Paul's letter to the people at Philippi serves as a reminder that if we search for joy in possessions, places, or people, we will always come up short. True, lasting joy comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, living in harmony with His followers, and serving others in the name of Christ. The life lived by the Philippians is still attainable today. In her comprehensive approach, Joyce Meyer takes a deep dive into well-known and beloved verses, identifying key truths and incorporating room for personal reflection.

Joyce's Philippians provides a key study tool that will help you develop a stronger relationship with God. If you take time to examine His word, you'll see how much He loves you and how much He desires that you live a joyful, content life on earth!

The starting point for any study of the Bible is the text of the Masora, as designed by the Masoretes. The ancient manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible contain thousands of Masora comments of two types: Masora Magna and Masora Prava. How does this complex defense mechanism, which contains counting of words and combinations from the Bible, work? Yosef Ofer, of Bar-Ilan University and the Academy of the Hebrew Language, presents the way in which the Masoretic comments preserve the Masoretic Text of the Bible throughout generations and all over the world, providing comprehensive information in a short and efficient manner. The book describes the important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, and the methods of the Masora in determining the biblical spelling and designing the forms of the parshiot and the biblical Songs. The effectiveness of Masoretic mechanisms and their degree of success in preserving the text is examined. A special explanation is offered for the phenomenon of qere and ketiv. The book discusses the place of the Masoretic text in the history of the Bible, the differences between the Babylonian Masora and that of Tiberias, the special status of the Aleppo Codex and the mystery surrounding it. Special attention is given to the comparison between the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex (B 19a). In addition, the book discusses the relationship between the Masora and other tangential domains: the grammar of the Hebrew language, the interpretation of the Bible, and the Halakha. The book is a necessary tool for anyone interested in the text of the Bible and its crystallization.

First Order: Zeraim / Tractate Peah and Demay is the second volume in the edition of the Jerusalem Talmud. It presents basic Jewish texts on the organization of private and public charity, and on the modalities of coexistence of the ritually observant and the non-observant. This part of the Jerusalem Talmud has almost no counterpart in the Babylonian Talmud. Its study is prerequisite for an understanding of the relevant rules of Jewish tradition.

After World War II, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) published works in English and German by eminent Israeli scholars, in this way introducing them to a wider audience in Europe and North America. The series he founded for that purpose, Studia Judaica, continues to offer a platform for scholarly studies and editions that cover all eras in the history of the Jewish religion.

Volume 12 in the edition of the complete Jerusalem Talmud. Tractates Sanhedrin and Makkot belong together as one tractate, covering procedural law for panels of arbitration, communal rabbinic courts (in bare outline) and an elaborate construction of hypothetical criminal courts supposedly independent of the king's administration. Tractate Horaiot, an elaboration of Lev. 4:1-26, defines the roles of High Priest, rabbinate, and prince in a Commonwealth strictly following biblical rules.

This volume, the second of a five-volume edition of the third order of the Jerusalem Talmud, deals in part I (Sotah) with the ordeal of the wife suspected of adultery (Num 5) and the role of Hebrew in the Jewish ritual. Part II (Nedarim) is concerned with Korban and similar expressions, vows and their consequences, and vows of women (Num 30).

Was Jesus of Nazareth a real historical person or a fictional character in a religious legend? What do the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal about the origins of Christianity? Has there been a conspiracy to suppress information in the Scrolls that contradicts traditional church teaching? John Allegro addresses these and many other intriguing questions in this fascinating account of what may be the most significant archaeological discovery of the twentieth century.
As one of the original scholars entrusted with the task of deciphering these ancient documents, Allegro worked on some of the most important texts, including the Biblical commentaries. In 1961, King Hussein of Jordan appointed him to be honorary advisor to the Jordanian government on the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his engaging and highly readable style, Allegro conveys the excitement of the initial archaeological find and takes the reader on a journey of intellectual discovery that goes to the heart of Western culture. Allegro suggests that Christianity evolved out of the Messianic theology of the Essenes, the Jewish sect that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This new edition of Allegro's book also contains an essay in which he describes the in-fighting among the scholars assigned to study the scrolls and his thirty-year battle to release all of the texts to the public. Allegro was one of the first scholars to protest the long delay in publishing the Scrolls and to criticize his colleagues for their secretive and possessive attitudes. This issue has recently been the focus of national media coverage, with the result that after forty years, open access to all of the Dead Sea Scrolls has finally been permitted.
If he had lived to see it, John Allegro would have been very pleased by this resolution of the controversy. In the same spirit of free inquiry that Allegro championed, Prometheus is reissuing his book in paperback to encourage open discussion of these important ancient texts.

The Cross of Christ: Foundational Islamic Perspectives takes an in-depth look at all of the medieval Muslim scholars considered to have affirmed Jesus' crucifixion. Each chapter provides the important historical and intellectual context for the commentators. As well, critical new translations of key texts are provided, offering important access to vital documents and schools of thought. The author argues that, rather than affirming the historicity of the crucifixion, the Isma'ilis tend to assume its historicity, in order to advance important Isma'ili doctrines. The author also contends that the commentators who explored ways to affirm the crucifixion, nonetheless made extensive use of traditional substitution legends that deny the crucifixion. In order to orient the reader, the book starts by introducing the reader to the Jesus of the Qur'an. It then compares him to the Jesus of the New Testament and the Jesus of extra canonical literature. Upon this Qur'anic skeleton, the author layers a myriad of details found in seventeen works of classic Islamic literature, so that a truly unique, authentic and authoritative Jesus of Islam emerges.

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most widely read Hindu scriptures in the Western world. Taking the form of a dialogue between the warrior Arjuna and the divine Krishna on the eve of battle, it is concerned with the most profound aspects of social and religious duty, and the relationship of human beings to God. In its eighteen short chapters it explores the spiritual struggle of the human soul and the search for both the true self and eternal life, culminating in an unparalleled vision of God the omnipotent.

Is it possible to rethink the multilayered and polyvalent Christology of the Qur'an against the intersecting of competing peripheral Christianities, anti-Jewish Christian polemics, and the making of a new Arab state in the 7th-century Near East? To what extent may this help us to decipher, moreover, the intricate redactional process of the quranic corpus? And can we unearth from any conclusions as to the tension between a messianic-oriented and a prophetic-guided religious thought buried in the document? By analysing, first, the typology and plausible date of the Jesus texts contained in the Qur'an (which implies moving far beyond both the habitual chronology of the Qur'an and the common thematic division of the passages in question) and by examining, in the second place, the Qur'an's earliest Christology via-a-vis its later (and indeed much better known) Muhamadan kerygma, the present study answers these crucial questions and, thereby, sheds new light on the Qur'an's original sectarian milieu and pre-canonical development.

Discoveries on Mount Gerizim and in Qumran demonstrate that the final editing of the Hebrew Bible coincides with the emergence of the Samaritans as one of the different types of Judaisms from the last centuries BCE. This book discusses this new scholarly situation. Scholars working with the Bible, especially the Pentateuch, and experts on the Samaritans approach the topic from the vantage point of their respective fields of expertise. Earlier, scholars who worked with Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies mostly could leave the Samaritan material to experts in that area of research, and scholars studying the Samaritan material needed only sporadically to engage in Biblical studies. This is no longer the case: the pre-Samaritan texts from Qumran and the results from the excavations on Mount Gerizim have created an area of study common to the previously separated fields of research. Scholars coming from different directions meet in this new area, and realize that they work on the same questions and with much common material.This volume presents the current state of scholarship in this area and the effects these recent discoveries have for an understanding of this important epoch in the development of the Bible.

Despite considerable scholarly efforts for many years, the last two decades of the Kingdom of Israel are still beneath the veil of history. What was the status of the Kingdom after its annexation by Assyria in 732 BCE? Who conquered Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom? When did it happen? One of the primary reasons for this situation lies in the discrepancies found in the historical sources, namely the Hebrew Bible and the Assyrian texts. Since biblical studies and Assyriology are two distinct disciplines, the gaps in the sources are not easy to bridge. Moreover, recent great progress in the archaeological research in the Southern Levant provides now crucial new data, independent of these textual sources. This volume, a collection of papers by leading scholars from different fields of research, aims to bring together, for the first time, all the available data and to discuss these conundrums from various perspectives in order to reach a better and deeper understanding of this crucial period, which possibly triggered in the following decades the birth of "new Israel" in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and eventually led to the formation of the Hebrew Bible and its underlying theology.

Let the wisdom of Colossians transform relationships in every area of your life -- home, church, and even the world -- with this study guide from renowned Bible teacher Joyce Meyer. Paul's letter to the Colossians reminds us that as we have died with Christ, we also need to die to our sins. It encourages us that because we have also been raised in Him, we must submit to Jesus and adopt qualities motivated by Christian love. In this comprehensive study tool, Joyce Meyer's commentary on Colossians affirms the Lordship of Christ and offers practical advice on family, relationships, and faith.