This volume is a minor revision of my Ph.D. thesis completed under the supervision of Prof. Richard J. Bauckham at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. I am grateful for Prof. Bauckham's very capable supervision, as he patiently corrected careless oversights and fallacious reasoning. Not only has his gracious supervision has informed my work in the Gospels and Second Temple Judaism, but his honest scholarship, done at the highest level, has been a formative example for me. I am likewise grateful to Prof. Ron Piper, who, though late in coming to my supervisory aid, was nonetheless decisively influential in crafting my argumentation with care and precision.

I am particularly grateful to Dr G. K. Beale for his enduring encouragement in my research, for his rigorous, thorough, and worshipful exegetical fervor, and for his love for Jesus Christ that is evident through it. I am grateful to my parents, Donald and Marilyn Gurtner and Wayne and Sharon Greenwood, for unwavering support of my calling and studies. I am grateful to Prof. John Court for accepting this piece for the SNTS Monograph Series, and to Dr Donald A. Hagner for recommending that he do so, along with offering some valuable suggestions for how to introduce the subject.

While the present work has been submitted to the scholarly community for scrutiny and critique, it is, more importantly, submitted to the glory of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as an act of obedient worship, of which he alone is worthy.