Over 15 years after its original publication The Bible in History remains an essential examination of the symbiotic relationship between Scripture and the social and cultural contexts shaping its interpretation. David W. Kling traces the fascinating story of how specific biblical texts-sometimes a single verse, other times a selection of verses or chapters, even books-have at various times emerged to be the inspiration of movements that have changed the course of history. Episodes range from Anthony's call to the desert and a life of monasticism after hearing Jesus's directive to the "rich young rule" to give up his possessions, to the Anabaptists non-violent ethic in following Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, to the varied applications of the exodus motif in African American history. This revised and expanded second edition adds two new chapters. The first examines the text in Matthew 28:18-20 and considers the multitudinous interpretations before, during, and after the text emerged as the iconic "Great Commission" of missionary motivation in the modern period. The second assesses those biblical texts that encompass the divisive and ongoing issue of male homosexuality. Both chapters engage the question of, "how the texts have shaped the times," but, as Kling argues, the "times" have also exerted an enormous impact on shaping the interpretation of the texts, and hence, on the continuing disputes over the meaning of those texts.

Preaching's Preacher's Guide to the Best Bible Reference The prophet Jeremiah and King Josiah were born at the end of the longest, darkest reign in Judah's history. Human sacrifice and practice of the black arts were just two features of the wickedness that filled Jerusalem from one end to the other with innocent blood. As outspoken prophet and reforming king, these two men gave their country its finest opportunity of renewal and its last hope of surviving as the kingdom of David. The book of Jeremiah is full of turmoil and national tragedy, the story of key people like Baruch, Gedaliah and Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, and the drama of rediscovering the forgotten book of Mosaic law. National events interweave with the lives of individuals; the rediscovered book of God's law transforms Josiah, Jeremiah and the future of the world. Derek Kidner, in this volume that was formerly part of the widely respected The Bible Speaks Today series, gives careful attention to the text and reveals its startling relevance to our own troubled time.

Psalm 93

If Zechariah's vision report (Zechariah 1.8-6.8) reflects the seer's visionary experience, how does that impact our understanding of the gradual growth of the text? Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer builds on the work done in her previous book Zechariah and His Visions (Bloomsbury-T&T Clark, 2014), to demonstrate that the visionary material forms the primary textual layer. The oracular texts constitute chronologically later interpretations. Zechariah and/or later authors/editors sought guidance in the earlier vision accounts, and the oracular material reflects these endeavours. Tiemeyer's investigation is guided by the question: what is the latter material doing with the former? Is it enforcing, contradicting, or adding to it? Using a ratio composed of the difference between the intratexts and intertexts of Zech 1-8, Tiemeyer shows how this ratio is higher in the oracular material than in the visionary material. This difference points to the different origin and the different purpose of the two sets of material. While the earlier vision report draws on images found primarily in other biblical vision reports, the later oracular material has the characteristics of scribal interpretation. By drawing on earlier material, it seeks to anchor its proposed interpretations of the various vision accounts within the Israelite textual tradition. It is clear that the divine oracles were added to give, modify, and specify the meaning of the earlier vision report.

This book provides a new reading of the biblical book of Numbers in a commentary form. Mainstream readings have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis-Leviticus with Deuteronomy (and Joshua), composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, this book reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis-Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. In the context of the tremendous influence that the biblical documents have had on the world in the last 2,000-3,000 years, the book also offers pointers towards reading these texts today. This volume is a fascinating study of this text, and will be of interest not only to biblical scholars, but to anyone with an interest in the history of the ancient Levant, and colonisation and colonialism in the ancient world more broadly.

The Old Testament is integrally bound to the history and culture of Ancient Israeland the Ancient Middle East. This collection of essays primarily employs approaches from the fields of literary history andarcheology. It makes an important contribution to cultural and religious historical aspects of kingship and prophecy. It also casts a new light on questions regarding institutional education and worship practices, on the possibilities and limitations of religious historical comparison, and on Biblical interpretation in a Judeo-Christian context.

Here in Robert Alter's bold new translation are some of the most magnificent works in world literature. The astounding poetry in the Book of Job is restored to its powerful ancient meanings and rhythms. The creation account in its Voice from the Whirlwind is beautiful and incendiary. By contrast, a serene fatalism suffuses Ecclesiastes with a quiet beauty, and the pithy maxims of Proverbs impart a worldly wisdom that is satirically shrewd. Each of these books addresses the universal wisdom that the righteous thrive and the wicked suffer in a rational moral order; together they are essential to the ancient canon that is the Hebrew Bible.

This amazing, bestselling guide presents hundreds of facts about the Temple. The full-color, glossy 12-panel pamphlet covers the Tabernacle in the wilderness to the Temple built by King Solomon, Zerubbabel, and Herod's Temple, the one Jesus knew so well. The Temple pamphlet has colorful illustrations of the Temple drawn to scale based on Bible measurements. Each of the Temple furnishings are explained in detail, as well as their functions, purposes, and the meanings they have for believers today. Size: 8.5x 5.5 unfolds to 33 long. Fits inside most Bible covers. A beautiful cutaway illustration of the first temple, Solomon's Temple, shows what the Temple may have looked like inside and out. Teachers can show students the outer courtyards of the Temple and the area where Jesus praised the widow who gave sacrificially to the Lord, giving the widow's mite. The Temple pamphlet explains each of the Temple's key features: the Ark of the Covenant, the Veil, the Holy Place, and the Most Holy Place (the Holy of Holies), to name a few. The Temple pamphlet includes: A tour of the temple and its features An historical time line and fascinating facts A Q & A about the Temple A beautiful illustration of Herod's Temple (sometimes called the third temple) References to Jesus in the Temple Biblical encounters that happened in God's Temple The Temple pamphlet provides a numbered list indicating each of the key features of the temple and explains their original purposes and what their uses mean to us today. For example: The Brazen Altar (Bronze Altar). Back THEN it was the place where the perfect animal was sacrificed for the sins of the people. NOW Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. Old andNew Testament Scripture references are provided for each Temple feature: Sacrifice / the Brazen Altar (Bronze Altar) The Sea (Bronze Basin) Brass Pillars (Bronze Pillars) Holy Place Golden Lampstand and Tables of Showbread Golden Incense Altar The Veil Most Holy Place Cherubim Ark of the Covenant and Mercy Seat Storerooms An historical timeline shows the years the Temples were built, destroyed, and rebuilt. The timeline covers: The Tabernacle Solomon's Temple Zerubbabel's Temple Herod's Temple The Temple pamphlet provides fascinating details: Learn who made the plans for the Temple Who raided and destroyed the Temples Whether the Temple will be restored

In this new addition to the Old Testament Library series, Graeme Auld writes, "This book is about David." The author demonstrates how all the other personalities in First and Second Samuel--including Samuel, for whom the books were named--are present so that we may see and know David better. These fascinating stories detail the lives of David, his predecessors, and their families. Auld explains that though we read these books from beginning to end, we need to understand that they were composed from end to beginning. By reconstructing what must have gone before, the story of David sets up and explains the succeeding story of monarchy in Israel.

Yitzhak Berger advances a distinctive and markedly original interpretation of the biblical book of Jonah that resolves many of the ambiguities in the text. Berger contends that the Jonah text pulls from many inner-biblical connections, especially ones relating to the Garden of Eden. These connections provide a foundation for Berger's reading of the story, which attributes multiple layers of meaning to this carefully crafted biblical book. Focusing on Jonah's futile quest and his profoundly troubled response to God's view of the sins of humanity, Berger shows how the book paints Jonah as a pacifist no less than as a moralist.

In contrast to previous scholarship which has approached loanwords from etymological and lexicographic perspectives, Jonathan Thambyrajah considers them not only as data but as rhetorical elements of the literary texts of which they are a part. In the book, he explains why certain biblical texts strongly prefer to use loanwords whereas others have few. In order to explore this, he studies the loanwords of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Exodus, considering their impact on audiences and readers. He also analyzes and evaluates the many proposed loan hypotheses in Biblical Hebrew and proposes further or different hypotheses. Loanwords have the potential to carry associations with its culture of origin, and as such are ideal rhetorical tools for shaping a text's audience's view of the nations around them and their own nation. Thambyrajah also focuses on this phenomenon, looking at the court tales in Esther and Daniel, the correspondence in the Hebrew and Aramaic sections of Ezra 1-7, and the accounts of building the tabernacle in Exodus, and paying close attention to how these texts present ethnicity.

The Mudil Codex from the late 4th century contains the Biblical Psalms in Coptic. However, the text differs significantly from familiar versions of the Psalms, giving rise to the question of whether we are dealing with an original form of the text. The comprehensive analysis presented here demonstrates the tradition in which this fascinating text is located, how it arose, and what significance it has for research into the Psalms generally and the Coptic Bible manuscripts in particular.

Few pastors continue to read their Hebrew Old Testament after seminary. One reason is that it is too time-consuming, since many words have to be looked up in the dictionary. The Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament, now for the first time complete in one volume, enables the pastor and the student to read the Hebrew Old Testament with relative ease. Listed in sequence by chapter and verse are all words that occur fewer than fifty times in the Old Testament, complete with translation (based on Brown, Driver, and Briggs' Lexicon) and numbers indicating how often the word occurs in the particular book and in the Old Testament as a whole. At the end of each entry is the page number in Brown, Driver, and Briggs' Lexicon where a discussion of the word can be found. Appendixes list all Hebrew words occurring more than fifty times in the Old Testament and all Aramaic words occurring more than ten times.

Ben Sira is properly regarded as one of the most significant representatives of Jewish wisdom literature. Georg Sauer, the renowned Viennese Old Testament scholar, addresses the many sides of these scriptural writings in the present volume. He explores text-immanent questions regarding the structure, content, and theological meaning of Ben Sira s book in consideration of evidence from Hebrew and Greek texts. In addition, this study illuminates the historical background and context for Ben Sira s work as well as explores questions about the history of its interpretation in Judaism and Christianity.

A cornerstone of the scriptural canon, the Book of Psalms has been a source of solace and joy for countless readers over millennia. This timeless poetry is beautifully wrought by a scholar whose translation of the Five Books of Moses was hailed as a "godsend" by Seamus Heaney and a "masterpiece" by Robert Fagles. Alter's The Book of Psalms captures the simplicity, the physicality, and the coiled rhythmic power of the Hebrew, restoring the remarkable eloquence of these ancient poems. His learned and insightful commentary illuminates the obscurities of the text.

Isaiah 24-27 has been an enduring mystery and a hotly contested text for biblical scholars. Early scholarship linked its references to the dead rising to the New Testament. These theories have remained influential even as common opinion moderated over the course of the twentieth century. In this volume, Christopher B. Hays situates Isaiah 24-27 within its historical and cultural contexts. He methodically demonstrates that it is not apocalyptic; that its imagery of divine feasting and conquering death have ancient cognates; and that its Hebrew language does not reflect a late composition date. He also shows how the passage celebrates the receding of Assyrian power from Judah, and especially from the citadel at Ramat Rahel near Jerusalem, in the late seventh century. This was the time of King Josiah and his scribes, who saw a political opportunity and issued a peace overture to the former northern kingdom. Using comparative, archaeological, linguistic, and literary tools, Hays' volume changes the study of Isaiah, arguing for a different historical setting than that of traditional scholarship.

? As long as the TUAT has not been completed and remains hardly affordable for students, this continues to be a useful collection for instruction purposes. Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Christoph Markschies"