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Coauthored by a homiletician, a theologian, and a biblical scholar, this book is a preaching primer that provides tools for crafting effective, engaging, and inspiring sermons. Using a unique workbook-style format, Introduction to Preaching equips seminarians and preachers to use appropriate theological claims informed by solid biblical interpretation while providing several sample sermons from the authors. Readers will learn how to use a three-part schema—the Central Question, the Central Claim, and the Central Purpose—to provide the drive, direction, and destination for the sermon. Offering guidelines for using appropriate sermon forms, imagery, metaphors, and creativity, together with...
In Biblical Exegesis without Authorial Intention? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Authorship and Meaning, Clarissa Breu offers interdisciplinary contributions to the question of the author in biblical interpretation with a focus on “death of the author” theory. The wide range of approaches represented in the volume comprises mostly postmodern theory (e. g. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, Julia Kristeva and Gilles Deleuze), but also the implied author and intentio operis. Furthermore, psychology, choreography, reader-response theories and anthropological studies are reflected. Inasmuch as the contributions demonstrate that biblical studies could utilize significantly more differentiated views on the author than are predominantly presumed within the discipline, it is an invitation to question the importance and place attributed to the author.
For almost two millennia, readers of the New Testament have been trying to figure out Paul. The struggle with his words begins already within the canon itself. While Acts portrays with ease a Torah-observant, Pharisaic-messianic Paul working in partnership with James and other leaders in Jerusalem, the author of 2 Peter famously admitted that the apostle to the nations is difficult to understand. From that moment on debate has ebbed and flowed on all things Pauline; on women as leaders in assemblies and on the status of Jews and Gentiles in God's plan, just to mention two of the contentious topics associated with Paul. For clergy, scholar, and lay person, Paul's letters hold weight and continue to draw in new readers. Anders Runesson seeks to listen to the voice of the historical Paul - a Jew proclaiming a form of Judaism to non-Jews to save them from divine wrath - but also to probe what it means to breathe new life into this historical figure in the twenty-first century.
In Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John, Jonathan Bernier utilizes the critical-realist hermeneutics developed by Bernard Lonergan and Ben F. Meyer to survey historical data relevant to the Johannine expulsion passages (John 9:22, 12:42, 16:2). He evaluates the major two contemporary interpretative traditions regarding these passages, namely that they describe not events of Jesus’ lifetime but rather the implementation of the Birkat ha-Minim in the first first-century, or that they describe not historical events at all but serve only to construct Johannine identity. Against both traditions Bernier argues that these passages plausibly describe events that could have happened during Jesus’ lifetime.
Since 1776, more than 100,000 Swedish-speaking immigrants have arrived in Canada from Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Ukraine, and the United States. Elinor Barr’s Swedes in Canada is the definitive history of that immigrant experience. Active in almost every aspect of Canadian life, Swedish individuals and companies are responsible for the CN Tower, ships on the Great Lakes, and log buildings in Riding Mountain National Park. They have built railways and grain elevators all across the country, as well as churches and old folks’ homes in their communities. At the national level, the introduction of cross-country skiing and the success of ParticipACTION can be attributed to Swedes. Despite this long list of accomplishments, Swedish ethnic consciousness in Canada has often been very low. Using extensive archival and demographic research, Barr explores both the impressive Swedish legacy in Canada and the reasons for their invisibility as an immigrant community.
This contextual biblical reading of Luke 18:18–30 (the encounter between Jesus and the rich ruler) foregrounds the political and economic context of the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs). The reading carefully explores the biblical text’s context, an exploration that includes looking at specific intertextual sources and engaging scholars from Asian and African contexts. The reading is then applied to a contextual biblical approach to poverty in Samoan society. The contextual biblical reading resituates the ruler in the Lukan narrative within the context of the household and the institutional constraints of its ecological environment. The theoretical framework for the conte...
Race and Redemption is the latest volume in the Studies in the History of Christian Missions series, which explores the significant, yet sometimes controversial, impact of Christian missions around the world. In this historical examination of the encounter between British missionaries and people in the Pacific Islands, Jane Samson reveals the paradoxical yet symbiotic nature of the two stances that the missionaries adopted--"othering" and "brothering." She shows how good and bad intentions were tangled up together and how some blind spots remained even as others were overcome. Arguing that gender was as important a category in the story as race, Samson paints a complex picture of the interactions between missionaries and native peoples--and the ways in which perspectives shaped by those encounters have endured.
Of all the array of different ministries within the church, it is perhaps deliverance ministry which causes the most concern and confusion, and yet it is also the one most critical to understand in order to practice well. Drawing on an array of disciplines, including practical theology, biblical theology and systematics, this book brings together leading thinkers in their fields to consider the role of deliverance ministry in the life of the church today.
In Biblical Interpretation and African Traditional Religion, Helen C. John juxtaposes grassroots biblical interpretations from Owamboland, Namibia, with professional interpretations of selected New Testament texts, effectively demonstrating the capacity of grassroots interpretations to destabilise, challenge and nuance dominant professional interpretations. John uses a cross-cultural and dialogical approach – ‘Cross-Cultural Biblical Interpretation Groups’ – to explore the relationship between African Traditional Religion (ATR), Christianity and biblical interpretation in Owamboland, Namibia. She contextualises the grassroots Owambo interpretations using fieldwork experiences and ethnographic literature, thus heightening the cross-cultural encounter. In particular, John reflects on Western epistemologies and the Eurocentric interpretative trends that are brought into relief by the African interpretations gathered in Owamboland.
This volume gathers for the first time all of the primary source material on the early synagogues up through the Second Century C. E. Each entry contains bibliographic citations and interpretative comments. An Introduction frames the current state of synagogue research, while extensive indices allow for easy location of specific allusions.