Your youth will go on a scavenger hunt through the Bible and read it in its entirety over six 12-week legs. How many times have you wished your youth knew more of the Bible? Sure, they can give you a rundown of the some familiar stories; but when was the last time they looked at the Bible as a scavenger-hunt, digging and searching for new discoveries to open up their faith? The Amazing Bible Race was created with that in mind. Teams will work together to solve weekly challenges, encourage one another, and build community as you all race toward this goal. The Amazing Bible Race is less like a sprint and more like a marathon, building knowledge, endurance, and faith with every chapter read. Groups accrue points and at the end of the official Race the top ten point getters receive $500 toward a mission organization of their choice or towards their youth missions program. The Amazing Bible Race is a 6-volume scavenger hunt through the Bible for youth groups. The race has six legs through different sections of the Bible and promises excitement and new discoveries as youth live into the sacred stories. Each leg includes a daily reader for every runner and a CD-Rom leader's guide with everything a "race director" needs, including website registration. Runners will be assigned to teams and will support one another in the daily readings and work together to complete "Weekly Challenges," "Fast Forwards," and "Hurdles." The program includes a web component, with both administration and publicity features. Administration tools help youth workers manage the race, coordinate weekly challenge turn-in, send e-mail reminders, and tally points. Publicity tools help build excitement, allow teams to check their standings against other youth groups, upload photos of teams "running" the race; and it allows teams to challenge another youth group for a one-on-one race. Teams get points for daily reading, completing the Weekly Challenge, accomplishing any Fast Forwards, and jumping over any Hurdles. Points are turned in and tallied on the website. Race directors are encouraged to celebrate the "finish line" of each leg with a party and a recognition of the winning team. The six legs of the race are Leg 1 Law: Genesis Deuteronomy Leg 2 History: Joshua Esther Leg 3 Wisdom: Job Song of Solomon Leg 4 Prophets: Isaiah Malachai Leg 5 Gospel and the Early Church: Matthew Acts Leg 6 Letters and Prophecy: Romans Revelation
Check out the race at www.amazingbiblerace.com. "

This volume celebrates the discovery of "The Dead Sea Scrolls", their contents, the community that wrote and preserved them, and new scientific issues that arise from Scrolls studies. The essays, in four sections, explore the origins and text of scripture, the interpretation of scripture in Second Temple Judaism, the identity and practices of the movement associated with Qumran and the Scrolls, and the extensive contributions of Canadian projects and scholarship. Eight color plates are included in the volume. The contributors are Eileen Schuller, Jason Kalmon and Jaqueline S. du Toit, Jean Duhaime, Andrew B. Perrin, Benjamin H. Parker, Peter W. Flint and Kyung S. Baek, Eugene Ulrich, Manuel Jinbachian, Martin G. Abegg Jr., Emanuel Tov, Steve Mason, Daniel K. Falk, Wayne McCready, Ian W. Scott, Chad Martin Stauber, Ted M. Erho, Robert David with the collaboration of Eric Bellavance, Francis Daoust, Marie-France Dion, Dorothy M. Peters, Hindy Najman, C. J. Patrick Davis, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Cecilia Wassen, and Craig A. Evans.

This volume assesses past, theoretically engaged work on Israelite religion and presents new approaches to particular problems and larger interpretive and methodological questions. It gathers previously unpublished research by senior and mid-career scholars well known for their contributions in the area of social theory and the study of Israelite religion and by junior scholars whose writing is just beginning to have a serious impact on the field. The volume begins with a critical introduction by the editor. Topics of interest to the contributors include gender, violence, social change, the festivals, the dynamics of shame and honor, and the relationship of text to ritual. The contributors engage theory from social and cultural anthropology, sociology, post-colonial studies, and ritual studies. Theoretical models are evaluated in light of the primary data, and some authors modify or adapt theory to increase its utility for biblical studies.

This volume employs a text-centered, literary-rhetorical, and audience-oriented method to demonstrate how the implied audience of Philippians are persuaded and exhorted by the dynamic progression of the letter s chiastic structures to rejoice along with Paul and other believers in being conformed, with all of the broad implications of such conformity, to Christ. This reading assumes that Philippians is a single, unified letter written to be read and heard in a public setting as an oral performance substituting for the personal presence of the imprisoned Paul, and it proposes new chiastic structures for the entire letter as a key to understanding it.

Sharing many traditions and characteristics, the Gospel of Matthew, the letter of James, and the Didache invite comparative study. In this volume, internationally renowned scholars consider the three writings and the complex interrelationship between first-century Judaism and nascent Christianity. These texts likely reflect different aspects and emphases of a network of connected communities sharing basic theological assumptions and expressions.Of particular importance for the reconstruction of the religious and social milieu of these communities are issues such as the role of Jewish law, the development of community structures, the reception of the Jesus tradition, and conflict management. In addition to the Pauline and Johannine 'schools', "Matthew, James, and the Didache" may represent a third religious milieu within earliest Christianity that is especially characterized through its distinct connections to a particular ethical stream of contemporary Jewish tradition. Paperback edition of this title is available from the Society of Biblical Literature.

"Plato s "Parmenides" and Its Heritage" presents in two volumes ground-breaking results in the history of interpretation of Plato s "Parmenides," the culmination of six years of international collaboration by the SBL Annual Meeting seminar, Rethinking Plato s Parmenides and Its Platonic, Gnostic and Patristic Reception (2001 2007). The theme of Volume 1 is the dissolution of firm boundaries for thinking about the tradition of Parmenides interpretation from the Old Academy through Middle Platonism and Gnosticism. The volume suggests a radically different interpretation of the history of thought from Plato to Proclus than is customary by arguing against Proclus s generally accepted view that there was no metaphysical interpretation of the Parmenides before Plotinus in the third century C.E. Instead, this volume traces such metaphysical interpretations, first, to Speusippus and the early Platonic Academy; second, to the Platonism of the first and second centuries C.E. in figures like Moderatus and Numenius; third, to the emergence of an exegetical tradition that read Aristotle s categories in relation to the Parmenides; and, fourth, to important Middle Platonic figures and texts. The contributors to Volume 1 are Kevin Corrigan, Gerald Bechtle, Luc Brisson, John Dillon, Thomas Szlez k, Zlatko Ple e, Noel Hubler, John D. Turner, Johanna Brankaer, Volker Henning Drecoll, and Alain Lernould.

The Bible is hardly the first text that comes to mind when the general public considers gender, sex, and violence, yet within its first four chapters the Bible includes the creation of the first couple, thus gender designation; procreation, thus sex; and violence via the first murder. "Pregnant Passion presents essays excavating some of the biblical stories that explore the dynamics, intersection, and relatedness of gender, human sexuality, and violence in the Bible, with themes spanning the realms of feasts and famines, betrayal and bloodshed, seduction and sensuality, power and politics, virtue and violence.
Contributors include Randall C. Bailey, Valerie C. Cooper, Nicole Duran, Barbara Green, Gina Hens-Piazza, Barbara A. Holmes, Susan E. Hylen, Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Mignon R. Jacobs, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Madeline McClenney-Sadler, M. Fulgence Nyengele, Mary Donovan Turner, and Susan R. Holmes Winfield.
Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

The six biblical manuscripts that reside in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC are historically significant artifacts for tracing the early history of the transmission of the writings that make up the New Testament and the Septuagint. The manuscripts, all purchased in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century by Charles Freer, date to the third through fifth centuries and include codices of the four Gospels, Deuteronomy and Joshua, the Psalms, and the Pauline Epistles, as well as a Coptic codex of the Psalms and a papyrus codex of the Minor Prophets, which, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was the earliest Greek manuscript of the Minor Prophets known. The ten essays in this volume are a notable collection of fresh scholarship with long-term value for the study of what is a small but highly valuable treasure trove of biblical manuscripts. The contributors are Malcolm Choat, Kent D. Clarke, Kristin De Troyer, Timothy J. Finney, Dennis Haugh, Larry W. Hurtado, J. Bruce Prior, Jean-Francois Racine, James R. Royse, Ulrich Schmid, and Thomas A. Wayment. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

This volume reexamines and reconstructs the relationship between the Deuteronomic History and the book of Chronicles, building on recent developments such as the Persian-period dating of the Deuteronomic History, the contribution of oral traditional studies to understanding the production of biblical texts, and the reassessment of the relationship of Standard Biblical Hebrew and Late Biblical Hebrew. These new perspectives challenge widely held understandings of the relationship between the two scribal works and strongly suggest that they were competing historiographies during the Persian period that nevertheless descended from a common source. This new reconstruction leads to new readings of the literature.

Casuistic or case law in the Pentateuch deals with real human affairs; each case law entails a compressed story that can encourage reader engagement with seemingly a oedrya legal text. This book is the first to present an interpretive method integrating biblical law, jurisprudence, and literary theory, reflecting the current a oelaw and literaturea school within legal studies. It identifies the narrative elements that exist in the laws of the Pentateuch, exposes the narrative techniques employed by the authors, and discovers the poetics of biblical law, thus revealing new or previously unconsidered aspects of the relationship between law and narrative in the Bible.

The essays in "Bible Trouble" all engage queer theories for purposes of biblical interpretation, a rare effort to date within biblical scholarship. The title phrase "Bible Trouble" plays on "Judith Butler's Gender Trouble", gesturing toward a primary text for contemporary queer theory. The essays consider, among others, the Lazarus story, the Ethiopian eunuch, "gender trouble" in "Judges 4 and 5", the "Song of Songs", and an unorthodox coupling of the books of Samuel and the film "Paris Is Burning". This volume "troubles" not only the boundaries between biblical scholarship and queer theory but also the boundaries between different frameworks currently used in the analysis of biblical literature, including sexuality, gender, race, class, history, and literature. The contributors are Ellen T. Armour, Michael Joseph Brown, Sean D. Burke, Heidi Epstein, Deryn Guest, Jione Havea, Teresa J. Hornsby, Lynn R. Huber, S. Tamar Kamionkowski, Joseph A. Marchal, Jeremy Punt, Erin Runions, Ken Stone, Gillian Townsley, Jay Twomey, and Manuel Villalobos.

This 4 session study of the book of Philippians is part of the Bible Readers Series which is designed for adult study groups wishing to explore a particular book of the Bible for a limited number of sessions using the NRSV.

Sessions in this study of Philippians call us to live a life worthy of the name of Christ. Then, realizing that decisions are based on the example seen in those claiming to be children of God, Paul's words encourage us to continue pressing forward, focusing on the positives of a relationship with Christ, to the fulfillment of God's perfect will. (separate leader's guide #0687051630)
To see another adult Bible study offered by Cokesbury, go to the Adult Bible Studies website.

"Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets" offers a new theological reading of the book of Lamentations by putting the female voice of chapters 1-2 into dialogue with the divine voice of prophetic texts in which God represents the people Israel as his wife and indicts them/her for being unfaithful to him. In Lam 1-2 we hear the "wife" talk back, and from her words we get an entirely different picture of the conflict showcased through this marriage metaphor. Mandolfo thus presents a feminist challenge to biblical hegemony and patriarchy and reconstrues biblical authority to contribute to the theological concerns of a postcolonial world. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

Women have been thoughtful readers and interpreters of scripture throughout the ages, yet the standard history of biblical interpretation includes few women's voices. To introduce readers to this untapped source for the history of biblical interpretation, this volume analyzes forgotten works from the nineteenth century written by women-including Christina Rossetti, Florence Nightingale, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, among others-from various faith backgrounds, countries, and social classes engaging contemporary biblical scholarship. Due to their exclusion from the academy, women's interpretive writings addressed primarily a nonscholarly audience and were written in a variety of genres: novels and poetry, catechisms, manuals for Bible study, and commentaries on the books of the Bible. To recover these nineteenth-century women interpreters of the Bible, each essay in this volume locates a female author in her historical, ecclesiastical, and interpretive context, focusing on particular biblical passages to clarify an author's contributions as well as to explore how her reading of the text was shaped by her experience as a woman. The contributors are Amanda Benckhuysen, Elizabeth Davis, Christiana de Groot, Rebecca G. S. Idestrom, Donna Kerfoot, Bernon P. Lee, Marion Taylor, Heather Weir, and Lissa M. Wray Beal. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

Over the last two centuries, many scholars have considered the Gospel of John off-limits for all quests for the historical Jesus. That stance, however, creates a new set of problems that need to be addressed thoughtfully. The essays in this book, reflecting the ongoing deliberations of an international group of Johannine and Jesus scholars, critically assess two primary assumptions of the prevalent view: the dehistoricization of John and the de-Johannification of Jesus. The approaches taken here are diverse, including cognitive-critical developments of Johannine memory, distinctive characteristics of the Johannine witness, new historicism, Johannine-Synoptic relations, and fresh analyses of Johannine traditional development. In addition to offering state-of-the-art reviews of Johannine studies and Jesus studies, this volume draws together an emerging consensus that sees the Gospel of John as an autonomous tradition with its own perspective, in dialogue with other traditions. Through this challenging of critical and traditional assumptions alike, new approaches to John's age-old riddles emerge, and the ground is cleared for new and creative ways forward. The contributors are Paul Anderson; D. A. Carson; Colleen M. Conway; Paula Fredriksen; Felix Just, S.J.; Robert Kysar; Andrew Lincoln; John Painter; Sidney Palmer; Mark Allan Powell; D. Moody Smith; Tom Thatcher; Marianne Meye Thompson; Gilbert Van Belle; and Jack Verheyden. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

This volume offers a meeting between genre theory in biblical studies and the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, who continues to be immensely influential in literary criticism. Here Bakhtin comes face to face with a central area of biblical studies: the question of genre. The essays range from general discussions of genre through the reading of specific biblical texts to an engagement with Toni Morrison and the Bible. The contributors are John Anderson, Roland Boer, Martin J. Buss, Judy Fentress-Williams, Christopher Fuller, Barbara Green, Bula Maddison, Carleen Mandolfo, Christine Mitchell, Carol A. Newsom, David M. Valeta, and Michael Vines. Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)

This book breaks new ground in offering an exposition of the theological message of the Shorter Pauline Letters. Karl P. Donfried expounds the theology of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, examining the cultural setting of these letters and the particular milieu in which their distinctive themes took shape. He shows that the notion of election is a key theme in the Thessalonian correspondence, while both letters have important things to say to people in our own day about Christ, about forgiveness, and about a sanctifying God who pours out his Spirit. I. Howard Marshall's study of Philippians brings out especially the understanding of the theological basis of the Christian life which underlies the letter, while his discussion of Philemon emphasises how the main theme of the letter is the relation between the gospel and Christian ethics; the implications of Paul's teaching on slavery are considered in a manner which goes much further than the surface of the text might imply.

Delf diep in die Johannes-evangelie en ontdek die ware Jesus soos Johannes Hom beskryf.

Die hele Skrif openbaar dat Jesus God is, maar geen boek beskryf hierdie waarheid duideliker as Johannes se Evangelie nie. Hierdie Evangelie is ’n openbaring van God se karakter soos dit waargeneem is deur die man aan wie Hy die naaste was.

Ken Jesus as God is ’n Bybelstudie oor 10 weke wat individue of groepe deur die hele Evangelie van Johannes begelei. Dit sluit die volgende in:

• Daaglikse sessies wat nie te lank is nie.
• Vrae vir diep nadenke en plek vir antwoorde en notas.
• Weeklikse uitdagings sodat toegepas kan word wat geleer is.
• Memorisering van teksverse.

Of hierdie studie van Johannes jou eerste of jou honderdste is, die gelyktydige eenvoud en kompleksiteit van hierdie Evangelie-bespreking bied ’n onuitputbare bron van bemoediging. Die boek wat geskryf is “sodat julle tot die geloof kan kom dat Jesus die Messias is, die Seun van God” (Joh. 20:31), wys bladsy vir bladsy dat Hy die bron van ware lewe is!

• ’n Bybelstudie oor 10 weke vir individue of groepe oor die Johannes-evangelie.
• Bevat daaglikse sessies, vrae vir diep nadenke en plek vir antwoorde en notas.
• 224 bladsye.
• Sagteband.
• Ook beskikbaar in Engels onder die titel Knowing Jesus as God.

Sien jy ook soms oral waar jy kyk net afgodery, geldgierigheid en vyandigheid teenoor Christene? Is jy bewus van ’n intense geestelike oorlog en wil jy soms net moed opgee? Dis wat die Bybelse gelowiges in die stad Efese ook beleef het! Paulus deel dan sy boodskap met hulle oor die kragtigste wapen om in moeilike tye staande te bly.

Hierdie vers-vir-vers-Bybelstudie oor Efesiërs deur Riekert Botha vestig jou aandag op God se allesoortreffende liefde vir elkeen wat in Christus glo. Ontdek dat dit jou identiteit in Christus is wat jou in staat stel om staande te bly wanneer chaos en vyandskap jou wil onderkry.

Aan die einde van die agt studies is daar verdere vrae om te besin oor die dorp of stad waar jy bly en hoe jy kan meewerk om die evangelie in jou gemeenskap uit te dra.

• Vers-vir-vers-bespreking van Efesiërs vir groepe en individue
• Besprekingsvrae en plek om antwoorde neer te skryf
• Vrae aan die einde om jou dorp/stad te evalueer vir moontlike evangelisasiewerk
• Relevante tema vir gelowiges vandag
• 120 bladsye

Grow your knowledge of God, as revealed in Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Throughout Scripture, it is revealed that Jesus is God. But no book in the Bible makes this truth clearer than the Gospel of John. The entire book is a revelation of God's character as witnessed by the man he was closest to.

Knowing Jesus as God is a 10-session Bible study designed to walk individuals or small groups through the Gospel of John. It includes:

• Daily study sessions that don't overwhelm.
• Passage-by-passage teaching.
• Thought-provoking questions and writing space.
• Weekly challenges to help you live out what you're learning.
• Scripture memorization.

Whether it's your first time studying John or your hundredth, the simplicity and complexity of this gospel account make it a never-ending source of encouragement. Written "so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31), the book of John demonstrates page after page that He's where the joy is!

• A 10-session Bible study for individuals or small groups on the Gospel of John.
• Includes daily study sessions; passage-by-passage teaching; thought-provoking questions and writing space; weekly challenges to help you live out what you're learning; and Scripture memorization.
• 224 one-color pages.
• Also available in Afrikaans under the title Ken Jesus as God Bybelstudie.