2020 Catholic Press Association second place award for English translation edition Is the Christian hope for resurrection still alive or has it become tired? How can we talk about the Resurrection today? Gerhard Lohfink takes up the question of death and resurrection in this new book. He argues against the dazzling array of today's ideas and expectations and seeks his answers in Scripture, the Christian tradition, and human reason. With his characteristically gentle but clear language, he reveals the power of Christian resurrection, showing it is not about events that lie in the distant future but rather occurrences incomprehensively close to us. They were long since begun and they will embrace us fully in our own death..

Who was Jesus? A prophet? There have been many of those. A miracle-worker? A radical revolutionary? A wise teacher? There have been many of these, too. In his latest book, renowned Scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink asks, What is unique about Jesus of Nazareth, and what did he really want? Lohfink engages the perceptions of the first witnesses of his life and ministry and those who handed on their testimony. His approach is altogether historical and critical, but he agrees with Karl Barth's statement that "historical criticism has to be more critical." Lohfink takes seriously the fact that Jesus was a Jew and lived entirely in and out of Israel's faith experiences but at the same time brought those experiences to their goal and fulfilment. The result is a convincing and profound picture of Jesus.

Reading 1 Peter through the lens of feminist and diaspora studies keeps front and center the bodily, psychological, and social suffering experienced by those without stable support of family or homeland, whether they were economic migrants or descendants of those enslaved by Roman armies. In the new "household" of God, believers are encouraged to exhibit a moral superiority to the society that engulfs them. But adoption of "elite" values cannot erase the undertones of randomized verbal abuse, general scorn, and physical violence that women, immigrants, slaves, and freedmen faced as the "facts of life." First Peter offers the "honor" of identifying with the Crucified, "by his bruises you are healed" (2:24). A Christian liberation ethic would challenge 1 Peter's approach. Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia-Pontus in north-western Asia Minor, is a contemporary of 2 Peter's writer. The polemical, accusatory genre of 2 Peter, like Jude, originates in Roman judicial rhetoric. The pastor, in the persona of a prosecuting attorney, condemns immoral defendants, including influential women. Their "crimes" encode community tensions over women's leadership, Gentile-members' sexual ethics, their syncretistic deviations from Jewish doctrine on creation, and the certainty of divine judgment and punishment. Citations to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's A Woman's Bible enliven the commentary. The doctrinal disorder prompts the male pastor to sustain loyalists in their commitment to "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Second Peter dramatizes an ecclesial crisis whose "solution" was the eventual imposition of a magisterium to silence dissent. Brief, combative, and assuming a familiarity with a literary culture that most twenty-first-century readers do not have, the Letter of Jude would be an obvious candidate for being the most neglected book of the New Testament. As a model for a pastoral strategy, it can be recommended only with great reservations: almost everyone will find in it something problematic, if not offensive. Yet, in addition to giving a window on a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian milieu, Jude's energetic prose testifies to the author's visceral concern for those attempting to live by the gospel in difficult circumstances. Furthermore, to the extent that over familiarity with parts of the New Testament can blunt their challenge, this letter provides a salutary reminder that the entire canon originated in a world that is radically unfamiliar to us.

Does Martin Luther have anything to say to us today? Nearly five hundred years after the beginning of the Reformation, Hans-Martin Barth explores that question in this comprehensive and critical evaluation of Luthers theology. Rich in its extent and in its many facets, Barths didactically well-planned work begins with clarifications about obsolete and outdated images of Luther that could obstruct access to the Reformer. The second part covers the whole of Martin Luther's theology. Having divided Luther's theology into twelve subsections, Barth ends each one of these with an honest and frank assessment of what today can be salvaged and what's got to go. In the final section he gives his summation: an honestly critical appropriation of Luthers theology can still be existentially inspiring and globally relevant for the twenty-first century.

Worship is at the heart of the Christian faith. This applies equally to all denominations. For that reason it is all the more important that the ordering of worship and its place in the life of the church is regularly rewritten and reinterpreted. This volume-based on the third, completely revised German edition from 2013 by two of the foremost liturgical scholars in Germany-offers a contemporary, comprehensive introduction to the foundations for the study of liturgy today, one from which scholars and students in the English-speaking world can also profit. Beyond appealing to students of liturgy and theology, this book reaches out to everyone who wants to know more about the liturgical essence and dimensions of the church.

A personal, surprising, and heart-warming book wherein two spiritual masters of our time advance the central questions of life and faith."Brother David Steindl-Rast and Father Anselm Grun are figures of hope, people who by the power of their example can offer an orientation in a world that has become too complex to comprehend. The spirituality they radiate is an everyday thing that is nevertheless both profound and vivid. . . . "Our conversations, on which this book is based, could be read as a 'crash course' in Christian spirituality. This book will be an inspiration and an aid to spiritual life for many people of our time, whether they are believers or not."Johannes KaupFrom the Introduction

Anselm Grun, OSB, famed Benedictine author and cellarer-supplies manager-of his monastery at Munsterschwarzach, offers brief reflections on aspects of the Rule of Benedict. He sketches the life of Benedict and reflects on how Benedict's instructions enable one to live constantly in the presence of God. Even the most mundane objects are signs of the presence of God. It is not merely that we focus our attention on God, but that we're aware that God always focuses attention on us, loving and encouraging us in all things. For example: he calls the cellarer to regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar. Grun also ponders how work is an aid to prayer and how the Benedictine vow of stability is essential to building community. Silence and the solitude that characterize the monastic are conditions for the possibility of genuine community. Each chapter concludes with a brief reflection on the state of contemporary society and how the aspect of the Rule of Benedict treated in the chapter applies to the needs of today.

Israel's story as a people of God is a tale of women, men, and their children. Moving past a patriarchal reading of the Bible, Fischer presents a new interpretation of neglected biblical narratives. From a gender-balanced perspective, she reveals the political dimension and narrative continuation of ancestral stories in the Book of Ruth. "Women Who Wrestled with God" demonstrates the significance of women in religious history in a way that will inspire as well as inform.

Chapters are: The 'Fathers' and the Beginnings of the People - An Introduction to Israel's Ancestor's, - - Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham: Scenes From a Marriage Under the Promise, - - Rebecca: A Strong Woman With a Colorless Husband, - - Rachel and Leah: The Founders of the House of Israel, - - Dark Sides of the Family Chronicle, - - Subversive Women at the Beginnings of the People in Egypt, - - Naomi and Ruth: The Unconventional Women Ancestors of the Royal House of David, - and - Women Who Wrestled with God. -

"Irmtraud Fischer is professor of Old Testament and women's studies (theology) at the University of Bonn, as well as chair of Old Testament studies at the University of Graz, Austria. President of the European Society for Women's Research in Theology, Fischer was given the 2003 Bad Herrenalber Akademie Preis.""

Wisdom Has Built Her House brings together for the first time the collected studies of Silvia Schroer on the biblical figure of Sophia, divine Wisdom. Schroer presents a differentiated image of Wisdom as female, creator, teacher, prophet, beloved, and more. In Wisdom Has Built Her House Schroer portrays Wisdom as a cosmic ordering principle, as universal architect, and as mediator of all scientific knowledge. Schroer also inquires about the contexts of these writings: about feminine wisdom and women's roles after the Babylonian exile, about the goddess traditions behind the idea of Sophia, and about their significance within a monotheistic symbol system. Schroer then follows the tradition of God imaged as Wisdom to the time of the Jesus- movement and the first Christian communities. Teachers, students, and those looking for a well-reasoned study of personified Wisdom - and reasons for reinvisioning our own images of God - will find this in Wisdom Has Built Her House. Chapters are Wisdom on the Path of Righteousness (Proverbs 8:20)," "Divine Wisdom and Postexilic Monotheism," "Wise Women and Counselors in Israel: Models for Personified Hokma," "'And When the Next War Began . . .' The Wise Woman of Abel of Beth-maacah (2 Samuel 20:14-22)," "Abigail: A Wise Woman Works for Peace," "The One Lord and Male Dominance in the Book of Jesus Sirach: The Image of Woman and the Image of Wisdom in a Misogynist Document," "Personified Sophia in the Book of Wisdom," "Jesus Sophia," and "The Spirit, Wisdom, and the Dove."

What is the significance of Jesus' genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew? Why do we put and ox and ass at our creches? Why did angels appear to the shepherds? In "No Trace of Christmas?" Christoph Dohmen explains why the answers to these and other questions regarding our understanding of Christmas are to be found not in the New but in the Old Testament.

For the most part Christians regard the Old (or First) Testament as pre-history, a preparation for, or a promise of the New Testament and its proclamation of Christ. This is especially true during Advent, when the Christian liturgy directs our attention to the promise and its fulfillment. Yet Advent's status as the beginning of the Church year - as a turning point - calls us to look back in order to move forward. We read intensively from Old Testament prophecy texts with a special view toward their future meaning. Hence, Advent is the time of the year when Christians are reminded that they have one sacred Scripture in "two" parts, one Bible composed of the Old and New Testaments.

Since it was with the aid of the Old Testament that the early Church interpreted the event at Bethlehem, many of the images and biblical texts associated with Christmas can only be understood by following their Old Testament roots. Like the Magi who followed the star, we can, with Dohmen's help, follow in the liturgy of Advent and Christmas the traces that lead us into the Old Testament. Following those traces, we can arrive at a Christmas that appears to us in a new light, that of the Old Testament.

Chapters are In Search of Traces," "It al Began Before Christmas," "Addressed and Claimed," "A Gift from Heaven," "When Shepherds Become Prophets, "You Shall Make No Crib for Yourself " "Joseph, What Are You Dreaming?" "A New Age Is Beginning," "In Order That Might Be Fulfilled . . .," "In Our Midst," "Yad Vashem," "You, Bethlehem . . .," and "Following the Trace."

"Christoph Dohmen is professor of Old Testament Exegesis at the University of Osnabruck.""

Women Officeholders in Early Christianity is a scholarly investigation of the evidence for women holding offices of authority in the first several centuries of Christianity. Ute Eisen focuses on inscriptions and documentary papyri (private letters, official documents, contracts, and other such pieces) that have scarcely been considered before. Eisen presents the first extensive documentation of selected Greek and Latin inscriptions, plus a few documentary papyri, that witness to the existence of Christian women officeholders. The intent is to show the multiplicity of titles borne by women and to illustrate the narrowness of previous research on this topic. A single chapter is devoted to each of the titles of office or functional designations found in the sources. The epigraphical, papyrological, and literary witnesses are accordingly grouped by function. Topics are Apostles," "Prophets," "Teachers of Theology," "Presbyters," "Enrolled Widows," "Deacons," "Bishops," and "Stewards." Central to Women Officeholders in Early Christianity are the epigraphical witnesses. To this point they have been only marginally incorporated into research on women officeholders in the Church. In order to ensure correct interpretation, the majority of the inscriptions discussed have extensive documentation. They are organized geographically and chronologically. Besides the documentation they are commented on in the context of the existing literary sources. The book concludes with a chapter entitled "Source-Oriented Perspectives for a History of Christian Women Officeholders." The book also includes a bibliography of reference works, primary sources, and secondary sources. Ute E. Eisen is a Wissenschaftliche Assistentin at the Institute of New Testament Studies and Ancient Judaism at the University of Kiel, Germany. She has a doctorate in theology from the University of Hamburg. Her special areas of study include narrative analysis of Luke-Acts, methodology in New Testament studies, history of early Christianity, and gender studies. "

Are not al religions equally close to and equally far from God? Why, then, the Church? Gerhard Lohfink poses these questions with scholarly reliability and on the basis of his own experience of community in "Does God Need the Church?"

In 1982 Father Lohfink wrote "Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt?" (translated into English as"Jesus and Community") to show, on the basis of the New Testament, that faith is founded in a community that distinguishes itself in clear contours from the rest of society. In that book he also described a sequence of events that moved directly from commonality to a community that was readily accessible to every group of people and was made legitimate by Jesus himself. Only later did Father Lohfink learn, within a new horizon of experience, that such a description is not the way to community. The story of the gathering of the people of God, from Abraham until today, never took place according to such a model.

Today Father Lohfink states that he would not write "Wie hat Jesus Gemeinde gewollt?" the same way. The situation of belief and believers has undergone a shift: the question of the Church has become much more urgent. Church life is declining and the religions are returning, often in new guises.

In light of these shifts and the change in his own view of community, Father Lohfink inquires in "Does God Need the Church?" of Israel's theology, Jesus' praxis, the experiences of the early Christian communities, and of what is appearing in the Church today. These inquiries lead to an amazing history involving God and the world - a history that God presses forward with the aid of a single people and that always turns out differently from what they think and plan.

"Gerhard Lohfink, ThD, was professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Tubingen until 1986 when he resigned from his professorship in order to live and work as a theologian in the Catholic Integrierte Gemeinde and its community of priests."

No other female image has been so strongly influenced by the culture and history of past European centuries as Mary Magdalene. From ancient times to the present, Mary Magdalene has been a summary image of the feminine in each era. Despised as a sinner, revered as a saint, admired as a model disciple, Mary Magdalene became the symbol of al women whose fate she shared throughout history: honored, defamed, pushed to the margins, elevated to unreality, and degraded.

Ingrid Maisch examines Mary Magdalene's life from the perspectives of the biblical witnesses through Christian Gnosticism, the early Church interpreters, the Middle Ages to the present. She shows that while the biblical Mary Magdalene still had a leading role in the Jesus movement, in the Middle Ages she gradually became a saint held up to console sin-conscious Christians. In the Reformation and the baroque era, she was seen primarily as a penitent, then as an image of melancholy and resignation. Bourgeois modernity adopted the secularized figure of the Magdalene as a tool for social criticism, especially regarding the treatment of women. In recent decades critical exegesis of the biblical texts and feminist theology revealed another image of Mary Magdalene: the first witness of the Resurrection.

Mary Magdalene is one of the great women of the Bible, yet attitudes toward her in the Church and in art, history, and society have wavered between veneration of her as a saint and curiosity about her sinful" past. In "Mary Magdalene" Ingrid Maisch stresses that reflecting on Mary Magdalene means not only looking behind the history of the influence of the woman from Magdala but also inquiring about women in general, for the image of Mary Magdalene in every era is an indicator of the image borne by women at the time.

Chapters are "Mary Magdalene in the New Testament," "The Heiress of the Empire of Light: The Gnostic Mary Magdalene," "Mary Magdalene as Interpreted by the Medieval Mystics," "Mary Magdalene as Saint: The Middle Ages," "The Penitent Magdalene: A Symbol of the BaroqueEra," "Mary Magdalene Between Religion and Aesthetics," "A Peal More Precious than al Others: Magdalene in Brentano's Jesus-Novel," "The Fallen Woman, the Noble Courtesan," "The Woman at Jesus' Feet: Mary Magdalene in Modern Spiritual Poetry," "The 'sinful Magdalene from Bethany': The Confused Image Today," and "Freed from Sins, Demons, and Subjection." Includes eight pages of full color images of Mary Magdalene from earliest to most recent times."

Through the centuries, stories of popes and of the papacy from Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives, presented as biographies or as histories of an institution have boomed with the power of this often controversial office.

Whether as liberating truth which comes forth from the Church or as narrow perspective; whether as Rock of the Church" or "stumbling-block," primacy remains a reality at the heart of many ecclesiastical problems. Until now, a complete history of the primacy has been missing. "Papal Primacy" fills the void by providing a clear understanding of its history.

In this, the first complete history of the papal primacy, Schatz traces the development of the idea of a papacy as center of teaching and jurisdiction from its earliest Roman beginnings, through centuries of development, the great papal schism and the struggles over conciliarism and Galicanism, to the triumph of papal authority at Vatican I and beyond that to Vatican II and the growing realization that there are no "once and for al answers" to the Church's questions. Papal primacy has grown with the Church, and it remains a reality embedded in the Church as a living community open to change.

Chapters focus on the development of the primacy in the first five centuries, different functions of unity in the East and the West; the papacy as the head of the Church and Christendom in the Middle Ages, and the primacy as confessional mark of identity in modern times.

An appendix includes the following texts: Irenaeus of Lyons, "Adversus haereses; The Canons of Sardica 3, 4, 5 (343)"; Gregory VII, "Dictatus papae (1075)"; The Council of Constance, "Decree Haec sancta (April 6, 1415)"; The Council of Florence, "Formula of Primacy; The Four Galican Articles, Declaration of the Church of France (March 2,1682)"; "Papal Primacy of Jurisdiction and Papal Infallibility According to Vatican I (1870)"; and "Episcopal Collegiality and Papal Infallibility According to Vatican II" (Lumen gentium "22)."

Both resistance to and renewed interest in the sacraments mark current theological thought. This work acknowledges human limitations of the sacraments but stresses that God's relationship to human beings cannot be other than sacramental." Sacramental structures and events constitute salvation history, and thus permeate all theology. What makes this sacramental view comprehensible is faith; faith is an indispensable precondition for a sacramental theology.

Therefore, the author first demonstrates the preconditions of faith on which sacramental theology rests, and what place it holds within the whole of theology. Following this, he briefly presents the concept of sacraments and the history of that concept, the teachings of Church tradition on sacraments in general, and the basic features of a sacramental theology. Next, he explains from a theological perspective the traditional sacraments of the Catholic Church, including related topics such as indulgences and sacramentals.

This well-known and respected work on the eucharistic celebration has been updated and revised. The editor Monsignor Maas-Ewerd has incorporated the insights of recent research, updated the bibliography, and re-formulated many passages in light of some important changes in thought and language since the first edition.

"The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration" helps readers gain an understanding of correct form for celebration of the eucharistic liturgy in light of the renewals of Vatican Council II. It is therefore an explanation of the Mass, as Pius Parsch, to whom the first edition was dedicated, understood it. It is an explanation both of the biblical foundations and of the historical development of the liturgy within its two-thousand-year tradition. Thus, Maas-Ewerd maintains that we must inquire into both aspects - Jesus' foundational intention and the Church's long tradition of celebrating the Lord's legacy - to obtain a clear picture of the enduringly valid form of the Mass at all times, including its present realization.

In the foreword to the first edition, Johannes Emminghaus wrote that, despite the many content and language changes since the first edition, Parsch's fundamental principle was correct, and it remains so today: the essence or nature of the liturgy can only be explained on the basis of Christ's institution (as witnessed in Scripture) and the traditional teaching of the Church. Its form, in turn, with its many changes and its high and low points, is explicable also through Scripture and history; but the manner of its celebration can only be explained through the form as we know it and especially through the concrete faith of people.

The intent of "The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration" is practical: it is meant as an aid to an appropriate and responsible celebration of the congregational Eucharist. Readers - those in ministry, teachers, catechists, and members of parish liturgical committees and study groups, as well as those interested in Church history - are invited to an active participation, one that bears fruit because it stems from faith.

Maas-Ewerd maintains that our task now is to live with the renewed liturgy, to integrate it more fully into our lives, and at the same time understand and celebrate it as a sign of salvation and as the Church's self-expression. "The Eucharist: Essence, Form, Celebration" encourages this process.

Part One is "The Fundamental Structure of the Mass Through the Ages." Chapters are: "Fundamental Structure of the Mass," and "The Continuing Identity of the Mass Through Many Changes." Part Two is "The Celebration of Mass in Its Current Form." Chapters are: "The Celebration Begins," "Liturgy of the Word," "The Celebration of the Eucharist," and "The Conclusion of the Mass." A reminiscence of Professor Johannes H. Emminghaus (1919-1989), a bibliography, appendices, and an index are also included."

In this "meticulous" commentary, "brilliantly" translated by Linda M. Maloney (Review of Biblical Literature), Hossfeld and Zenger provide for each psalm a relevant bibliography of scholarship, a fresh translation, text-critical and philological details, and commentary on historical context, theological significance, literary structure, and reception (in Septuagint, Targums, and New Testament), engaging a wide range of scholarship as they proceed. Line drawings help to illustrate the Ancient Near Eastern context.

Bieler and Schottroff bring together the best of contemporary scholarship on ritual theory and practice, Eucharistic origins, the Eucharist and eschatology, the Eucharist and world hunger, the global economy, and the dynamics of torture in a dramatic new vision of the transformative power of the Eucharist for our world. It includes reflection questions that lead readers into the issues raised in each chapter.

Histories of ancient Israel have usually focused attention on major figures in powerful positions: kings, prophets, and patriarchs. Kessler asks about the larger social patterns that shaped the everyday life of ordinary people, from the emergence of Israel in the hills of Canaan, to the Jewish populations of Greek city-states in the Hellenistic age. The introductory section includes discussion of social history as discipline and as method, event history and the "long haul," the representation of social history, and the history of research. Two other sections explore the methods of the social history of Israel and the epochs of Israel's social history, including discussions of environment as living space, Israel's emergence as a kinship-based society, exile and its consequences, and more. Includes a time line, glossary of terms, maps and illustrations.

This newest contribution to the acclaimed Hermeneia series provides in-depth analysis of Psalms 51-100. It is volume 2 of a three-volume work; volume 3 (Psalms 101-150) will come next, followed by volume 1 (Psalms 1-50), which will include the comprehensive introduction.