Religious Studies

Offering an extraordinary window on centuries of dialogue between the Bible and literature, this superb, unprecedented, and award-winning reference work is designed to help the modern reader understand how biblical motifs, concepts, names, quotations and allusions have been transmitted through exegetical tradition and used by authors of English literature from the Middle Ages to the present. The book includes several hundred encyclopedic articles (more than a million words) written by a distinguished international roster of more than 160 contributors representing the disciplines of biblical studies, theology, patristics, and literary studies.

Every generation needs a comprehensive, reliable Introduction to the New Testament that opens the biblical text to the novice.

The Bible is Western Civilization's most profound literary work -- but its size, scope, and antiquity often make the Bible seem inaccessible to ordinary readers. Now, internationally renowned author and professor John Bowker heads a team of experts in the creation of a remarkable companion to the Bible. Photographs of paintings, sculpture, and ancient archaeological sites reveal fascinating information about life in biblical times, including festivals, fashions, and customs.

This comprehensive introduction to the various collections of biblical literature used by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants gives the beginner clear, concise, and engaging entries into each book while covering major controversies.

The unique commentary joins The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament in providing historical, social and cultural background for each passage of the Old Testament.

This unique commentary provides, in verse-by-verse format, the crucial cultural background you need for responsible--and richer--Bible study. It includes a glossary of cultural terms and important historical figures, maps and charts, up-to-date bibliographies, and introductory essays about cultural background information for each book of the New Testament.

The three volumes focus upon the diversity of receptions of the Jesus tradition in this time period, with memory theory providing the framework for approaching the complex interactions between the past of the tradition and the present of its receptions. Rather than addressing texts specifically as canonical or non-canonical, the volumes show the more complex reality of the reception of the Jesus tradition in early Christianity.

Reading the Bible as Literature provides the ideal entry-point to the process of reading, understanding, and assessing what many recognize to be the important and powerful literature of the Bible. Such reading holds potential for helping students understand literature generally and the Bible in itself. The book introduces the tools of literary analysis, including: language and style, the formal structures of genre (narrative, drama, and poetry), character study, and thematic analysis.

Authors Gabel and Wheeler approach the Bible from a literary/historical perspective, and study the work as a body of writing produced by real human beings who intended to convey messages to real readers. Avoiding assessments of the Bible's truth or authority, the book maintains a rigorously objective tone as it discusses such major issues as the forms and strategies of biblical writing, the actual historical and physical settings of that writing, the process of canon formation, the sources of the Pentaeuch, and the nature of such biblical literary genres as prophecy, apocalypse, and gospel. Each chapter is an independent yet related essay, designed to allow instructors maximum flexibility in using the text. The result is an easy-to-use, exciting presentation of the art of the Bible that is very accesible to students.

Is the Bible one book or a collection of writings? If it is a book, does it stand as a coherent piece of literature? Developing his argument through close textual analysis, Josipovici draws on his deep knowledge and appreciation of medieval and modern art and literature and on his personal understanding of the possibilities of narrative.

Rediscover the incomparable literary richness and strength of a book that all of us live with an many of us live by. An international team of renowned scholars, assembled by two leading literary critics, offers a book-by-book guide through the Old and New Testaments as well as general essays on the Bible as a whole, providing an enticing reintroduction to a work that has shaped our language and thought for thousands of years.

This volume addresses the most important issues related to the study of New Testament writings. Two respected senior scholars have brought together a team of distinguished specialists to introduce the Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman backgrounds necessary for understanding the New Testament and the early church.

Because of the cultural distance between the biblical world and our contemporary setting, we often bring modern Western biases to the text.

Stemming from questions about scriptural inerrancy, inspiration and oral transmission of ideas, The Lost World of Scripture examines the process by which the Bible has come to be what it is today. From the reasons why specific words were used to convey certain ideas to how oral tradition impacted the transmission of biblical texts, the authors seek to uncover how these issues might affect our current doctrine on the authority of Scripture.

Christianity in the Twentieth Century charts the transformation of one of the world's great religions during an age marked by world wars, genocide, nationalism, decolonization, and powerful ideological currents, many of them hostile to Christianity.

This major work draws on current archaeological and textual research to trace the spread of Christianity in the first millennium.

The words, phrases, and stories of the New Testament permeate the English language. Indeed, this relatively small group of twenty-seven works, written during the height of the Roman Empire, not only helped create and sustain a vast world religion, but also have been integral to the larger cultural dynamics of the West, above and beyond particular religious expressions. Looking at the New Testament through the lens of literary study, Kyle Keefer offers an engrossing exploration of this revered religious text as a work of literature, but also keeps in focus its theological ramifications.

Essential style manual for writing and publishing in biblical studies.

Exploration of a vast range of religious, literary and cultural ideas. Translators, writers such as Donne, Milton, Bunyan and the Romantics, reactionary Bishops and radical students all help to show the changes in religious ideas and in standards of language and literature that created our sense of the most important book in English.

The authors analyze the development of traditional literary and historical criticism and more recent social, scientific, and literary approaches.

No one can doubt that the Bible has exerted a tremendous influence on Western civilization since the dawn of Christianity. But few of us have considered the precise nature of that influence in particular historical contexts. In this book, David Kling traces the fascinating story of how specific biblical texts have at different times emerged to be the inspiration of movements that have changed the course of history. By examining eight such pivotal texts, Kling elucidates the ways in which sacred texts continue to shape our lives as well as our history.

Much of the Old Testament seems strange to contemporary readers. However, as we begin to understand how ancient people viewed the world, the Old Testament becomes more clearly a book that stands within its ancient context as it also speaks against it.