Brooke illuminates the first-century world shared by the Qumran community and the writers of the New Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls have provided Old Testament scholars with an enormous wealth of data for textual criticism as well as theology. But, as Brooke skillfully demonstrates, New Testament scholars can use the Scrolls to learn more about the linguistic, historical, religious, and social contexts of Palestine in the first century. A wide range of topics and themes is discussed, including Matthew's Beatitudes, the lost song of Miriam, Levi and the Levites, women's authority, and the use of scripture in the parable of the vineyard.

As a single man, you're in a war against sexual temptation.
But God has given you powerful ammunition.
"A comprehensive workbook for personal or group study!
You're bombarded by sexual images. You're constantly battling inner urges. You want to do right-in fact, you want to meet God's standard of avoiding any hint of sexual immorality. But accomplishing that goal is a challenge.
If you are a single man struggling to remain sexually pure, you are not alone. Now there's practical, hard-hitting help from the authors of the blockbuster Every Man series. "Every Single Man's Battle Workbook guides you-or your men's group-through an honest and clear exploration of God's Word. You'll undertake a personal journey into key Scriptures, wrestle with questions for reflection and examination, and discover the practical tools and Biblical strategies you need to live the pure life God is calling you to-- even while living in a sexually soaked culture.
Make a frontal assault on the temptation every single man faces. This workbook provides all the resources you need.

Unlike the negative but well-known precepts of the Old Testement--the Ten Commandments--the commands of Jesus are postitive and relatively overlooked, despite their superb relevance to the challenges people face today. In "Come, Follow Me: The Commandments of Jesus, " Anthony J. Gittins helps the reader hear Christ's message and live it in everyday life. Gittins explores some of the positive and specific things that Jesus would have the reader do to follow him.
144-page paperback

A brilliant new biography of Saint Paul, whose interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus transformed a loosely organized, grassroots peasant movement into the structured religion we know today
Without Paul, there would be no Christianity. His letters to various churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire articulated, for the first time, the beliefs that make up the heart of Christian practice and faith. In this extraordinary biography, Bruce Chilton explains the changing images of Paul, from the early Church period when he was regarded as the premiere apostle who separated Christianity from Judaism to more recent liberal evaluations, which paint him as an antifeminist, homophobic figure more dedicated to doctrine than to spiritual freedom. By illuminating Paul's thoughts and contributions within the context of his time, Chilton restores him to his place as the founding architect of the Church and one of the most important figures in Western history.
"Rabbi Paul" is at once a compelling, highly readable biography and a window on how Jesus' message was transformed into a religion embraced by millions around the world. Drawing on Paul's own writings as well as historical and scholarly documents about his life and times, Chilton portrays an all-too-human saint who helped to create both the most beautiful and the most troublesome aspects of the Church. He shows that Paul sought to specify the correct approach to such central concerns as sexuality, obedience, faith, conscience, and spirit, to define religion as an institution, and to clarify the nature of the religious personality--issues that Christians still struggle with today.

For over a century the ten-volume Dictionary of the Bible has been the definitive reference. "It is a Dictionary of the Old and New Testaments, together with the Old Testament Apocrypha, according to the Authorized and Revised English Versions, and with constant reference to the original tongues. ... Articles have been written on the names of all Persons and Places, on the Antiquities and Archaeology of the Bible, on its Ethnology, Geology, and Natural History, on Biblical Theology and Ethic, and even on the obsolete or archaic words occurring in the English Versions." James Hastings (1852-1922) was a distinguished scholar and pastor. He was founder and editor of the Expository Times and is also well known for editing the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, and the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church.

For over a century the ten-volume Dictionary of the Bible has been the definitive reference. "It is a Dictionary of the Old and New Testaments, together with the Old Testament Apocrypha, according to the Authorized and Revised English Versions, and with constant reference to the original tongues. ... Articles have been written on the names of all Persons and Places, on the Antiquities and Archaeology of the Bible, on its Ethnology, Geology, and Natural History, on Biblical Theology and Ethic, and even on the obsolete or archaic words occurring in the English Versions." James Hastings (1852-1922) was a distinguished scholar and pastor. He was founder and editor of the Expository Times and is also well known for editing the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, and the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church.

Walk in the footsteps of St. Paul in his mission to the Gentiles through chapters 16-27 of the Acts of the Apostles. ? Completes the journey begun in the popular study, Witnesses of the Messiah, on the Acts of the Apostles 1-15. ? Includes nine lessons, with stimulating discussion questions at the end of each lesson. ? Discussion questions bring the lessons of the Acts of the Apostles to life by challenging the reader to follow St. Paul's example in concrete situations.

This volume examines characterization in the four Gospels and in the Sayings Gospel Q. Peter in Matthew, Lazarus in John, and Jesus as Son of Man in Q are examples of the characters studied. The general approach is narrative-critical. At the same time, each contribution takes special effort to widen the scope beyond the narrated world to include the text's ideological and real-life setting as well as its effective history. New ways of doing narrative criticism are thus proposed. The concluding essay by David Rhoads delineates the development and envisions the future of narrative criticism in Gospel studies.

The Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries provide compact, criticalcommentaries on the books of the Old Testament for the use of theological studentsand pastors. The commentaries are also useful for upper-level college or universitystudents and for those responsible for teaching in congregational settings. Inaddition to providing basic information and insights into the Old Testamentwritings, these commentaries exemplify the tasks and procedures of carefulinterpretation, all to assist students of the Old Testament in coming to an informedand critical engagement with the biblical texts themselves.

Thepresent volume gives an up-to-date, readable commentary on the books of First andSecond Chronicles. The commentary covers critical issues section by section whileemphasizing the larger theological and literary issues in Chronicles andillustrating its relevance for modern readers.

This volume collects the best articles on the Pauline writings from the first fifty issues of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament. The range of the volume reflects the breadth of the journal itself. Here the reader will find ground-breaking studies which introduce new critical questions and move into fresh areas of enquiry, surveys of the state of play in this particular topic of New Testament studies, and articles which engage with each other in specific debates. For students this book offers an invaluable critical introduction to Pauline studies. More advanced students and scholars can use it to find background material or to gain an overview of the research in this area of scholarship. This builds on the reputation of JSNT as a conduit for first-class research and a major influence within the scholarly community.

In The Children of Israel, Danna Nolan Fewell explores how imaginative readings of selected scriptural texts might raise adult consciousness and responsibility toward children. Through stories, quotes, vignettes, and notes, Fewell provides different kinds of reading experiences, with different levels of coherence and disjunction, depending on how much the reader decides to delve into the critical apparatus or the framing dialogues. This work is designed to unsettle, to plant suggestions and questions, and to create space for reflection and conversation. It is an experiment to see if a postmodern reading of the Bible can provide a credible ethical vision that can inspire us to do a better job of caring for our children.

"The ways in which Fewell addresses the theme is inspiring. The text is imaginatively crafted and skillfully written." --Leslie J. Francis, from The Expository Times, volume 116, Number 8, May 2005

This book offers an ideal introduction to the complex field of modern biblical studies. In nine short chapters, readers are introduced to questions of inspiration, canon and authority. Chapters follow on historical approaches to the Bible, such as source, form and redaction criticism. Comparisons with other literature, such as ancient flood stories or Egyptian psalms help to set the context for this, as well as an analysis of the purpose of each of the four Gospels.;The historical approaches conclude with a discussion of the text of the Bible, asking such questions as, How did we get the Bible? Why do modern versions of the Bible differ from one another? In the second section, Moyise considers a number of approaches that seek to explain why people interpret the Bible in such different ways. Beginning with literary criticism, the book considers how texts 'speak' to readers and influence their attitudes, emotions, and behaviour. This is followed by liberation and feminist approaches, which consider how gender, ethnicity, and social location affect what people regard as important and hence how they interpret the Bible. The book concludes with a variety of theological approaches used b

For over a century the ten-volume Dictionary of the Bible has been the definitive reference. "It is a Dictionary of the Old and New Testaments, together with the Old Testament Apocrypha, according to the Authorized and Revised English Versions, and with constant reference to the original tongues. ... Articles have been written on the names of all Persons and Places, on the Antiquities and Archaeology of the Bible, on its Ethnology, Geology, and Natural History, on Biblical Theology and Ethic, and even on the obsolete or archaic words occurring in the English Versions." James Hastings (1852-1922) was a distinguished scholar and pastor. He was founder and editor of the Expository Times and is also well known for editing the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, the Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, and the Dictionary of the Apostolic Church.

Cameron Lee illustrates the nature of God's kingdom by contrasting each Beatitude from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount with the ways that our self-centered culture tugs at us. His exposition helps us reevaluate our cultural assumptions and challenge the world's values.

This book is a completely revised and reset edition of the best-selling A Concordance to the Greek Testament edited by W. F. Moulton and A. S. Geden. Originally published in 1897, it has remained in print ever since. It is beyond any doubt the most useful basic tool available for the student of the New Testament. The original edition was primarily based on the Greek text of Westcott and Hort, but gave all the variants in the edition of Tischendorf and in the Greek text underlying the Revised Version of the English Bible; quotations are given with grammatical completeness as far as possible; a significant feature is the inclusion of the Hebrew text of direct quotations from the Old Testament; asterisks and daggers indicate whether the vocabulary items in the New Testament are found in Classical Greek and in the Septuagint.This new edition retains all the features of the earlier editions, but it is primarily based on the Greek text in The Greek New Testament (4th edition), which is identical with that in Novum Testamentum Graece (27th edition), currently the two most widely used editions of the Greek New Testament; it incorporates the main marginal readings in the former of these texts; references to the variants in the older editions are preserved, so that the student has to hand every reading which by even a remote probability might be regarded as forming part of the true text of the New Testament. The Supplement incorporating the prepositions has been included in the main text of the Concordance. Where the same word occurs twice in the same verse, these occurrences are now printed on separate lines and individually verse-numbered so that it is easier to count the number of occurrences of any given word. Special new Greek fonts have been created to enable great clarity in the printing.

Budgets, friendships, entertainment, and conversations--not things that immediately come to mind when we think of spiritual growth. However, according to the Old Testament wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs), the hundreds of little decisions we make every day are essential parts of developing godly character.

With clarity and depth, authors Curtis and Brugaletta explore essential principles for spiritual growth including developing self-control, nurturing good relationships, practicing fairness and justice, speaking appropriately, and responding properly to difficulty and suffering. This much needed, practical book will help you live in constant awareness of God's concern for every aspect of your relationship with Him.

How is the biblical text understood and how does it function in the life of the reader today?

Richard Briggs first provides an illuminating introduction to the nature and claims of speech art theory. This seeks to extend our understanding of both spoken and written means of communication by seeing them not as merely representational or 'reality-depicting', but as acting or causing acts to be performed through the words themselves.

Briggs goes on to discuss to what extent the application of speech act theory might be helpful in the interpretation of biblical texts. In one of the first book-length explorations of this topic, he examines in detail several biblical speech acts of particular theological significance, including the confession of sin, forgiveness and teaching.

Through exploring the specific ways in which the reader is drawn into the performative action of the biblical text, and how speech act theory forces the reader to look beyond language into the world which gives the language its ability to function, speech act theory is shown to offer valuable insights within today's complex hermeneutical debate.

'A very significant volume . . . '
Alan Torrance, Professor of Divinity, University of Andrews

'An excellent piece of work . . . which is thoroughly acquainted with speech act theory and takes the debate forward in a variety of creative, exegetical and theological ways.'
Dr Craig Bartholomew, University of Gloucestershire

Williamson reflects on St. Paul's great song of love, I Corinthians 13. These familiar words contain life-changing truths when taken seriously. "In recent days," the author writes, "they have come to me with a freshness that is frightening and with a challenge that has rocked my status quo." These reflections aim to help us choose, against the odds, the way of love, which puts the whole of life in perspective.

The Word of God is alive--dynamic and powerful. Studying God's Word can transform your life. It knits you together with others. Revitalizes your relationships. Allows you to meet Christ for the first time as well as again and again. Studying the Bible can also be dry, dull--and seem to have little connection with your daily life. You've probably experienced group Bible study meetings in which the discussion is merely a chain of platitudes and people never say what they think or address the real questions they have about faith and life. Further, some approaches to Bible study require stacks of reference books, cross-referencing and three versions of the Bible. Other approaches ask you to fill in blanks like an elementary school child. What you need is a Bible study method that will bring Scripture to life in your personal study and in your group studies. In this book Bob Grahmann, a national and international Bible study teacher, unfolds a long-appreciated method of inductive Bible study which has been updated to meet the needs of today's generation. With both biblical expertise and cultural awareness he lays out the method clearly. With exercises to put the method into practice, this is a book that will benefit you individually as well as in your next group Bible study. It is time for your Bible study methods to be transformed. And it is time for you to allow the Bible to transform you. That's whatTransforming Bible Study is all about!

Israel expected the Messiah to be a conquering hero who would liberate the Jews from their Roman servitude. But instead, Christ came as a suffering servant to liberate all mankind from slavery to sin. The Gospel of Mark records Christ's public ministry as a journey to the Cross, yet-paradoxically again-as a time of vigorous action when His miracles astounded the multitudes, and His boldness infuriated His foes.About the commentary series This commentary was written for your grandmother. And for your plumber, your banker, and the girl who serves you French Fries at the nearby McDonald's. That is, it was written for the average layperson, for the nonprofessional who feels a bit intimidated by the presence of copious footnotes, long bibliographies, and all those other things which so enrich the lives of academics. It is written for the pious Orthodox layman who is mystified by such things as Source Criticism, but who nonetheless wants to know what the Scriptures mean.

This now classic book is a significant corrective to several recent developments in the study of the historical Jesus. In contrast to depictions of Jesus as a wandering Cynic teacher, Geza Vermes offers a portrait based on evidence of charismatic activity in first-century Galilee. Vermes shows how the major New Testament titles of Jesus-prophet, Lord, Messiah, son of man, Son of God-can be understood in this historical context. The result is a description of Jesus that retains its power and its credibility.