"Women are essential to the biblical story--they bear life, lead communities, and testify to God's power and presence. Some of their names we know, others we've only heard, and others, tragically, go unnamed. Following the success of her beloved book Fierce, pastor and provocateur Alice Connor introduces us to a whole new group of women from the Bible, including Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Esther, and Lydia. Connor invites us to see them not as players in a man's story--as victims or tempters--nor as solely morality archetypes who teach women to be better wives and mothers--but as brave foremothers of the faith. Skillfully drawn by the author, these women's stories are messy, challenging, and beautiful. When we read their stories, we can see not only their particular, formidable lives but also our own."

Craigie's study on the Book of Deuteronomy is part of The New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Like its companion series on the New Testament, this commentary devotes considerable care to achieving a balance between technical information and homiletic-devotional interpretation.

The year 2020 witnesses the 400th anniversary of the voyage made by the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed from England to America on board the Mayflower. This epic excursion signalled one of the most significant episodes in Christian history, making as it did an enormous impact on the trajectory of Christianity in the USA. Through the Year with the Pilgrim Fathers is a commemorative edition featuring excerpts relating to that event. It is a story of faith, adventure and courage. Each excerpt is married to a verse of Scripture and a prayer, providing 365 daily readings telling the story of great exploits in God's service.

The presentation, the use, and the possible reception of the book of Genesis to lay audience largely unable to read the original texts. What was meant by the medieval popular Bible - what was presented as biblical narrative to an audience largely unable to read the original biblical texts? Presentations in the vernacular languages of Europe of supposedly biblicalepisodes were more often than not expanded and interpreted, sometimes very considerably. This book looks at the presentation, the use, and the possible lay reception of the book of Genesis, using as wide a range of medieval genresand vernaculars as possible on a comparative basis down to the Reformation. Literatures taken into consideration include Irish, Cornish, English, French, High and Low German, Spanish, Italian and others. Genesis was an importantbook, and the focus is on those narrative high points which lend themselves most particularly (it is never exclusive) to literal expansion, even though allegory can also work backwards into the literal narrative. Starting with thedevil in paradise (who is not biblical), the book examines what Adam and Eve did afterwards, who killed Cain, what happened in the flood or at the tower of Babel, and ends with a consideration of the careers of Jacob and Joseph.The book is based on the Speaker's Lectures, given in 2002 in the University of Oxford. BRIAN MURDOCH is Professor of German at the University of Stirling.

In her What's in a Phrase? - winner of the 2015 Christianity Today award in Spirituality - Marilyn McEntyre showed readers how brief scriptural phrases can evoke and invite. In Word by Word McEntyre invites readers to dwell with single words - remembering their biblical contexts, considering the personal associations they bring up, and allowing them to become a focus for prayer and meditation. With seven phrases, questions, or prompts for each of the fifteen words she considers (see CONTENTS section), McEntyre guides readers in examining the word from a different angle each day of the week. She draws on the spiritual practices of lectio divina and centering prayer as she encourages readers to allow these single words to help us pause and hear the voice of the Spirit. "I invite you to discover," says McEntyre in her introduction, "how words may become little fountains of grace. How a single word may, if you hold it for a while, become a prayer."

This book reveals the complexity of the heart and what that means for how we understand sin and renewal, with principles for how believers can truly love and obey God with all that they are.

Envisioning the first book of the Bible like no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator, retells the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest and deeply moving way. Now, readers of every persuasion can gain astonishing new insights from these stories. Crumb's Book of Genesis reintroduces us to the bountiful tree-lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured the Bible's most dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of biblical originals: from the serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing like an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a 'kind of depressed guy who doesn't strike you as physically courageous', and his bother, Esau, 'a rough and kick-ass guy', to God himself, 'a standard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard'. Crumb's Book of Genesis, the culmination of five years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling that celebrates the astonishing diversity of one of our greatest artistic geniuses.

Revitalize Leadership Skills with Wisdom from the World's Best-Known Bible Passage

"What a joy to learn that David Davenport has placed his thoughts on paper! He has touched thousands with his teaching-may he and Blaine touch even more through this book."
-Max Lucado, best-selling author and pulpit minister, Oak Hills Church of Christ

"Providing fresh insight into one of the most cherished texts in the Bible, David Davenport and Blaine McCormick walk with us beside the 'quiet waters' of our contemplation and embolden us for ethical, fearless, and transformational leadership."
-Andrew K. Benton, president, Pepperdine University

"Shepherd Leadership extracts spiritual insights from the writings of one who was anointed by God to lead, David. It makes a tremendous contribution, not to the 'science' of leadership but, far more significantly, to its heart and soul."
-Richard Stearns, president, World Vision United States

"Shepherd Leadership is remarkable for showing how timeless truths-from one of the most significant passages in the Bible-apply to the complexities of contemporary organizations. It's abundantly clear that when leaders accept the call to lead like a shepherd, not only is the organizational culture improved, but so is the bottom line."
-Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and The Servant Leader and cofounder of the Center for FaithWalk Leadership

This newest "NICNT" volume explores Paul's three letters to Timothy and Titus within their historical, religious, and cultural settings. Significantly, Philip Towner treats these texts principally as communications from the apostle himself to his coworkers as they carried out assignments in the Pauline mission. Towner's introduction sets out the rationale for this historical approach, questions certain assumptions of recent critical scholarship, and establishes the uniqueness and individuality of each letter. The commentary itself displays a wide array of fresh insights. In treating Paul's concern with his opponents in Timothy, for example, Towner suggests that dangerous trends outside the church were also in Paul's mind as he addressed the behavior of women who were active as teachers in the church. Centered on a superb translation of the Greek text and complemented with thorough footnotes, bibliographical citations, and indexes, this commentary will soon become a standard reference for busy pastors, students, and scholars.

A 2001 Christianity Today Award of Merit winner Because the Catholic Epistles focus on orthodox faith and morals, the Fathers drew on them as a means of defense against the rising challenge of heretics. This factor gave these letters a freshness and relevance to conditions in the fourth and fifth centuries that might otherwise seem surprising. Many of the Fathers unabashedly saw in them anticipatory attacks on Marcion and strong defenses against the Arians. They did so quite naturally because in their view truth was eternal and deviations from it had existed from the beginning. Above all, the Fathers found in the Catholic Epistles a manual for spiritual warfare, counsel for the faithful in the cosmic struggle between good and evil. In them was sound instruction in the ways of self-sacrifice, generosity and humility, through which the cosmic forces of evil could be defeated. Allusions to these letters go back as far as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, but the first commentary derives from Clement of Alexandria. Didymus the Blind was the next significant Greek-speaking commentator, though his commentary is fully extant only in Latin translation. Many of the comments from the early centuries have been passed on to us through Latin catenae, or chain commentaries, in which a later commentator collected comments from a variety of sources and chained them together in a fashion much like that of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Among Latin commentators on these letters, pride of place must be given to Bede the Venerable. This volume opens up a treasure house of ancient wisdom that allows these faithful witnesses, some appearing here in English translation for the first time, to speak with eloquence and intellectual acumen to the church today.