Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

For whom were gospels written? -- Is there patristic counter-evidence? : a response to Margaret Mitchell -- The transmission of the gospel traditions -- Werner Kelber on oral tradition : a critique -- The gospel of Mark : origins and eyewitnesses -- Luke's infancy narrative as oral history in scriptural form -- Did Papias write history or exegesis? -- The gospel of John and the synoptic problem -- Review article : Gospel Writing by Francis Watson -- Review article : Seeking the Identity of Jesus -- The canonicity of the four gospels -- 2 Corinthians 4:6 : Paul's vision of the face of Jesus Christ as the face of God -- Barnabas in Galatians -- The martyrdom of Peter in early Christian literature -- James at the centre -- The estate of Publius on Malta (Acts 28:7) -- The Lord's day -- Sabbath and Sunday in the post-apostolic church -- Kerygmatic summaries in the speeches of Acts -- Kingdom and church according to Jesus and Paul -- The two fig tree parables in the Apocalypse of Peter -- Apocryphal Pauline literature -- Apocryphal gospels -- The Acts of Paul as a sequel to Acts -- The Acts of Paul : replacement of Acts or sequel to Acts? -- Apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature -- Non-canonical apocalypses and prophetic works -- Hell in the Latin Vision of Ezra -- Early Christian apocrypha as imaginative literature -- The great tribulation in the Shepherd of Hermas -- The fall of the angels as the source of philosophy in Hermias and Clement of Alexandria.

"Most of these thirty-one essays by Richard Bauckham, a well-known New Testament scholar, were first published between 1979 and 2015 in journals and multi-authored volumes. Two are previously unpublished and one has not been published in English before. They range widely over early Christianity and early Christian literature in both the New Testament period and the early patristic period, reflecting the author's conviction that the historical study of early Christianity should not isolate the New Testament literature from other early Christian sources, such as the apostolic fathers and the Christian apocryphal literature. Some of the essays develop further the themes of the author's books on aspects of the Gospels, such as the intended audiences of the Gospels, the way in which Gospel traditions were transmitted, the role of the eyewitnesses in the origins of the Gospels, the importance of Papias's evidence about Gospel traditions, and the relationship between canonical and Gnostic Gospels. Some of the essays relate to important persons, such as Peter, Barnabas, Paul and James. These include a full investigation of the evidence for the martyrdom of Peter and an attempt to locate the estate of Publius where Paul stayed on Malta. There are studies of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day in both the New Testament and patristic periods. There are studies that survey most of the main categories of apocryphal Christian literature, including apocryphal Gospels and Acts, and with a special focus on the non-canonical apocalypses, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Latin Vision of Ezra." -- ‡c From original publisher's description.

Originally published: Tübingen, Germany : Mohr Siebeck, 2017, under title: The Christian World around the New Testament : collected essays II (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 286) 0512-1604