From Babel to Babylon explores the literary and historical character of biblical texts in the Torah, Prophecy, and Writings. It considers questions of composition and the writing of history. The book situates biblical texts in their immediate and distant context. It reflects upon their intertextuality and identifies their literary sources. Key events and figures are discussed in light of the politics of the age. Gender issues are explored, with attention to the different social roles of men and women and the character of the interaction. Theology is another important topic, and the character of God keeps changing to reflect the development of historical and prophetic traditions. The books ends with biblical wisdom, with the specific instruction to rely on the experience of the sage, whose superior understanding is greater than our own. This exhortation to listen to the text directs us back to the introduction, where readers are asked to pay attention to the principles the text sets up for its own interpretation.

The Deuteronomistic Historian patterned more than four dozen of his narratives after those in Genesis-Numbers. The stories that make up Genesis-Numbers were indelibly impressed on the Deuteronomistic Historian's mind, to such an extent that in Deuteronomy-Kings he tells the stories of the nation through the lens of Genesis-Numbers. John Harvey discusses the eight criteria which may be used as evidence that the given stories in Deuteronomy-Kings were based on those in Genesis-Numbers. Unified accounts in the Deuteronomistic History, for instance, often share striking parallels with two or more redactional layers of their corresponding accounts in Genesis-Numbers, showing that the given accounts in the Deuteronomistic History were written after the corresponding accounts in Genesis-Numbers had been written. Furthermore, the Deuteronomistic Historian calls the reader's attention to accounts in Genesis-Numbers by explicitly citing and referring to them, by using personal names, and by drawing thematic and verbal parallels. Retelling the Torah, the first book to focus on these parallel narratives, contains far-reaching implications for Hebrew Bible scholarship.

Description: Born Again and Beyond identifies and interacts with various theological blind spots in Evangelicalism--such as its naive rationality, its faulty understanding of the nature of both Scripture and the gospel, and its emphasis on salvation as an event rather than a process. At the same time, Born Again and Beyond recognizes the real goodness that evangelicalism has brought to the world. Whether it be caring for the outcast and underprivileged, or insisting that one can have a personal relationship with God in Christ, Evangelicalism has certainly played a key role in the advancement of the Kingdom of God in modern times. Perhaps the most destructive element of Evangelicalism has been the equating of it with the gospel itself. Like other expressions of authentic Christian faith, Evangelicalism must not regard itself as the principal locus of the gospel. Having been an Evangelical for decades, John E. Harvey comes to this discussion not as a misinformed outsider, but as one who has sympathy with the Evangelical cause.