A fresh theological encounter with the book of Revelation, informed by contemporary concerns and reading strategiesGreg Carey, a respected scholar of the New Testament and apocalyptic literature, shows how Revelation can speak meaningfully to today's readers. He highlights themes in Revelation that resonate powerfully in our current era: the person of Jesus, hope in the face of death and adversity, resistance, authority, violence, gender, wealth, and more. In so do...

“What in the world are we to make of the dizzying array of grand and grotesque images ‘revealed’ to an early Christ-follower named John? Enter the expert scholar-teacher Greg Carey as the perfect docent through Revelation’s stunning gallery. Carey orients us to a ‘faithful and true’ focus on the ‘faithful and true’ Christ—a vital corrective to fanciful and false readings of Revelation that remain wildly popular.”—F. Scott Spencer, author of Salty Wives, Spirited Mother...

In Using Our Outside Voice, Greg Carey contends that responsible public biblical interpretation requires the ability to enter a conversation about the Bible, to understand the various arguments in play, and to offer informed opinions that others can understand. This role demands not only basic knowledge but also identifiable skills, habits, and dispositions. Carey does not suggest that public interpreters of the Bible are more insightful or more correct than are other people. But ...

What happens at the end of our lives and of the course of history? Will God bring about a just and peaceful world? What lies beyond this realm, and what can we know of the beings who dwell there? In Death, the End of History, and Beyond, Greg Carey offers resources for understanding multiple, even conflicting, ways that the Bible imagines these ultimate realities. Carey opens the Scriptures with a breadth of insight that acknowledges its diversity of viewpoints about what lies bey...

News from Inside is a collection of poems that talk to each other just like trees do. The poems talk to each other across big themes such as memory and hope, despair and joy, death and life, time and eternity, but also in those unrepeatable moments of pleasure, suffering, insight, and remembrance of others gone into the dark and brought momentarily into the light or better the half- light.

What happens at the end of our lives and of the course of history? Will God bring about a just and peaceful world? What lies beyond this realm, and what can we know of the beings who dwell there? In Death, the End of History, and Beyond, Greg Carey offers resources for understanding multiple, even conflicting, ways that the Bible imagines these ultimate realities. Carey opens the Scriptures with a breadth of insight that acknowledges its diversity of viewpoints about what lies bey...

The parables of Jesus—like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Laborers in the Vineyard—make up the most distinctive element of his teaching and are essential to our common memory of Jesus. However, almost all of them open themselves to multiple interpretations, leaving interpreters to scratch their heads and argue with one another for centuries.In this book, Greg Carey explores six of Jesus’ stories to understand how to read them, interpret them, and understand what they...

We love stories. That’s why we go to movies, read books, and listen to friends recount an experience. That’s also why teachers use the technique of storytelling to make a difficult concept easier for us to process. Jesus told stories, or parables, for that very reason—and to help us understand how God wants us to live life. Sometimes, however, stories like the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son can be interpreted in more than one way. Even Bible scholars are divided on their meanings....

Greg Carey's guide equips readers to develop their own informed assessments of Luke's Gospel. The book begins with an inductive exposition of Luke's singular approach to composing a story about Jesus, examining its use of Mark, clues to its social setting, and its distinctive literary strategies.Recognizing that many readers approach Luke for theological and religious reasons, while many others do not, a chapter on 'Spirit' addresses Luke's presentation of the God of Israel, how th...

Every significant layer of the New Testament features the distinctiveconcerns of apocalyptic literature, including the expectation of amessiah, hope for a resurrection, expectation of a final judgment, and aspiritual world that includes angels and demons. Yet many contemporaryreaders shy away from things apocalyptic, especially the book ofRevelation.This introduction considers the influence ofapocalyptic literature throughout the Gospels and...

Carey presents an introduction to the elements of apocalyptic discourse in the Hebrew Bible, the intertestamental texts of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and the Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts. He seeks to help modern readers perplexed by the rampant and somewhat outrageous depiction and interpretation of apocalyptic literature to see apocalyptic discourse as a flexible set of resources that early Jews and Christians could employ for a variety of persuasive tasks. Carey examines...

A number of disciplines aligned under "cultural criticism" have changed the shape of contemporary biblical studies not only by offering new methods but by questioning old goals and proposing new ones. Soundings in Cultural Criticism offers a collection of succinct essays in these fields by some of the foremost scholars in New Testament studies. Questions of historical reconstruction, textual interpretation, and present cultural deployment are addressed in an ideal second t...