In the Gospels of the Bible there are a few comments about Mary Magdalene here and there. But in the Gnostic scriptures that have been discovered, there are tantalizing hints that both her relationship to Jesus and her role among Jesus' disciples may have been profoundly important. Among several schools of Gnostic Christianity, Mary plays an essential role in the revelation of the gospel.
Here, for the first time in print, is a Sophian Gospel of St. Mary Magdalene. No secret oral tradition as extensive as this has ever been recorded, and none has ever presented a Gnostic view of Mary Magdalene as she is portrayed in this groundbreaking work-as a powerful holy woman, the innermost disciple and beloved wife of Jesus, and a Christed woman who is coequal with Jesus in the Christ revelation.

There have been many studies of the women in the Gospels, but this is a new kind of book on the subject. Rather than offering a general overview of the Gospel women or focusing on a single theme, Richard Bauckham studies in great depth both the individual women who appear in the Gospels and the specific passages in which they appear.

This unique approach reveals that there is much more to be known about such women than previous studies have assumed. Employing historical and literary readings of the biblical texts, Bauckham successfully captures the particularity of each woman he studies.

An opening look at the Old Testament book of Ruth introduces the possibilities of reading Scripture from a womans perspective. Other studies examine the women found in Matthews and Lukes genealogies, the prophet Anna, Mary of Clopas, Joanna, Salome, and the women featured in the Gospel resurrection narrative. A number of these women have never been the subject of deep theological enquiry.

Unlike most recent books, Bauckhams work is not dominated by a feminist agenda. It does not presume in advance that the Gospel texts support patriarchal oppression, but it does venture some of the new and surprising possibilities that arise when the texts are read from the perspective of their female characters.

Astute, sensitive to issues of gender, and written by one of todays leading theologians, "Gospel Women will be of interest to a wide range of readers.

How to Know What the Bible Teaches is a reliable guide for achieving a clear understanding of the Bible and beginning the discipline of systematic Bible study. Designed as a concise overview of what the Bible teaches, it is a simple introduction to the adventure of learning God's Word. Here is what the Bible says about: - The Word of God - The Trinity - God's relationship with the world - Sin and its remedies - The person and work of the Holy Spirit - The blessings of life in Christ - God - Creation and the Fall - The person and work of Christ - Faith and repentance - The Christian life The topics highlight a method for studying the Bible and growing as a Christian. Bible verses to commit to memory are included. Already a bestseller for many years, How to Know What the Bible Teaches was originally written by James Gray, a former president of the Moody Bible Institute. It has been updated by the staff of the Moody Bible Institute.

These essays deal with the interaction between culture and politics during the period of the Austrian Corporate State, the five years preceding the Anschluss in 1938. The contributions show that no aspect of literary and cultural life remained unchanged by the National Socialist infiltration that took place in the 1930s. All Austrian writers, publishers, theater directors, and film makers had to decide whether to face economic penalty by opposing National Socialism and being blacklisted in Germany or to seek financial advantage by joining the Nazi movement. Jewish writers and political activists had no choice but were forced to flee into exile or face imprisonment in concentration camps after the Anschluss.

The author presents exegetical and language-philosophical studies of a section of the Johannine history of theology. The fluctuation of language and experience in John 15 and 16 is carefully analyzed, theological thought movements and processes of reflection in the late phase of the origin of the Gospel of John are revealed.

World-renowned Bible translator and commentator George M. Lamsa explains nearly one thousand crucial idioms that will enrich reading of the Old and New Testaments for students and general reader alike.

Lamsa, who was raised speaking Aramaic in a community that followed customs largely unchanged since the times of Christ, offers fresh, accurate translations of important idioms, metaphors, and figures of speech found in the Scripture--and provides clear explanations of their meaning of biblical context.

Just as Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning wrote in the vernacular for English-speaking people, Moses the prophets, and the apostles wrote for their own people in the plain language of their times, so that even the unlearned might understand God's Word. Over the centuries, inaccurate translations and misunderstandings of customs and concepts have led to difficulties in bringing the biblical message to contemporary English-speaking readers.

For example, when a man says to Jesus, "let me bury my father," Lamsa points out that this expression means, "Let me first take care of my father until he dies." Traditionally, scholars assumed that this man's father was dead and that Jesus was not interested in his burial. Lamsa's scholarship offers a more accurate understanding of the intent and spirit of this passage.

Idioms in the Bible Explained and a Key to the Original Gospels goes far in correcting such errors that have crept into Biblical scholarship. Obscure and difficult passages from both Old and New Testaments are listed and compared with the King James version (though it will be helpful when used with any English version). These make clear the original meaning of such ancient idioms and assure that our grasp of the biblical message is more sound and rewarding.

To further uncover the original teachings of Scripture, Idioms in the Bible Explained and a Key to the Original Gospels, Lamsa discusses at greater length such topics as "The Language of Jesus," "Aramaic Phraseology," "The Sayings of Jesus," "Early Translations," and more..

The texts Joshua 1, 23 and 24, 1 Samuel 12, and 1 Kings 8 as speeches interpret the central epochs of the presentation of history from Deuteronomy 1 ? 2 Kings 25. The author analyzes these texts and their contextual relationships in regard to redaction, literary and genre criticism. On the basis of these studies, in regard to the presentation of history found in Deuteronomy 1 ? 2 Kings 25 a differentiation can be made between an exilic (DtrH) and an extensive post-exilic layer (DtrS). DtrH and DtrS show characteristic differences above all in their theological profile."

Rather than being content with atomistic approaches to a text, recent scholarship has increasingly seen the value of tracing motifs and their variations as they run through biblical books, and even across book boundaries. Williamson takes up the important but inadequately explored messianic theme, tracing its development and variations through the canonical Isaiah. He sets this unifying thematic study against a counterpoint of redactional analysis, which exploits and builds on his previous work in The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah's Role in Composition and Redaction (1994). The current work was composed to serve as the source material for the 1997 Didsbury Lectures at the DEGREESNazarene Theological College near Manchester, England. In his introductory chapter, Williamson sets the foundation of his theme against the broader backdrop of the king, which moves from the minor tones of the human, Davidic king in the earlier chapters of Isaiah to the major key of the divine king later in the book. He goes against much recent scholarship in holding that the former derive most probably from before the exile. The second variation concerns Immanuel, looking in detail at chapters 6-9. He presents and critiques Buddes' century-old hypothesis that Isaiah 6-8 were an Isaianic Memoir which originally opened the book. Rather than taking the call narratives of other prophets as a comparison, Williamson finds closer parallels between the calls of Isaiah and of Micaiah (1 Kgs 22) and the literary shape of Amos 7-8. He sees the chief interest in the Immanuel figure being in fulfilling the role of righteous rule within the Davidic dynasty, rather than in identifying any specific individual. The third variation, the "Servant" is drawn from Deutero-Isaiah. There the original Davidic relationship with God is transferred to the nation of Israel. She will be God's witness and mediator to the world. As a Christian, Williamson brings up the interpretation that Jesus is the servant according to the NT. He defends his view by stating that "Jesus fulfills, but does not thereby exhaust, the prophecy" (p. 53). The theme of justice and righteousness in association with the servant ties his role to that of the king in the first section.

Why is the Bible so often used as a tool for division and exclusion? And why are so many intelligent and compassionate people embarrassed to say they find wisdom and comfort in the Bible? In this groundbreaking book, the man Time magazine called one of the seven best preachers in America provides answers to these questions and shows what the Bible says about topics that concern Lis all, including joy, suffering, evil, and goodness. With compassion, humor, and insight, lie gives readers the tools and understanding they need to make the ancient wisdom of the Bible a dynamic part of their modern lives.

This French work presents an exegetic and theological interpretation of Qoheleth's speech on riches (Ecclesiastes 5:9-6:6). The detailed exegetic analysis distinguishes the existential meaning from the anthropological and theological meaning, and develops a rhetorical figure of wisdom which is characterised by two aspects - either the denial of God or the reference to God. Using a parallel to the Book of Job, the intertextuality of the discourse of wisdom becomes clear. To the extent that the critical literary and the hermeneutic approach foregrounds the text in its final form, it points directly to the internal tension of the text, which is marked by contrasts, and questions the conditions of the process of composition. This approach also provides a new access to Qoheleth's provocative thinking.

Good and evil, clean and unclean, rich and poor, self and other. The nature and function of such binary oppositions have long intrigued scholars in such fields as philosophy, linguistics, classics, and anthropology. From the opening chapters of Genesis, in which God separates day from night, and Adam and Eve partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dyadic pairs proliferate throughout the Hebrew Bible. In this groundbreaking work melding critical exegesis and contemporary theory, Saul M. Olyan considers the prevalence of polarities in biblical discourse and expounds their significance for the social and religious institutions of ancient Israel. Extant biblical narrative and legal texts reveal a set of socially constructed and culturally privileged binary oppositions, Olyan argues, which instigate and perpetuate hierarchical social relations in ritual settings such as the sanctuary.

Focusing on four binary pairs--holy/common, Israelite/alien, clean/unclean, and whole/blemished--Olyan shows how these privileged oppositions were used to restrict access to cultic spaces, such as the temple or the Passover table. These ritual sites, therefore, became the primary contexts for creating and recreating unequal social relations. Olyan also uncovers a pattern of challenge to the established hierarchies by nonprivileged groups. Converging with contemporary issues of power, marginalization, and privileging, Olyan's painstaking yet lucid study abounds with implications for anthropology, classics, critical theory, and feminist studies.

The study examines the thesis widely held in religious studies and theology that in the ancient world there was a close link between the possession of citizenship and the chance - and also the obligation - to engage in cult. There is a critical discussion of different versions of this thesis. The study presents, translates and interprets epigraphic and literary sources on cultic practice and religious law from the Hellenistic Age from Greek poleis, Rome and Judaism.

In this study the author is concerned with how human life is understood in the biblical book of Qoheleth (the Preacher). In Qoheleth, insight into one's own mortality leads to a new evaluation of happiness in life. Both the various areas of human life (for example work and rest, poverty and wealth, youth and old age) and the relationship of human beings to God are developed by Qoheleth between the poles of "death" and "happiness in life."

The author here presents a contribution to the Gospel literature of the New Testament. In his analysis of Luke 8-21 as an integral part of Luke-Acts, he deals with this section in a literary-critical and traditio-historical way. Ever since Schleiermacher the hypothesis of a "travel narrative" or a corresponding "central section" (the term employed in the English-speaking world) beginning in "Luke" 9:51 and covering about ten chapters, has been dominant in research of the "Third Gospel". The author shows that this hypothesis is "un-Lukan". This in turn makes a new access to the total Lukan project possible. One part of the analysis of the text, for example, is a comparison with the narrative techniques of bios literature in classical sources.

A genuine renaissance is presently underway in the study of biblical interpretation and biblical culture in the early Christian age. The profundity and complexity of the early Christians engagement with Holy Scripture, in theology, in ecclesial and liturgical life, in ethics, and in ascetic and devotional life, are providing a rich resource for contemporary discussions of the Bible's ongoing "afterlife" within ecumenical Christian communities and contexts.

The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity is a collection of wide-ranging essays on the influence of the Bible in numerous and varied aspects of the life of the Greek-speaking churches during the first four centuries. Essays appear under the general themes of (I) The Bible as a Foundation of Christianity; (II) The Bible in Use among the Greek Church Fathers; (III) The Bible in Early Christian Doctrinal Controversy; (IV) The Bible and Religious Devotion in the Early Greek Church. Individual essays probe topics as diverse as the use of the Bible in early Christian preaching and catechesis, appeals to Scripture in the conflicts between Jews and Christians, pagan use of Scripture against the Church, and the Bible's influence in early Christian art, martyrology, liturgical reading, pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and ascetical life.

Much of the volume constitutes a translation, revision, and adaptation of essays originally presented in the French volume Le monde grec ancien et la Bible (1984), Volume 1 of the series Bible de Tousles Temps. Four new studies appear, however, including an introductory essay on Origen of Alexandria as a guide to the biblical reader, and two essays on the biblical culture of early Eastern Christianmonasticism.

The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity comes as an international project, the work of French, Swiss, Australian, and now Canadian and American scholars. It will be useful to students of early Christianity and the history of biblical interpretation, and will also serve as a useful introduction to the many dimensions of the reception of the Bible in the early Church.

Oskar Skarsaune gives us a new look into the development of the early church and its practice by showing us the evidence of interaction between the early Christians and rabbinic Judaism. He offers numerous fascinating episodes and glimpses into this untold story.

Conozca su Biblia, developed in partnership with the Asociaci??n para la Educaci??n Teol??gica Hispana and the Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission unit of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is a unique new Bible commentary series written in Spanish by leading Hispanic theologians and Bible educators.

Newly rebound edition of a famous Bible History used in Catholic schools for years.

Covers the most important events events narrated in the Bible. With 80 beautiful drawings of biblical events and suitable for sixth through eighth grades.

New full color cover!

In plain language and with ample illustration, Paul D. Wegner presents an overview of the history and methods, aims and results of textual criticism of the whole Bible--the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. You will gain an appreciation for the vast work that has been accomplished in preserving the text of Scripture and find a renewed confidence in its reliability.

A Christianity Today 1999 Book of the Year Every reader of the Bible has encountered the powerful, comforting and sometimes puzzling imagery of Scripture. These concrete pictures with their hidden force have struck sharp and lasting impressions on our minds. Their imprint has etched itself on the language and grammar of Christian faith and Western culture. Why then do traditional Bible dictionaries and reference works offer so little help to explorers of the Bible's galaxy of verbal pictures? They excel in describing the climate, borders and location of Galilee or Sinai. But they are often blind to the artistic expressions and deaf to the musical meanings that echo from within the world of the biblical text. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery is the first contemporary reference work dedicated to exploring the images, symbols, motifs, metaphors and literary patterns found in the Bible. More than that, it examines the Bible's universal archetypes or master images--including the plot motifs and character types that recur throughout life, literature and the Bible. This unique dictionary explores the dazzling variety in which the Word of God comes dressed in clothes of everyday life. It traces the trail of images from Eden to the New Jerusalem. It captures the plotted patterns of biblical narrative. It surveys the imaged texture of each book of the Bible. In short, The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery is an inviting, enlightening and indispensable companion to the reading, study, contemplation and enjoyment of the Bible.