temple period and afterward; (2) both apocalyptic and apocalypticism are often “used to describe a social and religious worldview shared by many of Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries” and are present in written apocalypses; (3) the term apocalyptic eschatology refers to features of both written apocalypses and the apocalyptic worldview “that focus on the cataclysmic end of the cosmos” (24). He then compares the actions and sayings of Jesus with these distinctions and shows how Jesus would have been understood in his time (and how we should understand him today).  

Economics

David Downs writes about the ancient concept of oikonomia and how it is much broader than our use of the word economy (which we get from oikonomia). The oikonomia revolved more around household management or the activity of “organization” or “administration.” He surveys economics in the Roman Empire and offers a seven-tiered poverty scale, wit the imperial elites standing in the top 0.04% and the bottom two tiers (subsistence and below-subsistence) make up 68% (in fact, the bottom three tiers make up 90%). After surveying Roman Palestine, he shows how Jesus fits into and overturns world economics. 

Elijah and Elisha

Kenneth Litwak surveys these two wild prophets in the OT and in Second Temple Jewish Literature before looking at how these figures appear in the Gospel narratives. Elijah usually shows up in references to the eschatological restoration of all things. Elisha is implied in scenes in Luke’s Gospel, although according to Litwak, in Mark’s Gospel, if John the Baptist is a second Elijah, then Jesus is a second Elisha, performing more miracles of greater effect that Elisha himself. 

Hardness of Heart

Edward Meadors points to Ps 115:2–8 as an example of how hardening occurs as result (a covenant curse) that comes from worshiping idols. The heart represents our thoughts, desires, longings, wishes, and actions. It is where “inner thoughts conceive (Mt 9:4; Lk 1:51; 2:35; 9:47), faith flourishes or dies (Lk 8:12), and people treasure up objects of worship (Mt 6:21; Lk 12:34)” (360). According to Meadors,

“Jesus diagnoses sensory dysfunction as a symptom that debilitates those who hear the word of the gospel but allow the worries of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things to enter in and choke the word (Mk 4:12, 19). And the disciples themselves display hardness of heart when they fail to connect the feedings of the four thousand and the five thousand (Mk 6:52; 8:17–21) to the dynamic presence of the kingdom of God and Jesus’ identity as the messianic agent of its arrival. In Mark hardness of heart is thus an intellectual impairment that corresponds to deficient faith.” (361)

Lamb of God

John Dennis surveys how the background of the term “lamb of God” (John 1:29) is first understood by various interpreters and then how the term should be understood in context in John’s Gospel. John 1:29 is the backdrop to the entire Gospel of John’s portrayal of Jesus’ mission. Jesus’ salvific death is the means by which he gives eternal life and delivers people fro the bondage of sin, death, and the devil. His death affects life for others, it fulfills Israel’s Passover, and it casts out the ruler of this world. 

Sin, Sinner

Michael Bird weighs in on who counted as “sin” and how a “sinner” was to relate to the Jewish community. Jewish sectarians used the terms “sin” and “sinner” to either “denounce or exclude persons for behavior that did not meet the perceived norms of certain Jewish factions” (863). For the most part, Jesus does the opposite. He taught that God was seeking to save sinners, and he would restore them through their repentance. Jesus was willing to enter into the fray of those who were stuck in the margins of society, whether through victimization or willful disobedience to God. Rather than allowing sinners to repent and giving them a lower “holy” status, Jesus models the compassion of God to all. He showed that the Kingdom of God came in mercy, and those who respond appropriately to his message of the kingdom “will be assured of a place in God’s kingdom in the final assize” (868).

Not everything can be said about Jesus and the Gospels in one dictionary. But the information that is collected and synthesized is incredible. The one downside to this series is that, while there is a list of the contributors and their articles, there is no Table of Contents. This is unfortunate because if you want to know what all the articles are I the book, you have to skim through hundreds of pages (or purchase the Logos edition).