This essay offers three approaches to the text: a personal reflection on the way that doers of the Word had an effect on me as a young teen and possibilities for how this text could lead to focused ...concern for widows and orphans, since care for these two groups forms a singular marker of Christian faithfulness and salvation. Through the law of Moses, God commands us to protect and care for widows and orphans (Deut 10:18; Hos 14:3; Isa 1:17; Ps 82:3; cf. John 14:18). For James, the "doing of the Word," that is, right ethical behavior, is measured by whether hearers hear, then act rightly, especially in works that protect people in poverty, distress, and oppression (Jas 2:15-16). When we as a body neglect widows and orphans, our religion is worthless. Sermonic helps will include observations on the sociopolitical circumstances and conditions that caused the prophets and the early and (some) Reformation churches to focus on widows and orphans as special recipients of care and protection.
This work contends that when rightly read as a coherent narrative in its first-century setting, the Gospel of Matthew evinces a significant Isaac typology which coheres well with the Matthean themes ...of Jesus as new temple and ultimate sacrifice.
The Ancient Near East Pritchard, James B; Fleming, Daniel E
2021, 2010, 2021-12-07
eBook
Two classic illustrated anthologies, now combined in one convenient volume James Pritchard's classic anthologies of the ancient Near East have introduced generations of readers to texts essential for ...understanding the peoples and cultures of this important region. Now these two enduring works have been combined and integrated into one convenient and richly illustrated volume, with a new foreword that puts the translations in context.With more than 130 reading selections and 300 photographs of ancient art, architecture, and artifacts, this volume provides a stimulating introduction to some of the most significant and widely studied texts of the ancient Near East, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Creation Epic (Enuma elish), the Code of Hammurabi, and the Baal Cycle. For students of history, religion, the Bible, archaeology, and anthropology, this anthology provides a wealth of material for understanding the ancient Near East. * Represents the diverse cultures and languages of the ancient Near East—Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, and Aramaic—in a wide range of genres: * Historical texts * Legal texts and treaties * Inscriptions * Hymns * Didactic and wisdom literature * Oracles and prophecies * Love poetry and other literary texts * Letters * New foreword puts the classic translations in context * More than 300 photographs document ancient art, architecture, and artifacts related to the texts * Fully indexed
Can one hold consistently both that there is suffering in the world and that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? This book argues that one can. The opening section presents ...current research related to autism spectrum disorder to contend that some philosophical problems, including the problem of evil, are best considered with the help of narratives. Then the book investigates the moral psychology and value theory within which one typical medieval theodicy — that of Thomas Aquinas — is embedded. It also makes use of recent work in developmental psychology to illuminate these views. In the third section, the book presents detailed, innovative exegeses of the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham, and Mary of Bethany, each of which is exemplary of a different form of suffering. In the context of the interpretations of these stories and the previous examination of Aquinas's views, the book then argues that an extended Thomistic theodicy can constitute a consistent and cogent defence for the problem of suffering.
This book offers a comprehensive summary of the use of the Psalms at Qumran and in the New Testament. For the first time this collection offers a set of studies which will offer an overview of the ...role and function of the Psalms in the first century. Each chapter considers matters of textual form, points of particular interest, and hermeneutics. Together, this collection forms an important research tool for Septuagintal and manuscript studies, first-century hermeneutics and the development of Christian apologetics and theology. The contributors have all either written or are writing monographs on their particular section of the New Testament/ Qumran. In a number of cases, the particular chapter will be the first of its kind (such as Steve Moyise's discussion of Psalms in Revelation).
This work focuses on the appropriation and resignification of scripture in Joel and its NT Nachleben, where Israel's literature functions as an authoritative medium of refraction. The purpose is to ...recover the canon's unrecorded hermeneutics at the intersection of both diachronic and synchronic textual surfaces.
In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of reading and thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Attentive to nuance while engagingly ...straightforward, Walzer examines the commentary of the ancient biblical writers and discusses the implications for such urgent modern topics as the nature of political society, hierarchy and justice, the use of political power, the justification for and rules of warfare, and the responsibilities of clerical figures, monarchs, and their subjects.
Because there are many biblical writers, and because they represent different political views, pluralism is a central feature of biblical politics, Walzer observes. Yet pluralism is never explicitly defended in the Bible-indeed it couldn't be defended since God's word is one. There is, however, an anti-political teaching which recurs in biblical texts: if you have faith in God, you have no need for particular political institutions or prudent political leaders or deliberative assemblies or loyal citizens. And, Walzer finds a strong moral teaching common to the Bible's authors. He identifies God's decree for ethics and investigates its implications for just policymaking in our own times.
The Enlightenment Bible Sheehan, Jonathan
2013., 20130409, 2013, 2005, 2007, c2005., 2005-01-01
eBook
How did the Bible survive the Enlightenment? In this book, Jonathan Sheehan shows how Protestant translators and scholars in the eighteenth century transformed the Bible from a book justified by ...theology to one justified by culture. In doing so, the Bible was made into the cornerstone of Western heritage and invested with meaning, authority, and significance even for a secular age.
The Enlightenment Bibleoffers a new history of the Bible in the century of its greatest crisis and, in turn, a new vision of this century and its effects on religion. Although the Enlightenment has long symbolized the corrosive effects of modernity on religion, Sheehan shows how the Bible survived, and even thrived in this cradle of ostensible secularization. Indeed, in eighteenth-century Protestant Europe, biblical scholarship and translation became more vigorous and culturally significant than at any time since the Reformation. From across the theological spectrum, European scholars--especially German and English--exerted tremendous energies to rejuvenate the Bible, reinterpret its meaning, and reinvest it with new authority.
Poets, pedagogues, philosophers, literary critics, philologists, and historians together built a post-theological Bible, a monument for a new religious era. These literati forged the Bible into a cultural text, transforming the theological core of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the end, the Enlightenment gave the Bible the power to endure the corrosive effects of modernity, not as a theological text but as the foundation of Western culture.
