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The Participant's Guide guides daily study and preparation for discussion in the weekly group meeting. The expectation for daily study will be no more than thirty minutes.

Invitation To The New Testament
8 sessions, 60-90 minutes
Experience required: In Depth

Explore the writings of the New Testament using the story of Jesus as the starting point. This survey of the testament looks at how the early church took ownership of and was shaped by the story of Jesus and how the church learned how to develop as disciples and create communities of faith.

Participants find a deeper conversation with the writers of the NT and a renewal of our commitment to be shaped---personally and communally---by the story of Jesus.

In the weekly video segments, listen as scholars fascinate you with facts and information that opens new understanding and enlightenment for your group. In the second video, sit in on a table conversation between guest scholars and debate key issues in the text.Sessions:
1. Jesus Calls Us Into God's Redemption Story
2. Jesus Calls Us to a Transformed Life
3. Jesus Calls Us to Minister to a Hostile World
4. Jesus Calls Us to Complex Communities of Faith
5. Jesus Calls Us to Serve One Another
6. Jesus Calls Us to a New Relationship With Tradition
7. Jesus Calls Us to Live in Light of His Coming Again
8. Jesus Calls Us to Experience the Gifts of His Dying and Rising

Hellenistic Greek society offered many advantages to the Jew who was willing to relax Torah for the sake of easier relations with the dominant culture. 4 Maccabees was written to reassure Jewish readers that Torah was in fact the sole path to the perfection of the virtues honoured in Greek culture, as it freed the diligent devotee from slavery to the desire, emotion and the domination of pain and pleasure. In brief compass, deSilva provides a detailed look at the rhetorical and philosophical strategy of the author of 4 Maccabees, who redirects the hearers' desire for honour and advancement toward those commitments that will preserve his Jewish subculture from assimilation. This often neglected text becomes an engaging window into Hellenistic Judaism and into some of the concerns that were formative influences on the early church.>

In the blank pages between Malachi and Matthew, the course of an entire nation was changed . . . His brother, the high priest Honiah, enjoyed the authority of the high priesthood, and all important decisions needed his approval. But it was Jason who was shaping the future of Jerusalem and with it, all Judea. He breathed in again, imagining that he could feel the wave of destiny impelling him forward toward his vision as he exhaled . . . The Greeks have taken over the world, but Jerusalem is still the same backwater city Jason has always known. He wants to help his hometown rise to a new age of prosperity and influence. If that means stretching the terms of the city's divine covenant, so be it. But how far is he willing to go to achieve Greek greatness for this Jewish city? It will take the willingness of a handful of Jews to die rather than violate the covenant in order to turn the tide back to God. Written by an internationally recognized expert in the period between the Testaments, Day of Atonement invites readers into Judea during the tumultuous years leading up to the Maccabean Revolt. It was this pivotal decade that reminded Jews of the centrality of the covenant to their national security and taught them that the covenant was worth dying for. The story is so foundational, it is still told every year at Hanukkah. The lessons learned during this turbulent time also shed light on just what was at stake in the ministry of Jesus, whose radical message seemed to threaten the covenant once again. Day of Atonement joins the perennially successful novels Pontius Pilate and The Flames of Rome by renowned historian Paul Maier on Kregel's premier list of captivating and historically accurate biblical novels.