Although the Ten Commandments has been the center of much recent controversy in American politics, scripture contains many laws about which Christians are perplexed. If the Bible contains laws, shouldn't those laws be followed? What does the law that prohibits reaping a harvest to the very edges of your field mean in modern times? Or, what about God's prohibition, in Leviticus, not to round off the hair on your temples or to mar the edges of your beard? The Decalogue and the Holiness Code in Leviticus contain guidelines to ethical behavior that originally helped to shape a covenant community and still have meaning for us today.

In the newest addition to the Conversations with Scripture series, Kevin Wilson offers fresh insights into the meaning of the Law for today. In chapters that explore the Law in Exodus and Leviticus, Wilson examines the historical and cultural contexts of these legal codes. He discusses rituals such as sacrifice and rituals related to purification from defilement. Wilson demonstrates the ways in which the temple priests used many of these laws as their own code of purity and their own method of enforcing purity in the covenant community.

As with other books in the series, Wilson's book features definitions and sidebars in each chapter on particular topics, as well as study questions.

Current North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in Afghanistan continue a relatively recent trend in Alliance out of area involvement. Starting with the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s and continuing today, NATO now deploys more often and farther beyond its borders than ever in its history. Beside the stress of committing military forces to areas well beyond the strict borders of member nations, NATO must deal with perceptual gaps: both internal and external to the Alliance: concerning its expeditionary role. This paper specifically examines NATO's participation in Afghanistan as part of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in relation to the non-NATO United States (US) Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) coalition operations.