Among the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon were all thought by the early church fathers to have derived from the hand of Solomon. To their minds the finest wisdom about the deeper issues of life prior to the time of God's taking human form in Jesus Christ was to be found in these books. As in all the Old Testament, they were quick to find types and intimations of Christ and his church that would make the ancient Word r...

We may think of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as the only sacred writings of the early Christians, but this is not at all the case. Lost Scriptures offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the first centuries after Christ--texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia. Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically f...

How did the New Testament writers and the earliest Christians come to adopt the Jewish scriptures as their first Old Testament? And why are our modern Bibles related more to the Rabbinic Hebrew Bible than to the Greek Bible of the early Church? The Septuagint, the name given to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures between the third century BC and the second century AD, played a central role in the Bible's history. Many of the Hebrew scriptures were still evolving when they were transla...

Koheleths powerful guidebook for living without certainty and security in a world of constant change can become a companion for your own spiritual journey.Twenty-three hundred years ago, an unnamed Hebrew sage known only as Koheleth, the Assembler of Wisdom, rocked the ancient Jewish world with a critique of society that shattered conventional notions of God, piety, politics, and power. Koheleth lived in a world of change and challenge not unlike our own. His teachings, known a...

Ezra and Nehemiah record the exciting drama of the restoration of the Jews to their land following Babylonian captivity. The restoration period offered the Israelites a unique opportunity to re-establish the Temple, worship institutions, and the city of Jerusalem on lasting spiritual foundations.But that period also brought the recently returned exiles into great temptation and potential disaster. The biblical record of the three returns of the Jews from Babylon provide not only a ...

Considered not only a classic work of literature, but also esteemed for its preciseness and accuracy, The Annals of the World has not been published in the English language since the 17th century. Almost completely inaccessible to the public for three centuries, this book is a virtual historical encyclopedia with information and footnotes to history that otherwise would have been lost forever.Covering history from the beginning through the first century A.D., Ussher relate...

When Israel was at the pinnacle of her national power a lone prophet had come with a new message. His first two sermons ingratiated him to the rich elite socialites of Jerusalem. His third sermon exploded their carefully constructed lives. Amos predicted coming judgment. From the moment he spoke these words, Israel began to spiral downward.

"And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [the risen Jesus] interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Lk 24:27).The church fathers mined the Old Testament throughout for prophetic utterances regarding the Messiah, but few books yielded as much messianic ore as the Twelve Prophets, sometimes known as the Minor Prophets because of the relative brevity of their writings.Encouraged by the example of the New Testament writer...

This literary commentary on the book of Judges opens to us one of the darkest times of man’s history. The people of God should have been celebrating victories and conquering a new land. Judgesopens the window into the heart of mankind, and the picture is not pretty. Seven times in the book the statement is made “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” The result of that environment was catastrophic. It further emphasises that there was no King in those days, so every ma...

The book of Joel is about a locust invasion. It begins with the plague of locusts, and moves to the call for repentance. This small book of three chapters covers some of the most profound questions mankind has asked throughout history. The book of Obadiah is the shortest book in the bible and is about a feud between two brothers that spans hundreds of years. The author is anonymous. God said every generation needs to read this and adjust their life to be saved.

Commentary on the second of two inspired letters from the Apostle Paul to his younger protégé, Timothy; the Apostle affectionately calls him "my own son in the faith."Written from Macedonia in 62-63 A.D. after his first imprisonment in Rome, Paul writes this first epistle to Timothy addressing certain spiritual discrepancies, false teachings; disorder in worship ; and qualifications of church leaders.

A distinguished group of authors here illuminate a broad spectrum of themes in the history of biblical interpretation. Originally published in 1990, these essays take as their common ground the thesis that the intellectual and religious life of the sixteenth century cannot be understood without attention to the preoccupation of sixteenth-century humanists and theologians with the interpretation of the Bible. Topics explored include Jewish exegesis and problems of Old Testament interpretati...