How the Bible Actually Works
How the Bible Actually Works

Author: Peter Enns

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0062686771

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Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom. For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us. “The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading. Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

The Jefferson Bible
The Jefferson Bible

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-03-02

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 0486112519

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Jefferson regarded Jesus as a moral guide rather than a divinity. In his unique interpretation of the Bible, he highlights Christ's ethical teachings, discarding the scriptures' supernatural elements, to reflect the deist view of religion.

Jung's Answer to Job
Jung's Answer to Job

Author: Paul Bishop

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-12-18

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1317710711

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Greeted with controversy on its publication, Answer to Job has long been neglected by many serious commentators on Jung. This book offers an intellectual and cultural context for C.G.Jung's 1952 publication. In Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary, the author argues that such neglect is due to a failure to understand Jung's objectives in this text and offers a new way of reading the work. The book places Answer to Job in the context of biblical commentary, and then examines the circumstances surrounding its compositions and immediate reception. A detailed commentary on the work discusses the major methodological presuppositions informing it and explains how key Jungian concepts operate in the text. Jung's Answer to Job: A Commentary unravels Jung's narrative by reading it in the chronological order of the biblical events it analyses and the book to which it refers, offering a comprehensive re-reading of Jung's text. An original argument put across in a scholarly and accessible style provides an essential framework for understanding the work. Whilst taking account of the tenets of analytical psychology, this commentary underlines Answer to Job's more general significance in terms of cultural history. It will be invaluable to students and scholars of analytical psychology, the history of ideas, intercultural studies, comparative literature, religion and religious studies.

The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media
The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media

Author: Tom Thatcher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-10-19

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 0567678385

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The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media is a convenient and authoritative reference tool, introducing specific terms and concepts helpful to the study of the Bible and related literature in ancient communications culture. Since the early 1980s, biblical scholars have begun to explore the potentials of interdisciplinary theories of oral tradition, oral performance, personal and collective memory, ancient literacy and scribality, visual culture and ritual. Over time these theories have been combined with considerations of critical and exegetical problems in the study of the Bible, the history of Israel, Christian origins, and rabbinics. The Dictionary of the Bible and Ancient Media responds to the rapid growth of the field by providing a source of reference that offers clear definitions, and in-depth discussions of relevant terms and concepts, and the relationships between them. The volume begins with an overview of 'ancient media studies' and a brief history of research to orient the reader to the field and the broader research context of the book, with individual entries on terms and topics commonly encountered in studies of the Bible in ancient media culture. Each entry defines the term/ concept under consideration, then offers more sustained discussion of the topic, paying particular attention to its relevance for the study of the Bible and related literature

How the Bible Works
How the Bible Works

Author: Brian Malley

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2004-05-12

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0759115648

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What do evangelicals believe when they 'believe in the Bible?' Despite hundreds of English versions that differ in their texts, evangelicals continue to believe that there is a stable text—'the Bible'—which is the authoritative word of God and an essential guide to their everyday lives. To understand this phenomenon of evangelical Biblicism, anthropologist and biblical scholar Brian Malley looks not to the words of the Bible but to the Bible-believing communities. For as Malley demonstrates, it is less the meaning of the words of the Bible itself than how 'the Bible' provides a proper ground for beliefs that matters to evangelicals. Drawing on recent cognitive and social theory and extensive fieldwork in an evangelical church, Malley's book is an invaluable guide for seminarians, social scientists of religion, or for anyone who wants to understand just how the Bible works for American evangelicals.

Bible and Canon
Bible and Canon

Author: Luc Zaman

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2008-05-31

Total Pages: 730

ISBN-13: 9047433548

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Several decades ago canonical criticism came to dominate the study of the canon and even indeed all of biblical studies by its emphasis on the biblical canon's dogmatic content. An investigation of this canonical criticism brings its weak points to light: most notably the insufficient attention that is given to the canon's historical development. This new historical study begins with the earliest stages of the process of forming the canon rather than its final stages as most studies do. It shows how the canon, in essence, was already formed in the early stages of its historical development. It is essentially, synchronically, an authoritative unification of a range of traditions within the faith community, and diachronically, the guide that draws the dynamics of these traditions beyond their discontinuities to produce a continuity.

A History of the Bible
A History of the Bible

Author: John Barton

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 0143111205

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A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture," a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be read in its historical context--from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world--and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording--which is impossible to determine--and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.

Ephesians
Ephesians

Author: Andrew T. Lincoln

Publisher: Paternoster

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 600

ISBN-13:

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The Book of Job, among the greatest masterpieces of world literature, deserves a commentary alert both to the windings of its arguments and to the massive theological problem it raises: the conflict of faith and experience, that is, does it have to do primarily with the why of suffering, or is the chief issue rather the problem of the moral order of the world, of the principles on which it is governed? While many feel that Job is too long, full of windy and tedious words, Professor David J .A. Clines shows in detail how every element is essential and how only the interweaving of literary and theological perspectives can reveal the richness of the writing. To this end, he supplies a uniquely comprehensive General Bibliography (as well as pericope bibliographies), unrestricted by scholarly apartheid, which includes works of sermons and popular devotions valuable for their theological and spiritual insights. A verse-by-verse commentary, this volume never loses sight of the forest for the trees and, especially in the Explanation sections, constantly surveys the progress of the Book of Job. A particular focus is the unraveling of the arguments and the identification of the distinctive viewpoints of the book's speakers. The textual Notes, which center on explaining why the English versions of Job differ so amazingly from one another, support the author's carefully worded Translation. In his Introduction, Professor Clines says: "Reading and close-reading the Book of Job, the most theologically and intellectually intense book of the Old Testament, is a perennially uplifting and not infrequently euphoric experience. The craftsmanship in the finest details, the rain of metaphors, the never-failing imagination of the poet are surpassed only by the variety and delicacy of the theological ideas and the cunning of this most open of texts confronting its readers with two new questions along with any answer."