Bernhard Lang, known for his contributions over several decades to biblical anthropology, offers in this volume a selection of essays on the life and literature of the ancient Hebrews. The subjects range from the Hebrew God, the world-view of the Bible, and the formation of the scriptural canon, to peasant poverty, women's work, the good life, and prophetic street theatre. The stories of Joseph, Samson, and the expulsion from Paradise are analysed, and in a departure from the Old Testament...

"Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early Christian literature," writes Bart Ehrman, "is the degree to which it was forged." The Homilies and Recognitions of Clement; Paul's letters to and from Seneca; Gospels by Peter, Thomas, and Philip; Jesus' correspondence with Abgar, letters by Peter and Paul in the New Testament--all forgeries. To cite just a few examples. Forgery and Counterforgery is the first comprehensive study of early Christian pseudepigrapha ever produced in English...

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in the United Kingdom offers a refreshing and insightful commentary to the Koren Haggada, together with illuminating essays on the themes and motifs of the Festival of Freedom. Sensitively translated, the traditional texts are carefully balanced alongside the Chief Rabbi's contemporary ideas, in a modern and user-friendly design. With new interpretations and in-depth analyses of the Passover liturgy an...

Dr. Norman Golb's classic study on the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls is now available online.Since their earliest discovery in 1947, the Scrolls have been the object of fascination and extreme controversy.Challenging traditional dogma, Golb has been the leading proponent of the view that the Scrolls cannot be the work of a small, desert-dwelling fringe sect, as various earlier scholars had claimed, but are in all likelihood the remains of libraries of various Jewish groups...

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers...against spiritual wickedness in high places. —Ephesians 6:12This small but important book by Hendrik Berkhof ushered in a wave of studies on the powers spoken of in the New Testament, profoundly influencing William Stringfellow, Jacques Ellul, Marva Dawn, Walter Wink, and many others. John Howard Yoder brought it to an English-speaking audience for the first time in this translation, and drew from ...

According to the Bible, ancient Israel's neighbors worshipped a wide variety of gods. In recent years, scholars have sought a better understanding of this early polytheistic milieu and its relation to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Drawing on ancient Ugaritic texts and looking closely at Ugaritic deities, Mark Smith examines the meaning of "divinity" in the ancient near East and considers how this concept applies to Yahweh.

Since they were first discovered in the caves at Qumran in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have aroused more fascination--and more controversy--than perhaps any other archaeological find. They appear to have been hidden in the Judean desert by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that existed around the time of Jesus, and they continue to inspire veneration and conspiracy theories to this day. John Collins tells the story of the bitter conflicts that have swirled around the scrolls since their startling ...

Nothing has so radically transformed the world as the distinction between true and false religion. In this nuanced consideration of his own controversial Moses the Egyptian, renowned Egyptologist Jan Assmann answers his critics, extending and building upon ideas from his previous book. Maintaining that it was indeed the Moses of the Hebrew Bible who introduced the true-false distinction in a permanent and revolutionary form, Assmann reiterates that the price of this monotheistic r...

A critical examination of the origins and development of monotheismThe shift from polytheism to monotheism changed the world radically. Akhenaten and Moses—a figure of history and a figure of tradition—symbolize this shift in its incipient, revolutionary stages and represent two civilizations that were brought into the closest connection as early as the Book of Exodus, where Egypt stands for the old world to be rejected and abandoned in order to enter the new one.

One of the most widely praised studies of Jewish apocalyptic literature ever written, The Apocalyptic Imagination by John J. Collins has served for over thirty years as a helpful, relevant, comprehensive survey of the apocalyptic literary genre.After an initial overview of things apocalyptic, Collins proceeds to deal with individual apocalyptic texts — the early Enoch literature, the book of Daniel, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and others — concluding with an examination of apocal...