The political emergence of evangelical Christians has been a signal development in America in the past quarter century. And while their voting tendencies have been closely scrutinized, their participation in the policy debates of the day has not. They continue to be caricatured as anti-intellectual Bible thumpers whose views are devoid of reason, logic, or empirical evidence. They're seen as lemmings, following the cues of Dobson and Robertson and marching in lock step with the Republican ...

From the new afterword by the author:Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. The notion that Jesus Chri...

“A strange, wondrous, challenging, enriching book….Beautiful and powerful…you will not encounter another book like it.”—National Review onlineIn Digital Barbarism, bestselling novelist Mark Helprin (Winter’s Tale, A Soldier of the Great War) offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators. A timely, cogent, and important attac...

Much about the early history of mankind had become entirely lost until the restoration of the gospel. These details about the first 2,000 years of human history are all to be found in this exciting volume.We now know that Adam and Eve had two generations of children before Cain and Abel were born. The exact year of the Great Flood can now be calculated. Details about the golden age of Enoch are now available so that we can understand how the law of consecration works and how it eli...

Torah MiEtzion presents original, insightful essays on the Bible by the rabbis of Yeshivat Har Etzion, one of today's most vibrant and influential schools of modern biblical interpretation. Since its founding in Israel in 1968, Yeshivat Har Etzion has emphasized Bible study alongside Talmud study in order to foster what its founder, Rabbi Yehuda Amital z"l, called an "organic understanding" of Torah and Torah philosophy. The result has been the development of a unique, analytically rigorou...

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament. In Hebrew it is called ‘Bereshith,’ “in the beginning,” from the initial words of the text. The first eleven chapters deal with the creation of the world, the Fall of Man and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Flood and the Dispersion of the Jews. The remaining chapters (12-50) are accounts of the lives of the patriarchs of Israel: Abraham, Isaa...

I have frequently been struck by the fact that the Psalms are difficult to read and understand. I am referring to the various existing translations into English. After joining a group that was studying the Psalms, I became so dismayed by the translations we were using that I decided to try my hand at making better ones. By and large, the group was pleased with the results of my efforts and urged me to continue. Later, I decided to translate the entire book and publish it. Along the way, I ...

Explore how the roots of the ancient Christian tradition inform and shape faithfulness todayThe Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible enlists leading theologians to read and interpret scripture creedally for the twenty-first century, just as the church fathers, the Reformers, and other orthodox Christians did for their times and places.A rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups, the BTC provides guidance for reading the Bible u...

Lisa Bellantoni argues that contemporary bioethics divides into two logically incommensurable positions: a cult of rights, which identifies the worth of human life with our autonomy, and a cult of life, which identifies human worth with the possession of a soul, and thereby, of human dignity.

Though the Hebrew Bible often reflects and constructs a world that privileges men, many of its narratives play extensively with the gender norms of the society in which they were written. Drawing from feminist, masculinity and queer studies, Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible uses close literary analysis to argue that the writers of the Bible intentionally challenge gender norms in order to reveal the dangers of destabilizing societal and theological hierarchies that privilege men an...

Over the last four decades the public trust in government in the United States has fallen dramatically due to a "perfect storm" of contributing factors, such as a seemingly never ending string of political scandals, partisan polarization and toxic attack politics, and miserable failures to respond to natural disasters or the devastation of the Great Recession. This book contains the academic presentations that were made at the Symposium on Advancing Excellence and Public Trust in Gover...

The Origin of Myth is like The Chariots of the Gods or Fingerprints of the Gods and uses the discovery of the tree of knowledge to understand ancient history in an all new way.Noah’s ark becomes an important part of human history, but has very little to do with the nonexistent world flood. Most people have heard of Noah’s ark, and the amazing animal cargo he was carrying, but few know where he came from before the alleged flood. The flood was his understanding of an amazing journey...