Bailey begins by surveying the development of allegorical, historical-eschatological, aesthetic, and existential methods of interpretation. Though figures like Julicher, Jeremias, Dodd, Jones, and Via have made important advances, Bailey sees the need to go beyond them by combining an examination of the poetic structures of the parables with a better understanding of the Oriental culture that informs the text. Bailey's work within Middle Eastern peasant culture over the last twenty years has helped him in his attempt to determine the cultural assumptions that the teller of the parables must have made about his audience. The same values which underlay the impact of the parables in Christ's time, Bailey suggests, can be discovered today in isolated peasant communities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Because time has made almost no impact in these cultural pockets, it is possible to discern, for example, what it meant 2,000 years ago for a friend to come calling at midnight, or for a son to ask for his inheritance prior to his father's death. In addition to illuminating the cultural framework of the parables, Bailey offers an analysis of their literary structure, treating the parabolic section as a whole as well as its individual components. Through its combination of literary and cultural analyses, Bailey's study makes a number of profound advances in parabolic interpretation.

    This volume makes available some of the most important discovered source material for the historian of the ancient Near East.

    Psalm 19: 1-4: The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Their line is gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun. Having declared that the heavens reveal God's glory the Psalmist informs us that the heavens declare a message in a language that is understood by all peoples. These starry worlds as such do show forth His handiwork but explain little about the glory of God. How then can the stars be made to speak in a language everyone can understand? The answer is quite evident. Pictures speak in all dialects. They speak a universal language to all peoples everywhere. Somewhere in the earliest ages of human existence the visible stars were named. Those names and groupings were at the same time included in certain figures natural or imaginary but intensely symbolic & significant. Today we know them as Constellations. It is well known that the ancient races drew charts of these Zodiacal Signs that ancient astrology was actually the father of astronomy. Astronomers sometimes denounce the Zodiac as unnatural & confusing yet they have never been able to brush it aside or substitute anything better or more convenient in its place. The Signs of the Zodiac are a part of the common universal language of astronomical science. Were such wonderful creations of almighty power and wisdom without purpose or meaning? Was there some original divine science connected with the star designs. The purpose of this study is to present the findings of past eminent scholars together with those of modern scientific investigators in order to show the stars do reveal words written in heavens - words that declare the glory of God.

    

    A number of Bible stories that are followed by tales involving the Muffin family which illustrate the contemporary application of Biblical principles.