Using new approaches, contemporary scholars have constructed a fresh synthesis of this material with the biblical traditions. The Oxford History of the Biblical World incorporates the best of this scholarship, and in chronologically ordered chapters presents a readable and integrated study of the history, art, architecture, languages, literatures, and religion of biblical Israel and early Judaism and Christianity in their larger cultural contexts. The authors also examine such issues as the roles of women, the tensions between urban and rural settings, royal and kinship social structures, and official and popular religions of the region. Readers will find that 200 photographs, line drawings, and maps as well as an insert containing 25 color images vividly illustrate the history discussed.Understanding the biblical world is a vital part of understanding the Bible. Broad, authoritative, and visually engaging, The Oxford History of the Biblical World will illuminate for any reader the ancient world from which the Bible emerged.

    

    . .* there were absolutely no evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus?* for thousands of years Pagans had also followed a Son of God?* this Pagan savior was also born of a virgin on the twenty-fifth of December before three shepherds, turned water into wine at a wedding, died and was resurrected, and offered his body and blood as a Holy Communion?* these Pagan myths had been rewritten as the gospel of Jesus Christ?* the earliest Gnostic Christians knew that the Jesus story was a myth?* Christianity turned out to be a continuation of Paganism by another name?

    Translation of J'entre dans la vie, originally issued under title: Novissima verba.

    This essay is an attempt to contribute effective strategies to engage our own time and culture once more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and – for a weary world – to awaken the Catholic imaginative vision.

    Bringing together some of the most beloved Christian authors and songwriters of today, Faithful guides readers through the pages of Scripture to increase understanding of how God has always valued the integral role of females and how that shapes the lives of women today.   The Faithful project is a collaboration between three major ministry partners: David C Cook, Integrity Music, and Compassion International. The accompanying album and a 2021 tour of live events celebrates the contributions of women while recognizing their empowerment through the faithfulness of God.   This beautiful, creative book will invite readers to return again and again for reflection and inspiration through guided scripture reading and writing prompts.

    It is an invitation to the reader to put aside their traditional understanding of the Gospel of John and to replace it with another one more faithful to the original text perspective. The Jesus that will emerge will provoke to rethink most of what you knew about this gospel. The book is a well-rounded verse-by-verse illustrated rethinking of the fourth gospel. Here is the catch: instead of reading it, as if it was written for 21 century Gentile Christians, the book interprets it as if it was written for the first-century peoples of ancient Israel. The book proves what Krister Stendahl stated long time ago: “Our vision is often more abstracted by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge.” Other than challenging the long-held interpretations of well-known stories, the author with the skill of an experienced tour guide, takes us to a seat within those who most probably heard this gospel read in the late first century. Such exploration of variety of important contexts allows us to recover for our generation the true riches of this marvelous Judean gospel. “A genuine apologetic is one that is true to the texts and the history, akin to the speeches of a defense attorney with integrity. Using the best of contemporary scholarship in first-century Judaic history and contributing much of his own, Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg has demonstrated that the Gospel of John is not an anti-Jewish, but a thoroughly Jewish book.” Daniel Boyarin, Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, University of California, Berkeley “Dr. Lizorkin-Eyzenberg places the text of John’s Gospel in its authentic context by examining the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, rabbinic literature, and suggesting innovative explanations for the nomenclature, ‘the Jews.’ His fresh analysis is sure to stir meaningful debate. His creative approach will make an enduring contribution to the discipline of New Testament studies.” Brad Young, Professor of Biblical Literature in Judeao-Christian Studies, Oral Roberts University “For some time, research on the Gospels has suffered from stagnation, and there is a feeling that there is not much new that one can say. In light of this, Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg’s new commentary on the Gospel of John, with its original outlook on the identity of the original audience and the issues at stake, is extremely refreshing.” Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Head of the Talmud and Late Antiquity Department, Tel-Aviv University.

    Now, the major books making up the body of Enochian literature are presented to the public in a single volume. Joseph Lumpkin is the author of the best-selling work, "The Lost Book of Enoch." His work on both 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch have met with wide acceptance and plaudits. Now Lumpkin has completed his work on The Third Book of Enoch. 3 Enoch has not been available to the general public for over eighty years. His previous releases of 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch are placed along side The Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch,) which has been translated using Hebrew source materials and contains "in-text" commentary. This expansive volume contains copious notes and commentaries in all three books, designed to guide the reader through the difficulties of language, theology, and mystical references. It is a necessary resource for those curious about Angels, Demons, Watchers, Nephilim, Melchizedek, the angel Metatron, or the Merkabah (chariot of God). This volume is an indispensable resource for those engaged in the study of religion, religious history, angelology, demonology, mysticism or the Kabbalah.

    Yet over the course of the thousand-year Biblical Era, encounters with God changed dramatically. As James L. Kugel argues, this transition allows us to glimpse a massive shift in human experience—the emergence of the modern, Western sense of self. In this landmark work, Kugel fuses revelatory close readings of ancient texts with modern scholarship from a range of fields, including neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and archaeology, to explain the origins of belief, worship, and the sense of self, and the changing nature of God through history. In the tradition of books like The Swerve and The Better Angels of Our Nature,The Great Shift tells the story of a revolution in human consciousness and the enchantment of everyday life. This book will make believers and seekers think differently not just about the Bible, but about the entire history of the human imagination.

    Yet it is also one of the most puzzling, with an intriguing and sometimes violent history, from the sixth century BCE to the present day. Destroyed by Vesuvius in 79 CE, the ruins of Pompeii offer the best evidence we have of life in the Roman Empire. But the eruptions are only part of the story. In The Fires of Vesuvius, acclaimed historian Mary Beard makes sense of the remains. She explores what kind of town it was--more like Calcutta or the Costa del Sol?--and what it can tell us about ordinary life there. From sex to politics, food to religion, slavery to literacy, Beard offers us the big picture even as she takes us close enough to the past to smell the bad breath and see the intestinal tapeworms of the inhabitants of the lost city. She resurrects the Temple of Isis as a testament to ancient multiculturalism. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. Recently, Pompeii has been a focus of pleasure and loss: from Pink Floyd's memorable rock concert to Primo Levi's elegy on the victims. But Pompeii still does not give up its secrets quite as easily as it may seem. This book shows us how much more and less there is to Pompeii than a city frozen in time as it went about its business on 24 August 79.

    Apart from forbidding certain abusive practices, he never gives any precise instructions for living. It would have violated his two main social principles: human freedom and dignity, and the need for people to love one another.  Paul was a Hellenistic Jew, originally named Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, who made a living from tent making or leatherworking. He called himself the “Apostle to the Gentiles” and was the most important of the early Christian evangelists.  Paul is not easy to understand. The Greeks and Romans themselves probably misunderstood him or skimmed the surface of his arguments when he used terms such as “law” (referring to the complex system of Jewish religious law in which he himself was trained). But they did share a language—Greek—and a cosmopolitan urban culture, that of the Roman Empire. Paul considered evangelizing the Greeks and Romans to be his special mission. “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The idea of love as the only rule was current among Jewish thinkers of his time, but the idea of freedom being available to anyone was revolutionary.  Paul, regarded by Christians as the greatest interpreter of Jesus’ mission, was the first person to explain how Christ’s life and death fit into the larger scheme of salvation, from the creation of Adam to the end of time. Preaching spiritual equality and God’s infinite love, he crusaded for the Jewish Messiah to be accepted as the friend and deliverer of all humankind. In Paul Among the People, Sarah Ruden explores the meanings of his words and shows how they might have affected readers in his own time and culture. She describes as well how his writings represented the new church as an alternative to old ways of thinking, feeling, and living. Ruden translates passages from ancient Greek and Roman literature, from Aristophanes to Seneca, setting them beside famous and controversial passages of Paul and their key modern interpretations. She writes about Augustine; about George Bernard Shaw’s misguided notion of Paul as “the eternal enemy of Women”; and about the misuse of Paul in the English Puritan Richard Baxter’s strictures against “flesh-pleasing.” Ruden makes clear that Paul’s ethics, in contrast to later distortions, were humane, open, and responsible.  Paul Among the People is a remarkable work of scholarship, synthesis, and understanding; a revelation of the founder of Christianity.

    Sheed's concern with the Gospels is to come to know Christ as he actually lived among us, interacted with all the various people he encountered from his infancy to his passion and death--the God-man who was like us in all things except sin. Sheed has tried especially to see Our Lord in his effect upon others--seeing how they saw him, trying to see why they saw him so. There is much about Mary and Joseph in their task of bringing up a baby who was literally adorable; about John the Baptist; about Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalen; about Nicodemus; about people we meet only for a moment, like the man born blind and the owners of the drowned swine; and why the Pharisees, not only the worst of them but some of the best, would not accept Christ. Faith, doctrine, prayer, worship--all the content and consequences of Christian belief--rest on the person of Christ Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. In this classic study, Frank J. Sheed employs wide learning, theological sophistication, spiritual insight, and a lucid style to bring the reader to a personal encounter with the living Lord. To Know Christ Jesus has been justly called one of the most satisfying studies of the Gospel ever made. Frank J. Sheed had a distinguished career as a publisher, lecturer, street-corner evangelist, and popular writer. He and his wife Maisie Ward were the founders of the publishing house Sheed & Ward. His many books include Christ in Eclipse, What Difference Does Jesus Make?, Theology and Sanity, and A Map of Life.

    An inspiring exploration of the beliefs and commitment of a unique religious group, it was an instant sell-out when it first appeared in 2011. Geoffrey Durham has now revised and updated the book for its second edition, incorporating new developments and fresh thinking. With its well-judged balance of personal experience, spiritual guidance and practical advice, this book explains how Quaker meetings can change people, and then goes on to show the nature of the change. Quakers insist on working for peace, equality, simplicity and truth in their everyday lives and find themselves nourished and enriched by the experience. Being a Quaker: A Guide for Newcomers includes extracts from the testimony of Quakers of all backgrounds and beliefs, talking about the ways in which they put their religion into practice. It is a warm and incisive first book for all readers interested in Quakers, and an exhilarating read for anyone absorbed by the life of the Spirit.‘This book contains everything you always wanted to know about Quakerism but were afraid to ask. It is an ideal gift to give to newcomers who want to understand what ‘the Quaker way’ is all about.’ The Friend About the Author Geoffrey Durham became a Quaker in 1999. He was a contributor to the successful Twelve Quakers and … series of books, has compiled an anthology, The Spirit of the Quakers, and is a regular speaker at Quaker events. He has worked professionally in the performing arts for over forty years.

    Donald E. Knuth so loved the Bible that he dedicated five years of his life to creating this masterpiece. With it, you will learn about each 3:16 verse of the Bible, how it came to be written, and how it contributes to the wholeness of the Bible.

    In Complement, you'll learn how you can too, as they walk you through the keys to building a satisfying and lasting marriage. With funny, real-life stories and key insights from Scripture, the Iveys can help you unite with your spouse, cheer each other on, respond the right way when you fail each other, and serve one another well—even in conflict or tough times! If you want a strong marriage (or simply to be a better better-half!), the Iveys will show you the way in Complement.