LUKE-ACTS provides a prophetic vision of Jesus and the Church, which is also a call for today's Christians to live out God's vision in the world, argues Luke Timothy Johnson in Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church. He urges people today to take more seriously the idea of the Church as explicitly prophetic in its witness and calling (Wm B. Eerdmans, £16.99 (£15.30); 9780-8028-0390-0).

Ben Witherington III approaches the Epistle to the Philippians as oratory, albeit at a distance, rather than as a letter. He argues that the Graeco-Roman world was a predominantly oral culture, and that Paul's epistle has noticeable absences, and so concludes that the epistolatory framework s far less influential than the rhetorical style. This thinking is a focus in his Paul's Letter to the Philippians: A socio-rhetorical commentary (Wm B. Eerdmans, £25.99 (£23.40); 978-0-8028-0143-2).

Can the Old Testament provide a basis for 21st-century social justice? In He Has Shown You What Is Good, Hugh Williamson suggests what the OT can contribute to contemporary thinking. He emphasises the changes and development of situations and contexts underlying the Hebrew Bible, and argues that this dynamic approach can add creativity to approaches to social justice today. The material in this book had its origins in the inaugural 2011 Trinity Lectures at Trinity Theological College in Singapore; it is aimed at general readers rather than experts (The Lutterworth Press, £15; 978-0-7188-9298-2).