What difference would it make for Old Testament theology if we turned our attention from the more dramatic, forceful "mighty acts of God" to the more subdued, but more realistic themes of later writings in the Hebrew Bible? The result, Mark McEntire argues, would be a more mature theology that would enable us to respond more realistically and creatively to the unprecedented challenges of the present age.

The Hebrew Bible displays a complicated attitude toward cities. Much of the story tells of a rural, agrarian society, yet those stories were written by people living in urban environments. Moreover, cities frequently appear in a negative light; the Hebrew slaves in the book of Exodus were forced to build cities, and the book of Samuels critique of monarchy assumes an urban setting that supports that monarchy. At the same, time Ezra-Nehemiah makes restoration of Jerusalem and its wall a holy priority, and Genesis 111 (and subsequent references to the primeval narrative) show a much more layered view of the dangers and opportunities of the urban context. As the worlds population continues to move into cities and we debate the impact on human life and the natural environment, it becomes increasingly important to know how the biblical writers understood the ways in which urban life enhances and disrupts human thriving. In this book, McEntire offers a comprehensive and hopeful understanding of the Bible and the city.

While there are many textbooks about the prophetic literature, most have taken either a historical or literary approach to studying the prophets. A Chorus of Prophetic Voices, by contrast, draws on both historical and literary approaches by paying careful attention to the prophets as narrative characters. It considers each unique prophetic voice in the canon, in its fully developed literary form, while also listening to what these voices say together about a particular experience in Israel's story. It presents these four scrollsaEURO"Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the TwelveaEURO"as works produced in the aftermath of destruction, works that employ prophetic characters, and as the words uttered during the crises. The prophetic literature became for Israel, living in a context of dispersion and imperial domination, a portable and adaptable resource at once both challenging and comforting. This book provides the fullest picture available for introducing students to the prophetic literature by valuing the role of the original prophetic characters, the finished state of the books that bear their names, the separate historical crises in the life of Israel they address, and the aEUROoechorus of prophetic voicesaEURO one hears when reading them as part of a coherent literary corpus.

The narrative books of the Bible are dominated by the themes of violence and death. In his newly released work, author and biblical scholar Mark McEntire examines the messy stories of life and death found in the Bible. From gentle death at a good, old age to starvation to brutal murder, death appears in its many forms in these biblical worlds. Through the stories, we are invited to move back and forth between our own stories and those of the Bible, as McEntire writes, ?so that we might live and die faithfully in the dangerous world they form together.? As we live and die in our own dangerous world, the stories of life and death we encounter in the Bible offer us resources for understanding the most difficult aspect of our existence.

One of the factors that sometimes provides art with a richer sense of texture is its ability to draw an allusion to the classic expressions of human culture, thought, and experience. The Bible is no exception and has often been received through its incorporation into works of art- the plays of Shakespeare, the paintings of Rembrandt, the sculptures of Michelangelo, the stories of Flannery O'Connor, the films of Martin Scorsese. Raising Cain, Fleeing Egypt, and Fighting Philistines considers the overwhelming influence that Old Testament imagery has had on some of the most popular musical artists of our time- from Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen to OutKast. Ideal for use in personal reflection or small group study, this book contains questions for consideration and discussion after each chapter. Also included are handy charts linking the considered songs to their biblical references, creating an ease-of-use for teaching and further study.

In Portraits of a Mature God, Mark McEntire traced the narrative development of the divine character in the Old Testament, placing the God portrayed at the end of that long story at the center of theological discussion. He showed that Israel's understanding of God had developed into a complex, multipurpose being who could work within a new reality, a world that included a semiautonomous province of Yehud and a burgeoning Mesopotamian-Mediterranean world in which the Jewish people lived and moved in a growing diversity of ways. Now, McEntire continues that story beyond the narrative end of the Hebrew Bible as Israel and Israel's God moved into the Hellenistic world. The "narrative" McEntire perceives in the apocryphal literature describes a God protecting and guiding the scattered and persecuted, a God responding to suffering in revolt, and a God disclosing mysteries, yet also hidden in the symbolism of dreams and visions. McEntire here provides a coherent and compelling account of theological perspectives in the apocryphal writings and beyond.