If you use any of these documents in published form, please credit the source (www.craigkeener.org) so others will be able to visit us and read more of Craig’s work.
For Craig’s free video courses (about 60 hours altogether) on Matthew, Acts and Romans, see: http://biblicalelearning.org/authors/dr-craig-keener/
(This link has changed from its earlier site.) One can find shorter videos on other topics or passages by using the menu bar on the right side of the home page.
The Bible in Its Context: How to Improve Your Study of the Scriptures
This 82-page Word document was originally designed for use with students in Nigeria. It is for public use, not for traditional publication or remuneration. The background illustrations can be found in much greater details in Craig’s IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, published by InterVarsity.
To download this file, click here.
La Biblia en Su Contexto: Cómo mejorar su estudio de las Escrituras
(Spanish translation of the document described above)
To download this file/ para descargar este archivo, click here.
For additional languages, see Other Languages.
Assumptions in Historical-Jesus Research — a paper by Craig, published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. To read it click here.
Note: this is a recent scholarly article summarizing some of Craig’s research on the Gospels and Jesus. In addition to the article itself, he has a response to two criticisms from those who disagreed with the article:
First, some complained that he depended solely on rabbinic sources for his treatment of ancient memory. Anyone who simply reads pp. 40-44 will see that this criticism is conspicuously fallacious: the strong majority of his examples do not come from this source.
Second, one critic protested that biographies of emperors are not analogous to biographies of a miracle working-sage. His response to this criticism is this: biography is a genre, but the subject matter of biographies is a topic rather than genre (e.g., to use a modern analogy, biographies of Churchill and John Wesley address different subjects, but their genre is not different). We have only a limited number of biographies from the early Empire about figures who lived only a generation or two before, and these are most relevant for genre comparison, regardless of their topic.
Matthew Bible Study
Please note that this 32-page Word document is just an initial sample, that goes through Matthew 5:20. It may take Craig a few years to have sufficient free time to provide all the Bible studies he would like. This study models how Bible background can be used in understanding the Bible better.
To download this file, click here.
Women in Ministry
Contrary to what some detractors claim, some of us support women in ministry because we believe that it is biblical. Here is a PDF from Enrichment Journal, published in spring 2001.
To download this file, click here.
Racial/ethnic reconciliation booklet
This is a booklet that Craig (who is white, from Ohio) and his wife Médine (who is black, from Brazzaville in Congo) cowrote for promoting ethnic reconciliation. It has been published in Africa, where tens of thousands of copies have been distributed in various countries, especially in Francophone Africa. Although it was not written primarily to address the U.S. situation, we hope to make it available here in view of the present crisis (as soon as we can figure out the logistics to adding the link).
Some New Testament Invitations to Ethnic Reconciliation
“Most parts of the world currently experience some forms of ethnic conflict. Because prejudices from these conflicts inevitably affect Christians, they invite Christian theological reflection on ethnic reconciliation, which in turn invites an examination of biblical teaching on the subject.”
This is a 2003 article published in Evangelical Quarterly. To download this PDF file, click here.
Initial Response to John MacArthur’s Strange Fire
En English: http://pneumareview.com/john-macarthurs-strange-fire-reviewed-by-craig-s-keener/
In Spanish: http://razondelaesperanza.com/2014/06/29/resena-de-macarthur-fuego-extrano-por-craig-keener/
Academic Paper Supporting the Plausibility of Spirits (PDF file)