With practical commentaries, articles, and features, this new amplified version of #1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer's popular study Bible will help you live out your faith.

In the decade since its original publication, The Everyday Life Bible has sold 1.1 million copies, taking its place as an invaluable resource on the Word of God. Simultaneously, Joyce Meyer's renown as one of the world's leading practical Bible teachers has grown, as she continues to study and teach daily. This new edition updates Joyce's notes and commentary to reflect the changes made in the revision of the Amplified Bible which refreshes the English and refines the amplification for relevance and clarity. The result is The Everyday Life Bible that is now easier to read and better than ever to study, understand, and apply to your everyday life.

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This book investigates the Matthean use of bread and the breaking of bread in light of cognitive conceptual metaphor, which are not only intertwined within Matthew's narrative plots but also function to represent Matthew's communal identity and ideological vision. The metaphor of bread and its cognitive concept implicitly connect to Israel's indigenous sense of identity and religious imagination, while integrating the socio-religious context and the identity of Matthean community through the metaphoric action: breaking of bread. While using this metaphor as a narrative strategy, Matthew not only keeps the Jewish indigenous socio-religious heritage but also breaks down multiple boundaries of religion, ethnicity, gender, class, and the false prejudice in order to establish an alternative identity and ideological vision. From this perspective, this book presents how the Matthean bread functions to reveal the identity of Matthew's community in-between formative Judaism and the Roman Empire. In particular, the book investigates the metaphor of bread as a source of Matthew's rhetorical claim that represents its ideological vision for an alternative community beyond the socio-religious boundaries. The book also reviews Matthean contexts by postcolonial theories - hybridity and third space - subverting and deconstructing the hegemony of the dominant groups of formative Judaism and the imperial ideology of Rome.

This book offers an innovative examination of the question: why did early Christians begin calling their ministerial leaders "priests" (using the terms hiereus/sacerdos)? Scholarly consensus has typically suggested that a Christian "priesthood" emerged either from an imitation of pagan priesthood or in connection with seeing the Eucharist as a sacrifice over which a "priest" must preside. This work challenges these claims by exploring texts of the third and fourth century where Christian bishops and ministers are first designated "priests": Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the church orders Apostolic Tradition and Didascalia Apostolorum. Such an examination demonstrates that the rise of a Christian ministerial priesthood grew more broadly out of a developing "religio-political ecclesiology". As early Christians began to understand themselves culturally as a unique polis in their own right in the Greco-Roman world, they also saw themselves theologically and historically connected with ancient biblical Israel. This religio-political ecclesiology, sharpened by an emerging Christian material culture and a growing sense of Christian "sacred space", influenced the way Christians interpreted the Jewish Scriptures typologically. In seeing the nation of Israel as a divine nation corresponding to themselves, Christians began appropriating the Levitical priesthood as a figure or "type" of the Christian ministerial office. Such a study helpfully broadens our understanding of the emergence of a Christian priesthood beyond pagan imitation or narrow focus on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and instead offers a more comprehensive explanation in connection with early Christian ecclesiology.

Ayatollah al-Sayyid Abu al-Qasim al Musawi al-Khui (1899-1992) was one of the most respected and widely acclaimed authorities on Twelver Shi'ite Islam in this century. This book, which was first published in Arabic in 1974, presents al-Khuis comprehensive introduction to the history of the Quran. In it, al-Khui revisits many critical and controversial topics connected with the collection and ultimate canonization of the text that have received little attention in contemporary Muslim scholarship since the classical age. For instance, he tackles what is probably the single most controversial subject in Quranic studies: the question of possible alterations to the Quran as maintained by some succeeding generations of compilers of the Quran.
Throughout the volume, al-Khui stresses the importance of understanding the historical setting in which the Quran was revealed; he does this in order to apply its provisions appropriately in contemporary Muslim society, with its ever-expanding legal and ethical requirements. In addition to expounding his own views, al-Khui also has the polemical purpose of refuting Sunni beliefs and concepts concerning various matters related to the theories of alteration and abrogation in the Quran. His arguments illuminate some of the substantial yet little-understood and appreciated issues that have been truly at stake between the two principal segments of the Muslim community.
Translator Abdulaziz A. Sachedina supplies a helpful introduction to al-Khuis work, discussing the methodological problems involved with the study of such texts, and placing it in the historical context of polemic literature in Islam.

Analysis of inner-biblical exegesis ordinarily involves examination of the intertextual relationship between two texts within the biblical corpus. But in many cases there is an often overlooked intertext that serves as a bridge between the two texts. Such an intermediary text reads the primary text in a manner similar to the way the tertiary text reads it and supplies a missing link in a very subtle yet identifiable manner. The direction of dependence between texts of this kind is not as important in the present study as the direction in which these texts were meant to be read by those who gave them their final shape.

Providing an analysis of the complete story of Mary in its liturgical, narrative and rhetorical contexts, this literary reading is a prerequisite to any textual reading of the Qur'an whether juristic, theological, or otherwise. intertextuality between the Old Testament, New Testament and the Qur'an. The Qur'an is an oral event, linguistic phenomenon and great literature. So the application of modern literary theories is essential to have full comprehension of the history of the development of literary forms from pre-Islamic period such as poetry, story telling, speech-giving to the present. In addition, there is a need, from a feminist perspective, to understand in depth why a Christian mother figure such as Mary was important in early Islam and in the different stages of the development of the Qur'an as a communication process between Muhammad and the early Muslim community. Introducing modern literary theories, gender perspective and feminist criticism into Qur'anic scholarship for the first time, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers of Islamic Studies, Qur'anic and New Testament Studies, Comparative Literature and Feminist Theology.

This study of the Qur'an arises from an interest in a pressing contemporary issue, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims ('the Ummah and the Other'). This text explores how the Qur'an comments on this relationship as it changed in the course of Muhammad's ministry. Particular attention is paid to the portrayal in the Meccan 'punishment-narratives' of a fascinating and complex triangular relationship between God, the powerless and persecuted believing community with Muhammad at its centre, and the unbelieving Meccans who rejected Muhammad's preaching.

The text raising questions about the possible contemporary relevance of this analysis, focusing firstly on discussions about the appropriate models for Islamic society today, and secondly on dialogue between Christians and Muslims. This book presents a detailed and illuminating analysis of many important Qur'anic themes and passages, and offers a coherent and original account of significant developments within the thought of the Qur'an as a whole.

Recently, voices were raised in the worldwide Christian ecumenical movement that it was high time the Protestant-Catholic fundamental topic "Holy Scripture and Tradition" was approached and ecumenically reviewed. In Germany, this has already been achieved by the "OEkumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen" (Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians; founded in 1946). The results of this study group were published in the 1990s under the title "Verbindliches Zeugnis" by Theodor Schneider and Wolfhart Pannenberg. This edition provides the essence of the three volume work for the first time in English. The treatment of this age-long dispute in Protestant and Catholic theology, but first of all its fundamental settlement can thus be recognised and discussed in the international ecumenical dialogue.

No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish sages who considered all aspects of an entire people's life from the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers. These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and philosophy.

Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg, Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey, Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and David Weiss-Halivni.

Anonymous characters -- such as Lot's wife, Jephthah's daughter, Pharoah's baker, and the witch of Endor -- are ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, and appear in a wide variety of roles. Adele Reinhartz here answers two principal questions concerning this aspect of biblical narrative. First, is there a "poetics of anonymity," and if so, what are its contours? Second, how does anonymity affect the readers' response to, and construction of, unnamed biblical characters. She is especially interested in issues related to gender, determining whether female characters are more likely to be anonymous than male characters, and whether the anonymity of female characters functions differently from that of male characters.

The Bhagavad-Gita is probably the most popular - and certainly the most frequently quoted and widely studied - work of the Hindu scriptures. This book investigates the relationship between the various interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and the Hindu tradition. Taking into account a range of influential Indian and western thinkers to illustrate trends in writing about the Bhagavad-Gita including Western academic; Indian activist; Christian theological; Hindu universalist; perennialist mystical and contemporary experiental accounts. Examining the ideas of such influential figures as F Max Muller, M K Ghandi, Bede Griffiths, Swami Vivekananda, Aldous Huxley and Swami Bhakivedanta, this book demonstrates the inextricable link between different interpretations of the Bhagavad-Gita and images of the Hindu tradition. This accessible book aptly demonstrates the relevance of the Bhagavad-Gita for an understanding of Hinduism as a modern phenomenon.

The parables of Jesus have undergone different transmutations in the long history of their transmission. The events surrounding his death and resurrection as well as the new situations his followers were confronted with after these events led to the parables of Jesus being given new accentuations according to the needs of the reflecting community. This is evident in Matthew's treatment of the parable trilogy of Mt 21:28-22:14. This work shows how Matthew has used the dominical parables and sayings found in his tradition to serve the needs of his community, especially in its struggles with the official Jewish leaders of his time. Through these parables, which he presented as a three-pronged attack against the Jewish leaders, Matthew shows his community as the true Israel, called to produce the fruits of righteousness. In this regard, the Jewish leaders stand for the members of Matthew's community lacking in the actions that define belongingness to the chosen people. This group has no part in the eschatological banquet.

Bonhoeffer was convinced that God spoke to his people through the Bible. How did a theologian of his caliber, who was well acquainted with the historical-critical interpretation of the scriptures, justify such a claim, and how did he apply this conviction to his daily challenges as theologian, pastor and political dissident during the Nazi regime? This book presents the attempts by a group of international Bonhoeffer scholars to answer some of these questions. By approaching Bonhoeffer's theology from a number of different hermeneutical angles, the contributions in this volume cast new light both on his more general hermeneutical framework and on specific theological and political issues concerning his reading of the Bible. The essays underline Bonhoeffer's contemporary relevance for the current resurgence of theological interpretation and for postmodern discussions about the interpretive nature of truth.

Qur'anic exegesis has become the battleground of political Islam and theological conflict among various Muslim schools of thought. Using comparative and contrastive methodology, examples from the Qur'an are investigated in the light of various theological views to delineate the birth, development and growth of Qur'anic exegesis. The political status quo, in the past and at present, has impinged upon Qur'anic exegesis more than on any other discipline in Islamic studies. This book illustrates the dichotomy between mainstream and non-mainstream Islam, showing how Qur'anic exegesis reflects the subtle dogmatic differences and political cleavages in Islamic thought. Chapters explore in depth the intrusive views of the compilers of early exegesis manuscripts, the scepticism among Western scholars about the authenticity of early Muslim works of exegesis and of prophetic tradition, and the role of exegesis as a tool to reaffirm the Qur'an as a canon. Written to appeal to those with comparative exegetical interests as well as those focused on Islamic studies in general, this book will be an important reference for research students, scholars, and students of Islamic Studies, Theology, Religious studies and Middle Eastern Studies.

Is God a Vegetarian? is one of the most complete explorations of vegetarianism in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Young, a linguistics and New Testament scholar, attempts to answer the question being asked with greater and greater frequency: "Are Christians morally obligated to be vegetarians?"

Many people are confused about the apparent mixed messages within the Bible. On the one hand, God prescribes a vegetarian diet in the Garden of Eden and the apocalyptic visions of Isaiah and John imply the restoration of a vegetarian diet. However, it is also clear that God permits, Jesus partakes in, and Paul sanctions the eating of flesh. Does the Bible give any clear guidance?

Close readings of key biblical texts pertaining to dietary customs, vegetarianism, and animal rights make up the substance of the book. Rather than ignoring or offering a literal, twentieth-century interpretation of the passages, the author analyzes the voices of these conflicting dietary motifs within their own social contexts. Interwoven throughout these readings are discussions of contemporary issues, such as animal testing and experimentation, the fur industry, raising animals in factories, and the effects of meat-eating on human health.

Thirteen chapters cover such topics as
-- the vegetarian diet in the Garden of Eden
-- the clothing of the first humans in animal skins
-- God's permitting humans to eat meat
-- animal sacrifice
-- the dietary habits of Jesus and the early apostles
-- Paul's condemnation of vegetarianism as heresy
-- the dietary views of the early church fathers
-- the peaceable kingdom.

The author provides two vegetarian recipes at the end of each chapter. An epilogueincludes guidelines for becoming a vegetarian and a recommended reading list.

Insightful and challenging, Is God a Vegetarian? poses provocative questions for vegetarians, Christians, and anyone reflecting upon her personal choices and ethical role in our world today.

The series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) covers all areas of research into the Old Testament, focusing on the Hebrew Bible, its early and later forms in Ancient Judaism, as well as its branching into many neighboring cultures of the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world. BZAW welcomes submissions that make an original and significant contribution to the field; demonstrate sophisticated engagement with the relevant secondary literature; and are written in readable, logical, and engaging prose.

Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy is a radically new interpretation of prophetic poetry. Using more than thirty new translations from the Hebrew Bible, it shows that this poetry is inseparable from imperialism, that each of the three major waves of biblical prophecy which have survived in the Old Testament occurred in response to simultaneous waves of imperialist conquest.

In his brilliant introduction on the Mishnah, Jacob Neusner asks: How do you read a book that does not identify its author, tell you where it comes from, or explain why it was written - a book without a preface? And how do you identify a book with neither a beginning nor end, lacking table of contents and title? The answer is you just begin and let the author of the book lead you by paying attention to the information that the author does give, to the signals that the writer sets out. As Neusner goes on to explain, the Mishnah portrays the world in a special way, in a kind of code that makes it a difficult work for the modern reader to understand. Without knowing how to decode the Mishnah, we may read its works without receiving its message. Neusner, one of the world's foremost Mishnaic scholars, demonstrated that the Mishnah's own internal logic and structure form a solid foundation on which to build an understanding of this vitally important Jewish work. Using examples of how the Mishnah's language, logic, and discourse associate and categorize behaviors, events, and objects, Neusner opens the Mishnah to readers who would not otherwise be able to grasp its most fundamental concepts. Since the Mishnah forms the basis of both the Babylonian and the Palestinian Talmuds (which are, in Neusner's elegant terms, "the core curriculum of Judaism as a living religion"), study of the Mishnah is essential to an understanding of Judaism. Drawing on his own new translation of the Mishnah and displaying the enthusiastic dedication that has sparked a whole new body of Mishnaic research, Neusner allows readers with no previous background to join Jews who have studied, analyzed, and delighted in the wisdom of Mishnah for centuries. In addition to giving us a thorough exploration of the Mishnah's language, contents, organization, and inner logic, Neusner also provides us with a broad understanding of how it communicated its own world view - its vision of both the concrete an spiritual worlds. The Mishnah: An Introduction gives us a tour of this sacred Jewish text, shedding light on its many facets - from its view of life to its conception of God and His relation to our world.

The Canon of the Bible and the Apocrypha in the Churches of the East features essays reflecting the latest scholarly research in the field of the canon of the Bible and related apocryphal books, with special attention given to the early Christian literature of Eastern churches. These essays study and examine issues and concepts related to the biblical canon as well as non-canonical books that circulated in the early centuries of Christianity among Christian and non-Christian communities, claiming to be authored by biblical characters, such as the prophets and kings of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament.

What is the most important lesson in the word of God? In Matt. 22:34-40, Jesus summarizes the whole Bible into two commandments, being 'love for God' and 'love for thy neighbor' (Lev. 19:18). Why did Jesus cite Lev. 19:18 (love) instead of 19:2 (holiness), which is the core of this chapter? This book analyzes how Lev. 19 is unfolded from OT times to the message of the NT. It attempts to prove the importance of Lev. 19 in the canonical tradition of Judaism and Christianity and to identify the clues which can help to explain the reason why Jesus chose Lev. 19:18. Further, the book shows that holiness, one of the main issues in Lev. 19, is replaced by perfection in Matt. 5:48. This connection is shown through examining the Community Rule (1QS) of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which joins the themes of holiness and perfection. This combination serves as the 'missing link' to bridge the gap between Lev. 19 and Matt. 5. The method used to explore these texts is called 'a canonical unfolding.' After a commentary on Lev. 19 the chapter is compared to other connected texts. Finally, the meaning of Lev. 19 is reinterpreted in the whole context of the Canon.

Using the method of critical intertextual research, this book analyses the phenomena of hypertextuality and ethopoeia in the New Testament writings against the background of the Second Temple literature, the historical Jesus, and the historical Paul. The work demonstrates that all twenty post-Pauline writings including the Gospels, like some of Paul's letters, are only loosely related to history. On the other hand, the New Testament writings constitute a logically consistent network of intertextual-rhetorical relationships which have to be properly investigated and interpreted. Only analyses of this kind enable us to understand the internal logic of the New Testament as a whole and the true meaning of its individual works.

The Qur'an is read by millions of Muslims on a daily basis, yet there is no book available to the reader, Arab or non-Arab, which provides a linguistic and rhetorical insight into Qur'anic discourse. This book explains Qur'an translational problems and provides a thorough account of the unique syntactic, semantic, phonetic, prosodic, pragmatic, and rhetorical features of the Qur'an.

4Q Pesher Nahum, long considered one of the most important Qumran texts for understanding the historical context of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the focus of this critical study. The author presents new readings and undertakes extensive analysis and reconstruction of broken text. Areas of focus include text-critical implications for the biblical text of Nahum, scribal practices, and formal and composition patterns common throughout the Qumran Pmesharim. One of the contraversial aspects of the study is a challenge to accepted thought; that the mysterious "Lion of Wrath" figure of the text has nothing to do with the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus. Rather, this study argues that Pesher Nahum portrays a coming conquest from the "Kittim", and the "Lion of Wrath" is to be understood within well-known biblical motifs of a Nebuchadnezzar-like foreign invader coming to deliver the wrath of God upon a sinful Israel.

In the Pauline literature of the New Testament, the characteristics of the Spirit and Christian life are described through the use of metaphor. An interpreter of Paul must understand his metaphors in order to arrive at a complete understanding of the Pauline pneumatological perspective. Thus, The Pauline Metaphors of the Holy Spirit examines how the Pauline Spirit metaphors express the intangible Spirit's tangible presence in the life of the Christian. Rhetoricians prior to and contemporary with Paul discussed the appropriate usage of metaphor. Aristotle's thoughts provided the foundation from which these rhetoricians framed their arguments. In this context, The Pauline Metaphors surveys the use of metaphor in the Greco-Roman world during the NT period and also studies modern approaches to metaphor. The modern linguistic theories of substitution, comparison, and verbal opposition are offered as representative examples, as well as the conceptual theories of interaction, cognitive-linguistic, and the approach of Zoltan Koevecses. In examining these metaphors, it is important to understand their systematic and coherent attributes. These can be divided into structural, orientational, and ontological characteristics, which are rooted in the conceptual approach of metaphor asserted by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This book evaluates these characteristics against each of the Pauline Spirit-metaphors.