This critically acclaimed series provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The authors are scholars of international standing.

Combining exquisite Scripture art with the Word of God, My Promise Bible will encourage you to meditate on the truth and wonders of the Bible as you color in the faithful promises from God and establish His Word in your heart.

• Complete KJV text in single-column format.
• Highly readable 8.65 font.
• Plenty of room for journaling, note-taking and artistic expression in the ruled wide margins.
• A short introduction to each book of the Bible complemented by key promise verses.
• Over 500 illustrated Bible promises and line-art illustrations to color.
• 52 themes with well-known Bible promises under each theme.
• Index of designed promises from the Bible.
• Matching Bible book name tabs, full-color stickers and four sticker sheets to color.
• 12 additional designs on art paper to write down answered prayers, God’s promises to you and personal reflections.
• A pocket in the back of the Bible for storing Bible journaling embellishments.

In the popular imagination Martha has become synonymous with the harried housewife, fretting over excessive preparations. The Martha known to early Christians is far removed from this stereotype. Martha was better known for her role in the story of the raising of Lazarus and as apostle and witness of the resurrection. This book gathers and assesses the early traditions about Martha in text, liturgy and iconography. It shows that the significance of Martha has been seriously underestimated and recovers an important and widespread tradition of Martha as apostle and authority figure for early Christians. The analysis of Martha traditions with attention to issues of gender and authority render this book an important contribution to studies on women in early Christianity.

The divine warrior is an important motif in the Old Testament, leading many to study profitably the motif in its most prominent manifestations in poetic texts. This study builds on that foundation by examining the divine warrior in detail in the exodus narrative to construct a broader picture of the motif in the Old Testament.

The ESV Value Thinline Bible retains many of the popular features that people have come to appreciate and expect from the original ESV Thinline Bible. This highly affordable edition includes a quality TruTone cover in a portable format that is one inch thick. Containing the complete ESV text in readable type, this edition delivers great value for a thinline Bible at an affordable price.

• High-Quality Production: Stylish TruTone cover, smyth-sewn binding, and a lifetime guarantee
• Great for Personal Bible Study: Features the full ESV Bible with a glossary in a portable size
• Easy-to-Read Format: Features black 8.5-point type in a double-column, paragraph format

Through a close and informative reading of seven key texts in Acts, Kauppi analyses the appearances of Graeco-Roman religion, offering evidence of practices including divination and oracles, ruler cult and civic foundation myth. "Foreign But Familiar Gods" then uses a combination of these scriptural texts and other contemporary evidence (including archaeological and literary material) to suggest that one of Luke's subsidiary themes is to contrast Graeco-Roman and Christian religious conceptualizations and practices.

This monograph explores the joy theme in Luke- Acts as it relates to the dynamics of rhetoric, narrative and emotion. The Gospel of Luke has been called the "gospel of joy", and the joy theme has also been recognised in Acts. This theme, though, has received relatively little attention in NT scholarship. Joy in Luke-Acts examines the joy theme from a socio-rhetorical vantage point, showing that the joy theme empowers the Lukan rhetoric of reversal. The theme is a primary method in which the narrator seeks to persuade the reader to enter into the values and beliefs that characterise the 'upside-down' world in which YHWH has visited his people in Jesus.

Scholars generally see the aspiration of the Roman Empire and the imperial cult in Asia Minor as the great villain in "Revelation", treating the depiction of a cosmic conflict in the book mostly as metaphors that hold little or no explanatory power in the story. This book pursues the conviction that the cosmic conflict imagery is the primary and controlling element in the account. Such a reading puts the war-in-heaven theme in the foreground and calls on interpreters to pay more attention to the heavenly being whose attempt to subvert the truth about the divine government is the unremitting concern in "Revelation". This book redresses the distortion that results from leaving the larger conflict theme underexposed. Having first developed the story line, it aims is to show that the phrase 'Pistis Iesou' in "Revelation" is best understood when "Revelation" is read as a theodicy of God's handling of the reality of evil.

This book seeks to establish the inadequacy of readings of the Gospel of Matthew as intended for, and a reflection of, a local audience or community. Despite repeated challenges, the local audience thesis continues to dominate a large proportion of Matthean scholarship, and, as such, the issue of determining the Gospel's audience remains an open question. In this book, Cedric E. W. Vine posits four main critiques. The first suggests the assumptions which underpin the text-focused process of identifying the Gospel's audience, whether deemed to be local, Jewish, or universal, lack clarity. Second, local audience readings necessarily exclude plot-related developments and are both selective and restrictive in their treatment of characterisation. Third, Vine argues that many in an audience of the Gospel would have incorporated their experience of hearing Matthew within pre-existing mental representations shaped by Mark or other early traditions. Fourth, Vine suggests that early Christian audiences were largely heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, age, sex, wealth, familiarity with Christian traditions, and levels of commitment. As such, the aural reception of the Gospel would have resulted in a variety of impacts. A number of these critiques extend beyond the local audience option and for this reason this study concludes that we cannot currently determine the audience of the Gospel.