Evangelicals are no strangers to the debate over creation and evolution. Now the battle has spread from the contents of the creation account into Genesis 2-3 and the historicity of Adam and therefore the Fall. What, then, is at stake? Is this merely an ivory-tower debate or can it actually impact the Christian life? The faculty of The Master's College have here come together to contend that the second and third chapters of Genesis are indeed historical, that there are excellent reasons for believing so, and that it is an essential issue within Christian thought and life. The contents of these chapters become the history of how everything in the world came to be what it is today, its reflection in an account in our everyday lives. This Scripture--Chapter 3 especially--explains what we observe in the legal system, literature, gender roles, education, psychology, and science. Therefore the issue of the theology and historicity is not irrelevant, but something critical to our everyday lives. What Happened in the Garden? includes new research, scientific, literary, business, educational, and legal perspectives. This multi-disciplinary approach strengthens the conclusion of the contributors that to change our understanding of the Fall is to change the way we understand reality, and a shift in the Christian worldview and the faith itself.

Notions of women as found in the Bible have had an incalculable impact on western cultures, influencing perspectives on marriage, kinship, legal practice, political status, and general attitudes. Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible is drawn from three separate strands to address and analyse this phenomenon. The first examines how women were conceptualized and represented during the exilic period. The second focuses on methodological possibilities and drawbacks connected to investigating women and exile. The third reviews current prominent literature on the topic, with responses from authors. With chapters from a range of contributors, topics move from an analysis of Ruth as a woman returning to her homeland, and issues concerning the foreign presence who brings foreign family members into the midst of a community, and how this is dealt with, through the intermarriage crisis portrayed in Ezra 9-10, to an analysis of Judean constructions of gender in the exilic and early post-exilic periods. The contributions show an exciting range of the best scholarship on women and foreign identities, with important consequences for how the foreign/known is perceived, and what that has meant for women through the centuries.

The origin and integrity of the Biblical text are described with gematria and equidistant letter spacing requiring Divine inspiration. There should therefore be no conflict between the Bible and established Science. Key conflicts perceived by the secular world are evaluated in detail. The fine tuning of the Earth and Universe enabling humankind to survive and flourish are summarised, and the supreme perfections of design in humanity, in nature and Universe described. General Relativity since the Big Bank is used to resolve a timescale matching the events of the Six Days of Genesis terminating in the recent special creation of humankind.

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for intermediate Hebrew students and above. Sung Jin Park presents the fundamental features of the Tiberian Hebrew accents, focusing on their divisions and exegetical roles. Providing innovative methods for diagramming biblical texts, the volume explores the two major rules (hierarchy and dichotomy) of disjunctive accents. Students will also attain biblical insights from the exegetical application of the biblical texts that Hebrew syntax alone does not provide. Park's volume shows how the new perspectives on Hebrew accents enhance our understanding of biblical texts.

This volume presents the first study, critical edition, and translation of one of the earliest works by Richard Rolle (c. 1300-1349), a hermit and mystic whose works were widely read in England and on the European continent into the early modern period. Rolle's explication of the Old Testament Book of Lamentations gives us a glimpse of how the biblical commentary tradition informed what would become his signature mystical, doctrinal, and reformist preoccupations throughout his career. Rolle's English and explicitly mystical writings have been widely accessible for decades. Recent attention has turned again to his Latin commentaries, many of which have never been critically edited or thoroughly studied. This attention promises to give us a fuller sense of Rolle's intellectual, devotional, and reformist development, and of the interplay between his Latin and English writings. Richard Rolle: On Lamentations places Rolle's early commentary within a tradition of explication of the Lamentations of Jeremiah and in the context of his own career. The edition collates all known witnesses to the text, from Dublin, Oxford, Prague, and Cologne. A source apparatus as well as textual and explanatory notes accompany the edition.

Together with my story of travelling through the tough circumstances of a brain tumour diagnosis; 'Embracing the Father' takes us on a journey through some of the well known stories from the Old Testament, and some less well known ones, in order to grasp a fuller understanding of the true nature of God, and how we react to those difficult situations we come across. Is he a mean and self centred being or is he kind and generous? Is the Old Testament God relevant to us today? Does he become in the New Testament a much more approachable God, or maybe a different God altogether? I explore our relationship with God as a Father, and how that has developed in my own journey, in both serious and humorous ways.

The eighth century BCE Isaiah of Jerusalem, the so-called First Isaiah, is one of the most important theological voices in the Bible. J. J. M. Roberts takes a classical historical-critical approach to his interpretation of this material, making good use of his broad comparative knowledge of ancient Near Eastern historical and religious sources. In light of Isaiah's very long prophetic ministry of at least thirty-eight years, and perhaps as long as fifty-three years, Roberts also suggests Isaiah often reedited older oracles from early in his ministry to address new, though somewhat analogous situations, albeit with different players, later in his ministry, without erasing telltale signs of the material's earlier origin. In many cases, this suggestion provides a better explanation for glaring inconsistencies in an apparently connected text than the common fragmentation of the text that attributes such inconsistencies to later editors who either misunderstood or intentionally altered Isaiah's message for their own purposes.

Traditions at Odds explores the Pentateuch's literary influence on other biblical texts. There exist a number of content discrepancies between pentateuchal and non-pentateuchal texts that treat the same subject. Through a detailed analysis, the author argues that the discrepancies are not alterations of pentateuchal material, as is generally argued, but rather indications of independent traditions. Thus, much of biblical literature was written outside of the Pentateuch's purview. Corroborating evidence is found in literature from the Second Temple Period, which also exhibits a lack of conformity to the Pentateuch. After demonstrating this independence, this study explores its implications on the composition of biblical texts and the process of canonization. Marked by an interdisciplinary approach, the study incorporates recent theoretical developments in literary and ideological criticism, as well as ritual, historiography and textual citation. It not only provides a broader base of study, but serves to address a deficiency in biblical studies: most studies of intertextuality operate with little theoretical grounding, while studies in ritual or historiography are based on models from the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

The Scriptures of Ancient Judaism: A Secular Introduction provides students with a scholarly exploration of the literature and themes of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and cognate Near Eastern materials. The text features diverse interdisciplinary and methodological points of view from secular biblical scholars, offering readers a comprehensive, thoughtful, and accessible point of entry to the study of the ancient world and the religious heritage of Judaism. The text approaches the scriptures of ancient Judaism without religious bias or dogmatic intent. Rather, the book is designed to ignite interest in the history and literature of the ancient world and to present the latest scholarship related to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Students are introduced to Israelite religious traditions, their unique worldviews, and offered a primer on how to read ancient texts. Later chapters examine the histories and cultures of the ancient Near East and Jewish historiography. Legal texts, prophetic texts, biblical poetry and wisdom literature, and apocalyptic writings found within the Hebrew Bible and other related texts are analyzed. Providing students a rich and complete introduction, The Scriptures of Ancient Judaism is an ideal text for courses in biblical studies.

In the Hebrew Bible, Judges 4-5 tells the lurid story of the heroic figure of Jael, a woman who seduces the Canaanite general Sisera and then nails his head to the ground with a tent-peg, thus saving Israel from the troops of King Sabin. This gruesome tale has long intrigued scholars and artists alike. The many versions of the story that have appeared in art and literature have repeatedly and creatively built on the gendered themes of the tradition, often seeing in the encounter between Jael and Sisera some fundamental truth about the relationship between women and men. In Sex and Slaughter in the Tent of Jael, Colleen Conway offers the first sustained look at how this biblical tradition has been used artistically to articulate and inform cultural debates about gender. She traces the cultural retellings of this story in poems, prints, paintings, plays, and narratives across many centuries, beginning with its appearance in Judges 4-5 and continuing up to the present day. Once separated from its original theological context, the Jael/Sisera tradition becomes largely about gender identity, particularly the conflict between the sexes. Conway examines the ways in which Jael has been reimagined by turns as a wily seductress, passionate lover, frustrated and bored mother, peace-bringing earth goddess, and deadly cyborg assassin. Meanwhile, Sisera variously plays the enemy general, the seduced lover, the noble but tragically duped victim, and the violent male chauvinist. Ultimately, Conway demonstrates that the ways in which Jael's actions are explained and assessed all depend on when, by whom, and for whom the Jael and Sisera story is being told. In examining the varying artistic renditions of the story, this book also provides a case study of the Bible's role as a common cultural resource in secular western culture.

This study of the book of Daniel examines the ideology of divine and human rule in Daniel's historical resumes or reviews found in chaps 2, 7, 8, 9, 10-12. It seeks to uncover the concerns that motivate the resumes and the strategies the resumes use to resolve cognitive and experiential dissonance. Willis argues that the source of dissonance in Daniel stems not from failed prophecies (as has been commonly argued), nor do the visions function as symbolic theodicies to address a contradiction between divine power and divine goodness in the face evil. The study proposes, instead, that the historical resumes address profound contradictions concerning divine power and presence in the face of Hellenistic/Seleucid rule. These contradictions reach a crisis point in Daniel 8's depiction of the desecration of the temple (typically Daniel 8 is seen as a poor replica of the triumphant vision of divine power found in Daniel 7). This crisis of divine absence is addressed both within the vision of chap 8 itself and then in the following visions of chaps 9, and 10-12, through the use of narrative (both mythological narrative and historical narrative).

The longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, is about the Bible itself. In his commentary on Psalm 119 Pastor Mott shows how the Bible is relevant for every need of life. No matter what situation or emotion you may be experiencing in your life, there is a verse in Psalm 119 that speaks to it. In this psalm you will find information relating to things historical, political, social, psychological, soteriological, and eschatological. The comprehensiveness of Psalm 119 is itself a wonder. Only God could inspire such a psalm.