Another helpful reference work is found in the form of the Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times (Zondervan) edited by J. Daniel Hays, J. Scott Duvall, and C. Marvin Pate. “Biblical prophecy is a relevant and important topic for the church today,” the editors explain. “Not only does biblical prophecy provide hope for the future and strength for today, but its broad-sweeping themes help us understand the entire Bible. Indeed, prophecy ties the Bible together from Genesis to Revelation.” As the editors admit, the topic of prophecy often is complicated by controversy among evangelicals. This work attempts to present the best of biblical scholarship in order to help people study the issue in light of the biblical texts.

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Gordon Fee, one of the best known evangelical New Testament scholars, has produced Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Hendrickson). Fee brings a lifetime of research and scholarship devoted to the Pauline materials and offers preachers a wealth of study related to the person of Christ as understood within the Pauline corpus.

Preachers looking for an update on biblical scholarship related to the two testaments will find two volumes of particular assistance. In The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Zondervan), Gary Edward Schnittjer offers a narrative review of the first five books of the Bible. Schnittjer brings a fascinating literary eye to the text and his purpose is to assist his reader in understanding how the text holds together as a whole. Helpfully, Schnittjer puts the study of the Torah in a Christian context. “The Five Books of Moses were the writings most read, most studied and most quoted by the New Testament writers, and any and every practicing Judaic person at the turn of the era,” Schnittjer notes. “The meaning of the Torah preoccupied both the followers and opponents of Jesus. The Apostle Paul claimed that the Torah explained the human problem of sinfulness and pointed toward its remedy in the Messiah. Jesus proclaimed that Moses had written about Him. For these teachers the Pentateuch was crucial to explaining the meaning of God, religion, messiah, life, death, hope, and every important aspect of the human phenomenon.”

Similarly, Mark L. Strauss has produced Four Portraits, One Jesus: An Introduction to Jesus and the Gospels (Zondervan). Modern scholarship has devoted so much attention to the gospels that most preachers will find keeping abreast of this scholarship to be a daunting challenge. Strauss offers a very helpful guide in understanding current scholarship and, more importantly, understanding the biblical text. This book, as the Schnittjer volume above, is intended to serve as a text for seminary students and an update for pastors devoted to biblical scholarship.

Several books are devoted to a defense of the historical reliability of the Gospels in light of recent controversies such as the attention devoted to The Da Vinci Code and the discovery and publication of the so-called “Gospel of Judas.” Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd have produced The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Baker). The authors argue Matthew, Mark, and Luke offer “the most historically probable representation of the actual Jesus of history.”