From a team of more than 50 international scholars comes the 'Word Biblical Commentary Series'.

Its more than 60 volumes offer the best in critical scholarship firmly committed to the authority of Scripture as divine revelation.

In his first volume, Dr. Nolland expertly traced Jesus' general ministry throughout Palestine. Here the focus narrows to an incisive statement of Jesus' purpose as the suffering Servant, and to the fate that this will mean for Him in Jerusalem. Now the author invites us to follow Christ's footsteps on what will ultimately turn out to be His 'pathway to glory.'

Dr. Nolland continues to portray Luke as a creative but reliable historian with an explicit theological purpose. While he probes possible sources of the evangelist's material, the emphasis is on the final product - the Gospel text as 'an exercise in communication, deliberately undertaken by the Gospel writer with at least some focused sense of the actual or potential needs of his audience.'

The author notes the dramatic turn of events with which this section of Luke begins. The disciples had just arrived at the exhilarating confession that Jesus is 'The Christ of God.' and little wonder - up to now. Luke has described an ever-upward course of miracles and other messianic triumphs. But suddenly, as if to warn His disciples that triumphilsm and messiahship were not the same, Jesus not only warns them to be silent about their confession. He startles them with the word that Messiah must suffer and die, and that the 'thrones' His followers anticipated would be won on their knees, in self-denying service.

Dr. Nolland researches fairly the claims of some scholars that Jesus did not really predict His own death, but that, knowing the story, the early Church read His death back into the Gospels. But the author concludes that this possibility has not been proved, and that 'It is not more scholarly to assume the impossibility of prediction. ' Penetrating excursus such as that on the origin and meaning of the title 'Son of Man' add to the usefulness of this volume for both scholarly research and informed preaching and teaching.