In Slaves, Women & Homosexuals William J. Webb tackles some of the most complex and controversial issues that have challenged the Christian church--and still do.He leads you through the maze of interpretation that has historically surrounded understanding of slaves, women and homosexuals, and he evaluates various approaches to these and other biblical-ethical teachings. Throughout, Webb attempts to "work out the hermeneutics involved in distinguishing that which is merely ...

Word Guild Award Shortlist — Biblical StudiesWord Guild Best Book Cover AwardAssociation of University Presses Design Show — Book, Jacket, and CoversChristians cannot ignore the intersection of religionand violence, whether contemporary or ancient. In our own Scriptures, war texts that appear to approve of genocidal killings and war rape—forcibly taking female captives for wives—raise hard questions about biblical ethics and the chara...

William Webb confronts those often avoided biblical passages that call for the corporal punishment of children, slaves and wrongdoers. How should we understand and apply them today? Are we obligated to replicate those injunctions today? Or does the proper interpretation of them point in a different direction? Webb notes that most of the Christian church is at best inconsistent in its application of these texts. But is there a legitimate basis for these lapses? Building on the findings of h...

What does the Bible really tell us about the heavenly host?Everyone knows that angels have wings, usually carry harps, and that each of us has our own personal guardian angel, right? We all have some preconceptions about angels from movies, television shows, and other media, but you might be surprised to know that a lot of those notions aren't based on anything from the Bible.In Angels, Dr. Michael Heiser ...

Many find it difficult to take words that were written thousands of years ago and apply them to twenty-first-century life in the Western world. How do we read God's unchanging Word in a world that is increasingly defined by change?How to Read the Bible in Changing Times shows everyday Christians how to interpret and apply the Scriptures regardless of time and culture. Rather than seeing the Bible as a magic answer book, a list of commands to obey, or a series of promises t...

Proven three-tiered approach and a wealth of full-color images help readers connect the Old Testament with today's world. Old Testament Today is unique among Old Testament surveys. It not only provides an orientation to the world of the Old Testament but also builds a bridge between the original audience and modern readers, demonstrating why the ancient message is important for faith and life today. Old Testament Today goes beyond basic content to help students understand what the Scriptur...

**A fresh, deeply biblical account of God’s expanding grace and mercy, tracing how the Bible’s narrative points to the full inclusion of LGBTQ people in Christian communities“A radical new vision . . . and [an] argument that God’s plan was always to include more and more people.”—Scott Detrow, All Things Considered, NPR**Discussions of the Bible and human sexuality often focus on a scattered handful of specific passages. But arguments about this same set of verses ...

Reclaim the Psalms for true worship, as well as prayer, as you learn how to approach God with the emotional intensity of the ancient psalmists. Denise Dombkowski Hopkins combines the insights of scholarship on the Psalms with artwork, liturgy, song, and poetry, to give us a new way to use the Psalms in our life of faith together, to empower our corporate identity and revitalize our worship. She examines how the Psalms formed the worship of ancient synagogues and the earliest churches and h...

Womanist Midrash is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Using her own translations, Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the socioh...

This book has become a standard text in seminary and university classrooms. The purpose of this second edition is to help readers come to a critically informed understanding of the Old Testament as the church's scripture. This book introduces the Old Testament both as a witness of ancient Israel and as a witness to the church and synagogue through the generations of those who have passed these texts on as scripture.The authors of this volume share a commitment to the interpretation...

In April of 2001, the headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Doubting the Story of the Exodus.” It covered a sermon that had been delivered by the rabbi of a prominent local congregation over the holiday of Passover. In it, he said, “The truth is that virtually every modern archeologist who has investigated the story of the exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.” This seeming challen...

In this updated edition of the popular textbook An Introduction to the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann and Tod Linafelt introduce the reader to the broad theological scope of the Old Testament, treating some of the most important issues and methods in contemporary biblical interpretation. This clearly written textbook focuses on the literature of the Old Testament as it grew out of religious, political, and ideological contexts over many centuries in Israel's history. Covering e...