Writing in an accessible and anecdotal style, Tom Wright helps us to approach the rich and many-sided story of the book of Acts. Wright shows how the book builds on Luke's gospel, laying out the continuing work and teaching of the now risen and ascended Jesus in the power of the Spirit. His writing captures the vivid way in which Luke's work draws us all into the story, while leaving the ending open and challenging, inviting Christians today to pick up and carry on the story as we in turn live our lives in the service of Jesus. Tom Wright has undertaken a tremendous task to provide guides to all the books of the New Testament, and to furnish them with his own fresh translation of the entire text. Each short passage is followed by a highly readable discussion, with background information, useful interpretation and explanation, and thoughts as to how it can be relevant to our lives today. No knowledge of technical jargon is required. The series is suitable for personal or group use. The format makes it appropriate also for daily study.

Scholars have often read the book of Revelation in a way that attempts to ascertain which Old Testament book it most resembles. Instead, we should read it as a combined and imitative text which actively engages the audience through signalling to multiple texts and multiple textual experiences: in short, it is an act of pastiche. Fletcher analyses the methods used to approach Revelation's relationship with Old Testament texts and shows that, although there is literature on Revelation's imitative and multi-vocal nature, these aspects of the text have not yet been explored in sufficient depth. Fletcher's analysis also incorporates an examination of Greco-Roman imitation and combination before providing a better way to understand the nature of the book of Revelation, as pastiche. Fletcher builds her case on four comparative case studies and uses a test case to ascertain how completely they fit with this assessment. These insights are then used to clarify how reading Revelation as imitative and combined pastiche can challenge previous scholarly assumptions, transforming the way we approach the text.

Winner of The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2022 Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2022 A The Times Books of the Year 2022 A fascinating, surprising and often controversial examination of the real God of the Bible, in all his bodily, uncensored, scandalous forms. Three thousand years ago, in the Southwest Asian lands we now call Israel and Palestine, a group of people worshipped a complex pantheon of deities, led by a father god called El. El had seventy children, who were gods in their own right. One of them was a minor storm deity, known as Yahweh. Yahweh had a body, a wife, offspring and colleagues. He fought monsters and mortals. He gorged on food and wine, wrote books, and took walks and naps. But he would become something far larger and far more abstract: the God of the great monotheistic religions. But as Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou reveals, God's cultural DNA stretches back centuries before the Bible was written, and persists in the tics and twitches of our own society, whether we are believers or not. The Bible has shaped our ideas about God and religion, but also our cultural preferences about human existence and experience; our concept of life and death; our attitude to sex and gender; our habits of eating and drinking; our understanding of history. Examining God's body, from his head to his hands, feet and genitals, she shows how the Western idea of God developed. She explores the places and artefacts that shaped our view of this singular God and the ancient religions and societies of the biblical world. And in doing so she analyses not only the origins of our oldest monotheistic religions, but also the origins of Western culture. Beautifully written, passionately argued and frequently controversial, God: An Anatomy is cultural history on a grand scale. 'Rivetingly fresh and stunning' - Sunday Times 'One of the most remarkable historians and communicators working today' - Dan Snow

The book of Chronicles, the last book of the Hebrew Bible and a central historical book of the Christian Old Testament, has in recent decades gone from being "the Cinderella of biblical studies" to being one of the most researched books of the Bible. The anonymous author, often simply called "the Chronicler" by modern scholars, looks back at the old Israelite monarchy, before the Babylonian exile, from his vantage point in the post-exilic early Second Temple Period, and attempts to "update" the older historiographies of Samuel and Kings in order to elucidate their meaning to the people of his own time. In The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, Yigal Levin does the same for the modern reader. He offers a brand-new translation and commentary on 2 Chronicles chapters 10-36, tracing the "sacred history" of the monarchy from the division of Solomon's kingdom to the final exile and return. Each chapter is translated from the original Hebrew into an English that is both faithful to the original and easy for the modern reader to follow. Extensive footnotes provide full explanations of the translator's choices and of linguistic and literary issues, taking note of alternative versions offered by a wide array of ancient and modern versions and translations. The comprehensive commentary on each section provides historical background and explains the text both on a literary and a historical level, making full use of the most up-to-date research on the text, literature, history, geography and on the archaeological background of the biblical world. The Chronicles of the Kings of Judah is to be followed by The Chronicles of David and Solomon on 1 Chronicles 10 - 2 Chronicles 9, and then by The Chronicles of All Israel on the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1-9 and including comprehensive essays on the book of Chronicles, its time, purposes, methods and meanings.

A key text in the study of the minor prophets, this volume by distinguished academic William Rainey Harper offers a comprehensive look at the pre-prophetic movement, and in-depth analysis of meaning and literary form in these prophetic works.

Sparkling reflections by our most popular Christian author, from Advent to Christmas

This study explores how the Fourth Gospels use of Scripturecontributes to its characterization of Jesus. Utilizing literary-rhetoricalcriticism, Myers approaches the Gospel in its final form, paying particularattention to how Greco-Roman rhetoric can assist in understanding the ways inwhich Scripture is employed to support the presentation of Jesus. It offersfurther evidence in favour of the Gospels use of rhetoric (particularly thepractices of synkrisis, ekpharsis, and prosopopoiia), and gives scholars a new way to use rhetoric tobetter understand the use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel and the New Testamentas a whole.The book proceeds in three parts. First, it examines ancientMediterranean practices of narration and characterization in relationship tothe Gospel, concluding with an analysis of the Johannine prologue. In thesecond and third parts, it investigates explicit appeals to Scripture that aremade both in and outside of Jesus discourses.Through these analyses, Myers contends that the pervasivepresence of Scripture in quotations, allusions, and references acts ascorroborating evidence supporting the evangelists presentation of Jesus.