Contents
Invitation to the dance
1. Oral examination
How did "Oral" texts function in a rhetorical culture?
2. Canonical Pseudepigrapha
Is it an Oxymoron?
3. Rethinking and redescribing Scribal Culture
4. The Question of Sermons and Homilies in the New Testament
5. Romans 7:7-25
Retelling Adam's Tale
6. What's in a Name?
Rethinking the historical figure of the beloved disciple in the fourth Gospel
7. What's in a word?
Part One - Eidolotuton
8. What's in a word?
Part two - Porneia
9. What's in a phrase?
"No male and female" (Galatians 3 :28)
10. "Christianity in the making"
Oral mystery or Eyewitness history?
11. The Rise of canon consciousness and the formation of the New Testament
12. Signposts along the Way
On taking the less-traveled path
Notes
Scripture Index
Index of Subjects and Authors

Written in clear, and at times colorful, prose, Ben Witherington's What's in the Word explains how the recognition of the oral and socio-rhetorical character of the New Testament and its environment necessitates a change in how the New Testament literature is read. Expanding on the work in which he has been fruitfully engaged for over a quarter century, Witherington challenges the previously assured results of historical criticism and demonstrates chapter by chapter how the socio-rhetorical study shifts the paradigm.

Taken together, the chapters in What's in the Word coalesce around three of Witherington's ongoing academic concerns: orality and rhetoric; New Testament history, including issues of authenticity and canonicity; and the exegesis of given words in their canonical and socio-cultural contexts. Always unpredictable, this book never fails to pique interest and proffer instruction.