The Lost World of Scripture

Author: John H. Walton
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830864989
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
Walton and Sandy summarize what we know of orality and oral tradition as well as the composition and transmission of texts in the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, and how this shapes our understanding of the Old and New Testaments. The authors then translate these insights into a helpful model for understanding the reliability of Scripture.

The Lost World of Scripture

Author: John H. Walton
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083084032X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Ancient Word, Changing Worlds

Author: Stephen J. Nichols
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 143352113X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
Belief in the Bible as God's authoritative revelation to humanity forms the bedrock of the Christian faith, laying the groundwork for nearly everything in the practice of theology. For the last 150 years or so, this doctrine has been put under the microscope of the modern age, with focused attention-and criticism-falling on three main subject areas: the authority of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, and the interpretation of Scripture. Ancient Word, Changing Worlds tells the story of these developments in the doctrine of Scripture in the modern age, combining in one volume both narrative chapters and chapters devoted to primary source materials. This new genre of historical theology will appeal to general readers, who will be drawn in by the book's prose style, and students, who will benefit from features like timelines, charts, explanations of key terms, and introductions and explanatory notes for the primary source documents.

The God of Old

Author: James L. Kugel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
One of Harvard's most popular teachers has assembled evidence within the Bible that the earliest Israelites did not see God the way we do--as a distant, omnipotent being. Instead, their God was nearby and human in appearance; He inhabited a spiritual world that existed in parallel with the physical world, just out of sight.

The Bible among the Myths

Author: John N. Oswalt
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
ISBN: 0310322421
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Sixty years ago, most biblical scholars maintained that Israel’s religion was unique—that it stood in marked contrast to the faiths of its ancient Near Eastern neighbors. Nowadays, it is widely argued that Israel’s religion mirrors that of other West Semitic societies. What accounts for this radical change, and what are its implications for our understanding of the Old Testament? Dr. John N. Oswalt says the root of this new attitude lies in Western society’s hostility to the idea of revelation, which presupposes a reality that transcends the world of the senses, asserting the existence of a realm humans cannot control. While not advocating a “the Bible says it, and I believe it, and that settles it” point of view, Oswalt asserts convincingly that while other ancient literatures all see reality in essentially the same terms, the Bible differs radically on all the main points. The Bible Among the Myths supplies a necessary corrective to those who reject the Old Testament’s testimony about a transcendent God who breaks into time and space and reveals himself in and through human activity.

The Lost Art of Scripture

Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Knopf Canada
ISBN: 0345812360
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 664

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK In this timely and important book, one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs examines the lost art of Scripture as a medium to lift humanity and change our perception of reality while evading logical explanation. Today the Quran is used by some to justify war and acts of terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The significance of Scripture--the holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions--may not be immediately obvious in our secular world but its misunderstanding is perhaps the root cause of most of today's controversies over religion. In this timely and important book, one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs examines the meaning of Scripture. Today holy texts are not only used selectively to underwrite sometimes arbitrary and subjective views: they are seen to prescribe ethical norms and codes of behaviour that are divinely ordained--they are believed to contain eternal truths. But as Karen Armstrong shows in this fascinating trawl through millennia of religious history, this peculiar reading of Scripture is a relatively recent, modern phenomenon--and in many ways, a reaction to a hostile secular world. For most of their history, the world's religious traditions have regarded these texts as tools for the individual to connect with the divine, to transcend their physical existence, and to experience a higher level of consciousness that helped them to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways. Scripture was not a "truth" that had to be "believed." Armstrong argues that only if the world's religious faiths rediscover such an open and spiritual engagement with their holy texts can they curtail the arrogance, intolerance and violence that flows from a narrow reading of Scripture as truth.

A Smaller God

Author: Petri Merenlahti
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1630877409
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
The Bible is a perplexing book. It blends primitive beliefs with timeless truths, swings between compassionate love and ruthless violence, and forms a sympathetic heavenly father from the remains of a savage tribal god. What are we to make of it all? Petri Merenlahti takes an entertaining journey through biblical literature and returns with an original theology of imperfection. Looking at the Bible through the lenses of history, culture, literature, and psychology, he calls his readers to let go of an idealized image of the Christian Scriptures and embrace their limited human nature instead. This is vital, he argues, because false idealization and psychological splitting are major sources of religious fanaticism and violence. Merenlahti insists that we make a difference between the smaller God of human imagination and the transcendent God that should remain beyond it. We will then be rewarded with wisdom instead of fanaticism, mercy instead of moralism, and peace instead of hatred and guilt.

The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture

Author: George Duncan Barry
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9781331566755
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
Excerpt from The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture: A Study in the Literature of the First Five Centuries Canons came to be accepted by the Church as part of the one Revelation of God: and the fact that for fifteen centuries no attempt was made to formulate a definition of the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, testifies to the universal belief of the Church that the Scriptures were the handiwork of the Holy Ghost. For this freedom from definition we may indeed be thankful, since, it is far more important. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context

Author: John H. Walton
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 9780310365914
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
This book surveys within the various literary genres (cosmologies, personal archives and epics, hymns, and prayers) parallels between the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern literature.

Wisdom for Faithful Reading

Author: John H. Walton
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 1514004887
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
The church has often lost its way in reading the Old Testament for lack of sound principles of interpretation. John Walton offers a consistent approach to give us confidence as faithful interpreters, laying out his tried-and-true practices developed over four decades in the classroom. You may never read the Old Testament the same way again.