The present study represents the fruit of my Sabbatical research in 1996–97, during which I had the very pleasant opportunity of working both in the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and in the Evangelisch-theologisches Seminar of the University of Tübingen. This research would have been impossible without fellowships from the OCHJS and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My sincere thanks go to these institutions for their generous support.

I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to many individuals for their help and encouragement along the way. The following scholars deserve special mention in this regard: William Adler, Peter Barber, Richard Bauckham, Dean Béchard, Peder Borgen, Benjamin Braude, Katherine Clarke, Catherine Delano Smith, Evelyn Edson, Jörg Frey, Martin Hengel, Chris Howgego, F. Stanley Jones, Nikos Kokkinos, Fergus Millar, Matthew Morgenstern, Stanley Porter, Ferdinand Rohrhirsch, Peter Stuhlmacher, James C. VanderKam, John Williams, and David A. Woodward.

I would like to express my thanks to the staff at Cambridge University Press for facilitating the publication of this book, and to Susanne Staryk and Nathan Van Seters for checking the manuscript and preparing the indexes.

Finally, I would like to express my love and appreciation for my wife Gail and our two children, Kathryn and Elizabeth, whose flexibility and spirit of adventure made this Sabbatical year not only possible but also thoroughly enjoyable.