This is a detailed examination of Proverbs 1-9, an early Jewish poetic work and an example of Wisdom literature. The author shows that certain parts of it, profoundly influential on the development of both Judaism and Christianity, belong to a much broader and more intricate set of ideas than older scholarship allowed.
In Jesus and the Ossuaries, Craig A. Evans helps all readers, expert and layperson alike, understand the importance this recent find might have for the quest for the historical Jesus and any historical reconstruction of early Christianity. Evans does this by providing an overview of the most important archaeological discoveries, before examining nine other inscriptions (six on ossuaries, three …
For the first time in one volume, this book presents contributions to the textual criticism of the New Testament made over the past twenty years by Bart Ehrman, one of the premier textual scholars in North America. The collection includes fifteen previously published articles and six lectures (delivered at Duke University and Yale University) on a range of topics of central importance to the fi…
Christian exegesis of the Song of Songs has long interacted creatively with - and, more recently, reacted critically against - the allegorical interpretation developed by Origen of Alexandria (c.185-c.254) in his Commentary and two Homilies on the Song of Songs. Interest in Origen's exegesis of the Song's narrative elements has dominated past scholarship, which has almost entirely ignored how O…
Explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a compelling case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament.
In this completely revised and updated edition, François Bovon provides a critical assessment of the last fifty-five years of scholarship on Luke-Acts. The study divides thematically, with individual chapters covering the subjects of history and eschatology, the role of the Old Testament, Christology, the Holy Spirit, conversion, and the church. Each chapter begins with a consideration of the…
The main lines of inquiry pursued in this book are nearly all foreshadowed in the lengthy, wide-ranging Chapter 2, ‘Jesus and Gospel’. Here I explore the origin and the varied meanings of the ‘gospel’ word group all the way from its use by Jesus to refer to his own proclamation to its use as the title of a ‘book’ containing an account of the words and deeds of Jesus.
Most significant problems of contemporary life have their origins in nihilism and its paradoxical logic, which is simultaneously destructive to, and constitutive of, society. Yet, in social theory, nihilism is a surprisingly under-researched topic.
This edition presents for the first time "all the non-biblical Qumran texts classified according to their genres, together with English translations. Of these texts, some twenty were not previously published. The Hebrew-Aramaic texts in this edition are mainly based on the FARMS database of Brigham Young University, which, in its turn, reflects the text editions of the ancient scrolls (mainly "…
This edition presents for the first time "all the non-biblical Qumran texts classified according to their genres, together with English translations. Of these texts, some twenty were not previously published. The Hebrew-Aramaic texts in this edition are mainly based on the FARMS database of Brigham Young University, which, in its turn, reflects the text editions of the ancient scrolls (mainly "…
This edition presents for the first time "all the non-biblical Qumran texts classified according to their genres, together with English translations. Of these texts, some twenty were not previously published. The Hebrew-Aramaic texts in this edition are mainly based on the FARMS database of Brigham Young University, which, in its turn, reflects the text editions of the ancient scrolls (mainly "…
The Expanded Bible: New Testament reflects the latest scholarship, current English, and the needs of contemporary students of the Bible. This new testament includes a multitude of study aids right in line with the text. Expanded translations and other helps make it possible for you to study the Bible while you read Expanded translations bring out the meaning of words and offer alternatives. …
The New Testament book known as The First Letter of Peter describes how Christians should relate to the world. Specifically, it suggests how Christians should define themselves against a powerful and sometimes hostile culture. Written to first-century Christians in Asia Minor who were suffering from religious persecution, this letter brings Biblical and extra-Biblical traditions together to for…
"The Bible and the social and moral consequences that derive from its interpretation are all too important to be left in the hands of the pious or the experts, and too significant to be ignored and trivialized by the uninformed and indifferent.
When the ancients talked about "messiah", what did they picture? Did that term refer to a stately figure who would rule, to a militant who would rescue, or to a variety of roles held by many? While Christians have traditionally equated the word "messiah" with Jesus, the discussion is far more complex. This volume contributes significantly to that discussion. Ten expert scholars here address …
For centuries the story of Adam and Eve has resonated richly through the corridors of art, literature and theology. But for most moderns, taking it at face value is incongruous. And even for many thinking Christians today who want to take seriously the authority of Scripture, insisting on a "literal" understanding of Genesis 2–3 looks painfully like a "tear here" strip between faith and scien…
Thomas Schreiner, a respected scholar and a trusted voice for many students and pastors, offers a substantial and accessibly written overview of the whole Bible. He traces the storyline of the scriptures from the standpoint of biblical theology, examining the overarching message that is conveyed throughout. Schreiner emphasizes three interrelated and unified themes that stand out in the biblica…
Myth is that most elusive of cultural forms—forever avoiding the constraints of definition and analysis; yet always attesting, through its protean persistence, to an indomitable grip upon the human imagination. Call myth what you will, others will certainly put it differently and claim good grounds for their standpoint. For those bred in the West, the ancient Greek patrimony casts a long shad…
Ronald S. Hendel offers a careful and thorough re examination of the text of Genesis 1 11. He takes a strongly positive position on the value of the Septuagint as a reliable translation of its Hebrew parent text. This position is contrary to that taken in most existing studies of the text of Genesis, including some in standard editions and reference works. Nevertheless, Hendel shows, there is a…
Written by the Orthodox historian Rabbi Berel Wein, The Oral Law of Sinai is an extraordinary and beautifully illustrated book that explores the Talmud—a law book that is a faithful transmission of the Oral Law of Sinai. As Rabbi Wein explains, the Talmud is two separate books comprising the Oral Law. This work offers an explanation of the first book of the Talmud, the Mishnah
Three decades ago, renowned literary expert Robert Alter radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human creation but a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In The Art of Biblical Poetry , his companion to the seminal The Art of Biblical Narrative , Alter takes his analysis beyond narrative craft to investigate the use of Hebrew po…
In a history of a religiously controversial subject, of which the Book of Mormon is a premiere example, the disputability of the facts is too obvious to bear repeating on every page. I have therefore avoided constructions like “Joseph Smith’s alleged vision,” or “the purported visit of Moroni,” as they would become tiresome and pedantic if repeated on every page. My focus in any case …
R. C. Sproul helps us dig out the meaning of Scripture for ourselves. He lays the groundwork by discussing why we should study the Bible and how our own personal study relates to interpretation. Then he presents in simple, basic terms the science of interpretation and gives practical guidelines for applying this science. Here is a basic book for both beginning Bible readers and those who have b…
The book of Genesis contains foundational material for Jewish and Christian theology, both historic and contemporary, and is almost certainly the most appealed-to book in the Old Testament in contemporary culture. R. W. L. Moberly’s The Theology of the Book of Genesis examines the actual use made of Genesis in current debates, not only in academic but also in popular contexts. Traditional iss…
A collection of critical essays on C.S. Lewis's work.
The Language of Creation is a commentary on the primeval stories from the book of Genesis. It is often difficult to recognize the spiritual wisdom contained in these narratives because the current scientific worldview is deeply rooted in materialism. Therefore, instead of looking at these stories through the lens of modern academic disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, or the physical sci…
In his Exposition of Romans 13 Lloyd-Jones deals with the tensions of life in two kingdoms as he addresses topics such as; the function of the state, fearing God and honoring the king, the already and the not yet, Christ's coming, motives to holy living, reading Scripture and glory begun below. These are just a very few of the topics covered in the 23 chapters of an Exposition of Romans 13: Lif…
In these sermons we see that the truths experessed by the Apostle Paul are not only a fitting conclusion to Romans 9-11, and indeed to the preceding chapters as well, but are also an interpretative key to the past and the future. They explain the history of Israel in the Old Testament and that of the Jews and the church in the New, while also anticipating the future of the Jewish people in the …
In this volume the Apostle brings his argument concerning assurance of salvation to a grand climax. The way in which he advances surely from argument to argument, piling one upon another, is astonishing, and constitutes the supreme example of inspired logic. In doing so he brings us face to face with the fundamental theme of the Bible -- God's plan and purpose of redemption conceived before tim…
When a spiritual history of the 20th century comes to be written it will be bound to include mention not only the far-reaching influence of Dr. Lloyd-Jones' ministry at Westminster Chapel in London, England from 1938-68, but of the remarkable fact that his published volumes of expository sermons have had an unprecedented circulation for such material, selling in millions of copies.
As scholars Borg and Crossan reacted to questions about the blockbuster film The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events leading up to the Crucifixion. Here they present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first, that of Roman governor Pon…
The introductions from Westermann's three-volume commentary on Genesis in one volume.
We all know the story of how Eve was created from Adam's rib. But what if, perhaps, "rib" was a mistranslation and the body part she was really created from was Adam's penis bone? This would explain why human males don't have such a bone, unlike other male mammals. That's only one of many surprising and fun biblical twists readers will encounter in The Uncensored Bible . Here readers will learn…
A wide ranging survey of the secondary literature on the books of Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Ben Sira, and the Wisdom of Solomon in which the author summarizes not only modern scholarship, but also Church Fathers, Medieval authorities, and contemporary interpretations by artists and theologians.
This volume addresses the most important issues related to the study of New Testament writings. Two respected senior scholars have brought together a team of distinguished specialists to introduce the Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman backgrounds necessary for understanding the New Testament and the early church. Contributors include renowned scholars such as Lynn H. Cohick, David A. deSilva, Jame…
The sixteen essays assembled in this volume, four of them co-authored, chart the successive phases of a professional life lived in the interstices of Bible and "theory." Engaging such texts as the Song of Songs, 4 Maccabees, Mark, Luke-Acts, John, and Romans, and such themes as the quest for the historical Jesus, the essays simultaneously traverse postmodernism, deconstruction, New Historicism,…
Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the most important writers in the Western tradition. His two great, giant novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are regarded as pinnacles of the genre; they cover an enormous range of basic human experiences with a precision and probing spirit that, in the words of one critic, are simply 'unmatched by any other writer.'. This guide offers s…
This collection of essays highlights a dimension of Paul's theology of justification that has been neglected -- that his teaching emerged as an integral part of his understanding of his commission to preach the gospel to non-Jews and that his dismissal of justification "by works of the law" was directed not so much against Jewish legalism but rather against his fellow Jews' assumption that the …
A companion to Reading Biblical Narrative, this volume provides an authoritative introduction and overview to biblical poetry. Fokkelman describes, in step-by-step fashion, how to understand the Bible's poetry. Full of examples, Reading Biblical Poetry makes available a holistic and integrative approach to understanding poetry found nowhere else.
This is Greg Bahnsen's response to criticisms of the theonomic position that have been published or circulated over the last ten years. Bahnsen deals not only with Westminster Theological Seminary's Theonomy: A Reformed Critique, but also with two other brief critical books against him, and with various published articles and typewritten, photocopied responses. One by one, Bahnsen takes his cri…
Examines the Bible as a work of literature, focusing on its language and verbal structures and on the imaginative quality of its thought.
The chief aims of this book are: to consider methodologically how to compare two (or more) related but different religions; to destroy the view of Rabbinic Judaism which is still prevalent in much, perhaps most, New Testament scholarship; to establish a different view of Rabbinic Judaism; to argue a case concerning Palestinian Judaism (that is, Judaism as reflected in material of Palestinian pr…
It can no longer be assumed that most people--or even most Christians--have a basic understanding of the Bible. Many don't know the difference between the Old and New Testament, and even the more well-known biblical figures are often misunderstood. It is getting harder to talk about Jesus accurately and compellingly because listeners have no proper context with which to understand God's story o…
This groundbreaking work by Darrell Bock thoroughly explores the theology of Luke's gospel and the book of Acts. In his writings, Luke records the story of God working through Jesus to usher in a new era of promise and Spirit-enablement so that the people of God can be God's people even in the midst of a hostile world. It is a message the church still needs today. Bock both covers major Lukan t…
This Tragic Gospel suggests that the "Gospel" of John intended to supplant the first three gospels and succeeded in gaining undue influence on the early churches. This study focuses on the tragic moment when Jesus prays for deliverance from his impending death in the garden of Gethsemane. Ruprecht contends that John rewrote this scene in order to convey a very different dramatic meaning from th…
James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully rich and illuminating work, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference work. Focusing on two dozen core stories in the Pentateuch--from the Creation and Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and journey to the Promised Land…
This thoroughly revised edition of Bruce M. Metzger's classic work is the most up-to-date manual available for the textual criticism of the New Testament. The Text of the New Testament, Fourth Edition, has been invigorated by the addition of Bart D. Ehrman--author of numerous best-selling books on the New Testament--as a coauthor. This revision brings the discussion of such important matters as…
Reading the books of the Law, the Pentateuch, in their original context is the crucial prerequisite for reading their citation and use in later interpretation, including the New Testament writings, argues Ben Witherington III. Here, he offers pastors, teachers, and students an accessible commentary on the Pentateuch, as well as a reasoned consideration of how these books were heard and read in …
In this volume Robert Kysar chronicles the history of interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the twentieth century. His study reveals four distinct critical approaches to understanding the Fourth Gospel―historical, theological, literary, and postmodernist readings. The use of these methods mirrors the history of biblical studies and influences the present state of scholarship.