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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > The Bible > New Testament > General
Hailed as a "classic reference book" by The Right Reverend James
Jones, former Bishop of Liverpool, The New Testament Guide provides
readers with a complete all-in-one journey through the books of the
New Testament. Easy to read and navigate, this volume explores,
explains, and brings to life the history, stories, cultures, and
messages of each book. The accessibility of Andrew Knowles' writing
demystifies many aspects of the scriptures, and deepens our
understanding of their principles, doctrine, and messages for us
today. Interspersed with boxed features that highlight key events,
places, people and biblical passages, The New Testament Guide is an
ideal introduction for new scholars and interested readers alike
who have little or no grounding in the subject.
Social and Cognitive Perspectives on the Sermon on the Mount offers
fresh readings of themes and individual sayings in the Sermon on
the Mount (SM) using socio-cognitive approaches. Because these
approaches are invested in patterns of human cognition and social
mechanisms, the resulting collection highlights the persistent
appeal and persuasiveness of the SM: from innate moral drives, to
the biology of emotion and risk-taking, to the formation and
obliteration of in-group/out-group distinctions. Through these
theories the authors show why--even across cultures and
history--the SM continues to grip both individual minds and groups
of people in order to shape moral communities. Classical
historical-critical readings interpret the sermon according to the
conventions of literature, seeking a relationship to other texts
and ideas. By contrast our volume explores the SM not so much for
the logical and historical relationships to other literary
traditions, but also--and perhaps more importantly--for the ways it
stimulates emotional, biologically, culturally habituated,
evolutionarily preconditioned, and socially sanctioned
characteristics of humans. In short, the volume shines a light on
the action-inducing properties of the text. The volume will
introduce a broader group of scholars, students, and clergy to the
relevance of social scientific and cognitive studies for
interpretation of the Bible, by applying these approaches to
possibly the most read and discussed text in the Bible.
Despite its rich history in the Latin tradition, Christian
monasticism began in the east; the wellsprings of monastic culture
and spirituality can be directly sourced from the third-century
Egyptian wilderness. In this volume, John Binns creates a vivid,
authoritative account that traces the four main branches of eastern
Christianity, up to and beyond the Great Schism of 1054 and the
break between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Binns begins by
exploring asceticism in the early church and the establishment of
monastic life in Egypt, led by St Anthony and Pachomius. He
chronicles the expansion, influence and later separation of the
various Orthodox branches, examining monastic traditions and
histories ranging from Syria to Russia and Ethiopia to Asia Minor.
Culminating with both the persecution and the revival of monastic
life, Binns concludes with an argument for both the diversity and
the shared set of practices and ideals between the Orthodox
churches, creating a resource for both cross-disciplinary
specialist and students of religion, history, and spirituality.
Everyone knows the New Testament begins with the Gospel of
Matthew, but how many know Matthew was actually one of the later
books to be written? (It wasn't even the first Gospel ) But
Evolution of the Word is not your typical New Testament.
Marcus J. Borg, esteemed Bible scholar and bestselling author,
shakes up the order of the New Testament as we know it by putting
the books in a completely new order--the order in which they were
written. By doing so, Evolution of the Word allows us to read these
documents in their historical context. For the first time, see how
the core ideas of Christianity took shape and developed over
time.
Borg surveys what we know of the Jewish community of Jesus
followers who passed on their stories orally. Into this context
emerges the apostle Paul, whose seven authentic letters become the
first collected writings that would later become the New Testament.
Borg offers helpful introductions for each book so that as we read
through these biblical documents, spanning over a century in time,
we see afresh what concerns and pressures shaped this movement as
it evolved into a new religion.
In this groundbreaking format, Borg reveals how a radical and
primitive apocalyptic Jewish faith slowly became more comfortable
with the world, less Jewish, and more pre- occupied with
maintaining power and control. Evolution of the Word promises to
change forever how we think about this historic work.
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