Challenging gnositicizing interpretations of the letter, Terry Griffith explores how the polemic against idols was variously used in Jewish and Christian circles to define self-identity and the limits of community. He shows that the rhetoric of 1 John is not polemical, but pastoral, directed at confirming Johannine Christians in their fundamental confession of faith and preventing further defections of Jewish Christians back to Judaism. Griffith argues that the christological focus in 1 John concerns the identification of Jesus as the Messiah, and that the ending of the letter both contributes to the author's overall pastoral strategy and sheds light on the issues of sin and christology that are raised in this letter.>

A Bible Commentary on the Book of Hebrews. Sovereign grace emphasis suitable for personal study, devotional, study groups and sermon-help. Don Fortner is an experience Pastor and Teacher whose writings and preached sermons are highly regarded around the world.

"Cats help me pray," says Herbert Brokering. This collection of whimsical, insightful psalms, or prayers, is based on Brokering's observations of cats he has known through his life - farm cats, house cats, alley cats. Each psalm expresses an observation about a cat's nature, written in the "voice" of the cat, followed by a prayer in which the human spirit speaks of its cat-like nature to God. Cat Psalms is for those who wish to pray more deeply, with more imagination and understanding, and offers fresh ways to see ourselves and new ways to pray.

Opening with the prophet Elijah's ascent into heaven and closing with the people of Judah's descent to Babylonia, 2 Kings charts the story of the two Israelite kingdoms until their destruction. This commentary unfolds the literary dimensions of 2 Kings, analyzes the strategies through which its words create a world of meaning, and examines the book's tales of prophets, political intrigue, royal apostasy, and religious reform as components of larger patterns.

2 Kings pays attention to the writers' methods of representing human character and of twisting chronological time for literary purposes. It also shows how the contests between kings and prophets are mirrored in the competing structures of regnal synchronization and prophecy-fulfillment. Much more than a common chronicle of royal achievements and disasters, 2 Kings emerges as a powerful history that creates memories and forges identities for its Jewish readers.

"2 Kings" is divided into four parts including Part One The Story of Elisha: 2 Kings 1:1-8:6"; Part Two "Revolutions in Aram, Israel, and Judah: 2 Kings 8:7-13:25"; Part Three "Turmoil and Tragedy for Israel: 2 Kings 14-17"; and Part Four "Renewal and Catastrophe for Judah: 2 Kings 18-25."

"Robert L. Cohn is professor of religion and holds the Philip and Muriel Berman Chair in Jewish studies at Lafayette College. Under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee, he lectured on Jewish interpretations of the Bible as the first American Jewish-scholar-in-residence at four Roman Catholic seminaries in Poland.""

Professor Maurice Gilbert SJ is widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities on biblical wisdom literature, in particular the Book of Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon, on which he has produced many publications. This Festschrift, the third one in his honor, brings together twenty-four essays written by both established scholars who are friends and colleagues of Professor Gilbert and younger members of the field who wrote their doctoral dissertation under his guidance at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. There he was rector (1978-1984) and full professor until his retirement (1975-2011). The volume is divided into six main sections, focusing respectively on Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, and Psalms. Some essays display rigorous attention to textual and linguistic issues, whereas others deal with more theological questions (fear before God, joy in Qoheleth, arguments for justice in Wisdom of Solomon) or focus on the comparison between two books (for instance, Qoheleth and Sirach, Sirach and Genesis, Sirach and Tobit).

Despite the striking frequency with which the Greek word kyrios, Lord, occurs in Luke's Gospel, this study is the first comprehensive analysis of Luke's use of this word. The analysis follows the use of kyrios in the Gospel from beginning to end in order to trace narratively the complex and deliberate development of Jesus' identity as Lord. Detailed attention to Luke's narrative artistry and his use of Mark demonstrates that Luke has a nuanced and sophisticated christology centered on Jesus' identity as Lord.

The first translation into English of all the extant Targums, together with introductions and annotations. Each volume examines the place of a particular Targum or group of Targums in Jewish life, liturgy and biblical interpretation. Each Targum is evaluated in the light of Jewish tradition and of modern linguistic and biblical research. The notes point to parallel passages in other Jewish and Christian biblical and liturgical texts. Each translated Targum has its own apparatus indicating the relationship between the English translation and the Aramaic original and every volume has a useful bibliography.

This book examines the problem of theodicy arising from the fall of Jerusalem (587 B.C.E.) in the book of Jeremiah. It explores the ways in which the authors of the book of Jeremiah tried to explain away their God's responsibility while clinging to the idea of divine mastery over human affairs. In order to trace the development of a particular book's understanding of God's role in meting out punishments, this book analyzes all the passages containing the pivotal word"> (TM) ("to provoke to anger") in Deuteronomistic History and the book of Jeremiah.

Peng outlines a plausible structure for Romans 12.1 to 15.13. After a brief survey of scholars' opinions about the structure of this passage, three methodologies (structural exegesis, discourse analysis, and rhetorical criticism) are analysed. Having acknowledged that each of these methodologies has its own limitations, an eclectic approach, which is analogous with 'putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the final picture', is suggested. Peng also includes two appendices - the first is an assessment of the historical background of chapter 13.1 to 13.7 in light of the analysis presented; and the second is a short assessment of interpretations of the word 'pistis' in chapter 12.3 and 12.6, in which the rationale behind the interpretation of this term is discussed.

In Chapter 1 Paula Gooder discusses the problems of interpreting this text and looks at the major debates of its past interpreters. The most popular modern approach is to compare it with other texts of ascent in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, yet even a brief examination of these texts indicate that differences are present. In the remainder of the book Gooder evaluates the extent and significance of these differences. Part One consists of a detailed consideration of a range of texts which superficially seem closest to 2 Corinthians 12. Chapter 2 presents a history of scholarship on heavenly ascent. Chapters 3 to 8 each examine a text of ascent from a different period and background in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Chapter 9 draws out the points of similarity between these texts. Part Two considers the text of 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 in the light of the findings of Part One. In the detailed examination of the Pauline ascent in chapter 10, the extent of the differences between this text and the texts examined in Part One becomes clear. Chapter 11 proposes a new interpretation of the account of ascent, arguing that it reports a failed ascent into heaven. The chapter shows that this interpretation makes sense not only of 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 itself but also of chapters 10-13 which surround it. The account is one more example of weakness from the apostle in which he proves that weakness, not strength, is the sign of a true apostle.

"An overwhelming number of us are lonely," writes Marva Dawn. "Sometimes we are lonely for a specific reason: our spouse has recently died or left us; our children have just gone from home or have been tragically killed; we are fighting a particular battle against illness or suffering the ravages of chemotherapy; we are new in the neighborhood; our values are different from those of our work colleagues; it is a Friday night and all our other single friends have dates. Sometimes our loneliness is a general, pervasive alienation: we just don't feel as if we belong in our place of work, in our community, in our family, even in our church." Our struggle with loneliness often results in a lament directed at God. We might say something like "How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?" When we cry out words like these, we find ourselves praying the words of the Psalms. In My Soul Waits, Dawn guides us through psalms that reveal the burdens of our souls to God, and in turn reveal God's profound, intimate concern for our pain and a promise to abide with us in it. Readers feeling the sting of loneliness will take great comfort in this very personal book. Those who strive to support the lonely among them will take wise counsel from the Scriptures it expounds. All will encounter a renewed hope in the One who lists our tears only to wipe them all away.

The Old Testament Library provides an authoritative treatment of every major and important aspect of the Old Testament. This commentary on Lamentations furnishes a fresh translation and discusses questions of historical background and literary architecture before providing a theologically sensitive exposition of the text.

This wide-ranging investigation of the priestly cultic texts from Exodus 25 onwards explores the coherence and theology of the priestly writing, utilizing insights from anthropology and recent biblical scholarship. Through a carefully worked out set of laws and institutions, the priestly authors sought to order Israel's life before God in a sustainable and satisfying way. This is a valuable contribution to the growing number of studies concerned to understand and recover this neglected part of the Bible.>

A fascinating intertextual study of the classic biblical tragedy of Saul, the first king of Israel, as first narrated in biblical narrative and later reworked in Lamartine's drama Saul: Trag+--die and Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Plot and characterization are each explored in detail in this study, and in each of the narrations the hero's tragic fate emerges both as the result of a character flaw and also as a consequence of the ambivalent role of the deity, showing a double theme underlying not only the biblical vision but also its two very different retellings nearer to our own times.

This is a book about the use of classical rhetoric in reading Paul. It begins with a useful review of the various strategies, and, in the light of the issues that emerge, it describes a rhetorical method which is then tested on 2 Corinthians 8-9. Here, the advice of the classical rhetorical manuals for constructing a text is used-in reverse order-so as to uncover the persuasive strategy being used by Paul in this case. This technique leads to a quite new reading of the two chapters, which O'Mahony then proceeds to test against the standard work in the field by Hans Dieter Betz.>

The primary problem that Mobley's book deals with is the odd character of Judges 13-16 and of its hero. Samson's special quality, noted by virtually all interpreters, is defined here as liminality. The liminal situation, which includes a movement away from society, the lack of social restraints, and the status of outsider, is a permanent condition for Samson. The secondary purpose of this book is to demonstrate the ways in which the Samson saga, which is often compared to the Greek Heracles tradition, makes use of ideas about wild men and warriors found in other biblical and Mesopotamian stories.