You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Hebrew for Biblical Interpretation teaches elementary Hebrew with a specific focus on the tasks of biblical exegesis. This innovative textbook combines the features of a traditional grammar with exercises in reading and interpreting the Hebrew Bible. Grammatical descriptions are clear, concise, and systematic, and vocabulary is introduced in descending order of frequency. All words occurring more than 100 times in the Hebrew Bible are taught, and attention to grammatical indicators reduces the need for rote memorization of paradigms. The integration of grammar and exegesis helps to motivate students and makes the textbook well-suited to seminary courses, while those who teach in university settings will find the textbook useful because the focus is on scholarly biblical exegesis, not theological interpretation.
Arthur Walker-Jones presents an Earth-focused reading of the second book of Psalms, focusing upon the many nonhuman animals that appear repeatedly within the text. In the first commentary to explore the implications of the natural and cultural history of animals for the interpretation of Psalms, Walker-Jones moves beyond the standard treatment of animals as mere metaphors for human concerns, or background to human stories. Instead, Walker-Jones draws upon the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, incorporating this into ecocritical analysis and arguing for the similarity between the two approaches, including recognizing that the oppression and liberation of humans is interrelated with t...
C. S. Lewis famously penned the phrase “God in the Dock” and proposed that there was a “great divide” between ancient and modern humans, in that our ancestors would have rightly seen themselves “in the dock” before God, while we moderns have placed God there before us. But what if what God's love most desires for us, the gospel or “good news” of the only way of life for humanity, has been “in the dock” before us from the time of Adam and Eve? And what if it is also the case that the gospel is often “in the dock” as though it is not good—even for the church? This book builds upon and expands the “life and death” stakes Lewis proposed by demonstrating that the gospel way of faith itself has been placed in the dock by us and in many ways ruined our relationships with God, with our own selves, with one another, and even with the natural world itself which we are meant to “steward” for its good. In these pages the reader will discover why the gospel that requires faith is good news, but why we so tragically default to our divisive and self-destructive ways.
Concern for the Earth and biblical faith have always had an uneasy relationship. This book explores Psalm genres and important metaphors in the Psalms for Earth, the environment, and living things.
George Lindbeck once characterized postliberalism, which received its initial structure from his book The Nature of Doctrine, as an attempt to recover pre-modern scriptural interpretation in contemporary form. In Lord, Giver of Life: Toward a Pneumatological Complement to George Lindbeck’s Theory of Doctrine, Jane Barter Moulaison explores the success of that effort through a close examination of Lindbeck’s own theological contributions. Taking seriously the ecumenical promises of Lindbeck’s writing (he was instrumental in advancing Lutheran and Roman Catholic dialogue throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s), this book brings Lindbeck’s famous cultural-linguistic model of religion ...
The biblical and Christian traditions have long been seen to have legitimated and encouraged humanity's aggressive domination of nature. Biblical visions of the future, with destruction for the earth and rescue for the elect, have also discouraged any concern for the earth's future or the welfare of future generations. But we now live in a time when environmental issues are at the centre of political and ethical debate. What is needed is a new reading of the biblical tradition that can meet the challenges of the ecological issues that face humanity at the beginning of the third millennium. 'The Bible and the Environment' examines a range of biblical texts - from Genesis to Revelation - evaluating competing interpretations. The Bible provides a thoroughly ambivalent legacy. Certainly, it cannot provide straightforward teaching on care for the environment but nor can it simply be seen as an anti-ecological book. Developing an 'ecological hermeneutic' as a way of mediating between contemporary concerns and the biblical text, 'The Bible and the Environment' presents a way of productively reading the Bible in the context of contemporary ecology.
This book explores the ways in which early Christian writers and communities, from late antiquity through the New Testament period, interpreted the scriptures of Israel, as they sought to understand Jesus and the Gospel in relation to God's revelation and past acts in history. These essays represent work on the growing edge of studies of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament. The contents, authored by both veteran and younger scholars, treat methods and canons, Jesus and the Gospels, and Acts and the Epistles.
A Biblical Perspective on What It Means to Be Human This major work by a widely respected Old Testament scholar and theologian unpacks a biblical perspective on fundamental questions of what it means to be human. J. Gordon McConville explores how a biblical view of humanity provides a foundation for Christian reflection on ethics, economics, politics, and church life and practice. The book shows that the Old Testament's view of humanity as "earthed" and "embodied" plays an essential part in a well-rounded Christian theology and spirituality, and applies the theological concept of the "image of God" to all areas of human existence.
In this close reading of Psalms 90-150, Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford discovers meanings in the Psalms that were "there all along" but hidden beneath layers of interpretation built up over the centuries. Approaching the canonical storyline of the Psalter with feminist-critical lenses, she reads against the dominant mind-set, refuses to accept the givens, and seeks to uncover a hidden/alternate/parallel set of societal norms. DeClaissé-Walford attends to how context affects the way hearers appropriate the Psalter's words: women, for the most part, hear differently than men; women of privilege differently than women living in poverty. Her interchanges with students and scholars in post-apartheid South Africa bring the biblical text alive in new ways for today's believers.
Who was the real founder of Christianity as it is known today--Jesus or Paul? What, if any, was the connection between them? These and other questions about the two historical figures have occupied biblical scholars and the Christian church for many years up to the present time. This book proposes new ways of framing the questions as well as new approaches to answering them. Neither Jesus nor Paul spoke of a new world religion, separate from Judaism, that would envelop the planet and last for millennia. This study seeks to locate both figures in their respective places in the first century, in Jewish contexts and within the larger Greco-Roman society. The aim is to transcend the language and...