Sixty superlative sermons on familiar Old Testament texts. Many Christian preachers today largely neglect the Old Testament in their sermons, focusing instead on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ teachings and activities. As Fleming Rutledge points out, however, when the New Testament is disconnected from the context of the Old Testament, it is like a house with no foundation, a plant with no roots, or a pump with no well. In this powerful collection of sixty sermons on the Old Testament, Rutledge expounds on a number of familiar Old Testament passages featuring Abraham, Samuel, David, Elijah, Job, Jonah, and many other larger-than-life figures. Applying these texts to contemporary life and Christian theology, she highlights the ways in which their multivocal messages can be heard in all their diversity while still proclaiming univocally, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.
It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.
Imagine that you could really understand the Bible...that you could read, analyze, and discuss the book of Genesis not as a compositional mystery, a cultural relic, or a linguistic puzzle palace, or even as religious doctrine, but as a philosophical classic, precisely in the same way that a truth-seeking reader would study Plato or Nietzsche. Imagine that you could be led in your study by one of America's preeminent intellectuals and that he would help you to an understanding of the book that is deeper than you'd ever dreamed possible, that he would reveal line by line, verse by verse the incredible riches of this illuminating text -- one of the very few that actually deserve to be called seminal. Imagine that you could get, from Genesis, the beginning of wisdom. The Beginning of Wisdom is a hugely learned book that, like Genesis itself, falls naturally into two sections. The first shows how the universal history described in the first eleven chapters of Genesis, from creation to the tower of Babel, conveys, in the words of Leon Kass, "a coherent anthropology" -- a general teaching about human nature -- that "rivals anything produced by the great philosophers." Serving also as a mirror for the reader's self-discovery, these stories offer profound insights into the problematic character of human reason, speech, freedom, sexual desire, the love of the beautiful, pride, shame, anger, guilt, and death. Something as seemingly innocuous as the monotonous recounting of the ten generations from Adam to Noah yields a powerful lesson in the way in which humanity encounters its own mortality. In the story of the tower of Babel are deep understandings of the ambiguous power of speech, reason, and the arts; the hazards of unity and aloneness; the meaning of the city and its quest for self-sufficiency; and man's desire for fame, immortality, and apotheosis -- and the disasters these necessarily cause. Against this background of human failure, Part Two of The Beginning of Wisdom explores the struggles to launch a new human way, informed by the special Abrahamic covenant with the divine, that might address the problems and avoid the disasters of humankind's natural propensities. Close, eloquent, and brilliant readings of the lives and educations of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's sons reveal eternal wisdom about marriage, parenting, brotherhood, education, justice, political and moral leadership, and of course the ultimate question: How to live a good life? Connecting the two "parts" is the book's overarching philosophical and pedagogical structure: how understanding the dangers and accepting the limits of human powers can open the door to a superior way of life, not only for a solitary man of virtue but for an entire community -- a life devoted to righteousness and holiness. This extraordinary book finally shows Genesis as a coherent whole, beginning with the creation of the natural world and ending with the creation of a nation that hearkens to the awe-inspiring summons to godliness. A unique and ambitious commentary, a remarkably readable literary exegesis and philosophical companion, The Beginning of Wisdom is one of the most important books in decades on perhaps the most important -- and surely the most frequently read -- book of all time.
We are called to live a life obedient to God. But what does this look like? And how can we live in a way that's pleasing to Him? The answer is found in faith. Long considered the father of faith, Abraham sets the standard for what it means to be obedient. The book of Genesis holds the remarkable story of Abraham, a man who would give birth to a nation, and make the way for our Savior. Part of Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe's best-selling "BE" commentary series, Be Obedient has now been updated with study questions and a new introduction by Ken Baugh. A respected pastor and Bible teacher, Dr. Wiersbe shares insights and wisdom on pursuing an obedient life. You'll learn how to believe beyond your feelings, trust in spite of your circumstances, and place your complete confidence in Him.
Using the narrative method of biblical theology, From Age to Age traces the eschatological themes of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, emphasizing how each book of the Bible develops these themes that culminate in the coming of Christ and showing how individual texts fit into the over-arching picture.
Sharon Moughtin-Mumby considers the often unrecognised impact of different approaches to metaphor on readings of the prophtic sexual and marital metaphorical language. She outlines a practical and consciously simplified approach to metaphor, placing strong emphasis on the influence of literary context on metaphorical meaning. Drawing on this approach, she read Hosea 4-14, Jeremiah 2:1-4:4, Isaiah, Ezekiel 16 and 23, and Hosea 1-3 with fresh eyes. Her lucid new readings reveal the way in which scholarship has repeatedly stifled the prophetic metaphorical language by reading it within the 'default contexts' of 'the marriage metaphor' and 'cultic prostitution', which for so many years have been simply assumed. Readers are encouraged instead to read these diverse metaphors and similes within their distinctive literary contexts in which they have the potential to rise vividly to life, provoking the question: how are we to respond to these disquieting, powerful texts in the midst of the Hebrew Bible?
This first verse-by-verse commentary on the Greek text of the Testament of Abraham places the work within the history of both Jewish and Christian literature. It emphasizes the literary artistry and comedic nature of the Testament, brings to the task of interpretation a mass of comparative material, and establishes that, although the Testament goes back to a Jewish tale of the first or second century CE, the Christian elements are much more extensive than has previously been realized. The commentary further highlights the dependence of the Testament upon both Greco-Roman mythology and the Jewish Bible. This should be the standard commentary for years to come.
