Analyzes four biblical passages (Genesis 2-3, Hosea 1-3, Ezekiel 23, and Proverbs 7) in which a woman is the source or symbol of sin.

In the tradition of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Poor Banished Children of Eve is the haunting saga of the Duval/Leveque clan of Maringouin County, Mississippi, a family tormented by a history of incest and insanity. The story revolves around beautiful, tempestuous Angelique Leveque whose mother Solange Duval Leveque had spent the past twenty-one years, since Angelique’s birth, locked in an upstairs bedroom “mad as a hatter,” as the townspeople said, a fact that no one seems to find peculiar. After all, doesn’t everyone have an insane woman locked in an upstairs bedroom? As the story begins, Angelique is about to be married to Charles Carrington, a “suitable young man,” with a secret and twisted torment of his own, and her impending marriage is breaking the hearts of the town’s young swains, not the least of which, two of her brothers. To add fuel to the fire, Antoine Babineaux returns from prison still in love with Angelique and determined to win her back. Thus begins the first tremors of a tidal wave of tragedy that sweeps over the family and the residents of Jezreel, Mississippi in a miasma of murder, insanity, incest and suicide, to finally reach and explosive and unorthodox climax where they find peace at last. Or do they?

An explosion is heard off the coast of seventeenth-century England, and a woman washes up on the shore. She is barely alive and does not speak English, but she asks for a priest . . . In Latin. She has a confession to make and a story to tell, but who is she and from where has she come? Cast out of her superstitious, Maltese family, Warda turns to begging and stealing until she is fostered by an understanding Catholic priest who teaches her the art of healing. Her willful nature and hard-earned independence make her unfit for marriage, and so the good priest sends Warda to serve an anchorite, in the hope that his protégé will discern a religious vocation. Such a calling Warda never has the opportunity to hear. Barbary pirates raid her village, capture her and sell her into slavery in Muslim North Africa. In the merciless land of Warda's captivity, her wits, nerve, and self-respect are tested daily, as she struggles to survive without submitting to total and permanent enslavement. As she is slowly worn down by the brutality of her circumstances, she comes to believe that God has abandoned her and falls into despair, hatred, and a pattern of behavior which, ironically, mirrors that of her masters. Poor Banished Children is the tale of one woman's relentless search for freedom and redemption. The historical novel raises challenging questions about the nature of courage, free will, and ultimately salvation. - An award-winning European novelist presents a powerful story of mystery, adventure, peril, suffering, faith, and courage - A thrilling historical novel that explores the life and cultures of 17th century England, Malta and Africa - A challenging work that tells the story of one woman's relentless search for freedom and redemption amidst great suffering, loneliness and despair

Evangelical and feminist approaches to Old Testament interpretation often seem to be at odds with each other. The authors of this volume argue to the contrary: feminist and evangelical interpreters of the Old Testament can enter into a constructive dialogue that will be fruitful to both parties. They seek to illustrate this with reference to a number of texts and issues relevant to feminist Old Testament interpretation from an explicitly evangelical point of view. In so doing they raise issues that need to be addressed by both evangelical and feminist interpreters of the Old Testament, and present an invitation to faithful and fruitful reading of these portions of Scripture.

Notions of women as found in the Bible have had an incalculable impact on western cultures, influencing perspectives on marriage, kinship, legal practice, political status, and general attitudes. Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible is drawn from three separate strands to address and analyse this phenomenon. The first examines how women were conceptualized and represented during the exilic period. The second focuses on methodological possibilities and drawbacks connected to investigating women and exile. The third reviews current prominent literature on the topic, with responses from authors. With chapters from a range of contributors, topics move from an analysis of Ruth as a woman returning to her homeland, and issues concerning the foreign presence who brings foreign family members into the midst of a community, and how this is dealt with, through the intermarriage crisis portrayed in Ezra 9-10, to an analysis of Judean constructions of gender in the exilic and early post-exilic periods. The contributions show an exciting range of the best scholarship on women and foreign identities, with important consequences for how the foreign/known is perceived, and what that has meant for women through the centuries.

This book explores the use of the Bible among Latino/a theologians today. Latino/a Theology emerged in the 1980s, alongside a broad variety of contextual theological movements and discourses following the Latino/a movement and the formation of Latino/a Studies in the 1960s and 1970s. While much work has been done on biblical interpretation in Latino/a biblical criticism, little can be found regarding interpretation in Latino/a theological reflection. To address this gap in the literature, the contributors, from various ecclesial affiliations and religious traditions, examine the status and role of the Bible in Latino/a Theology.

Why has the Rosary remained such a popular Catholic devotional prayer? In this upbeat and easy-to-read book, Catholic author Mitch Finley explains that the simplicity and depth of the rosary make it a prayer for all seasons. The Rosary is perfect for those times when words can’t express our feelings, when we want to contemplate the basic truths of our faith, or when we simply want to enter into God’s presence. Finley includes a brief history of the Rosary and a short commentary on each of the twenty mysteries. The revised edition of this best-selling book offers several new features, including guidance on praying the Rosary in groups as well as the Rosary’s role in the Marian apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima. Alternative ways to pray the Rosary, a children’s Rosary, and the Fiat Rosary, are also featured in this new edition, making it a complete guide to this beautiful, timeless prayer.

This is Book No. 3, as well as the last book in the collection untitled WHAT IS THERE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN This series represents the fifty years of my life I dedicated to search and investigate literature in order to find everything I could about God and his relationship with man. Throughout these years, I worked with an open mind, putting aside all paradigms and biases, and I discovered very interesting things that led me to a number of conclusions that were surprising even for me. I found out, for instance, that Jesus Christ is the result of a legend created by Saul of Tarsus (Saint Paul) almost three hundred years before Emperor Constantine I (the Great) adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. I also learned that the divinity of Jesus Christ was agreed upon at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 A.D., being promoted and agreed to by the emperor. Christianity became the property of the empire and one hundred years afterwards, the Roman Empire became property of the Catholic Church, with the pope as leader. The pope performs the functions of Roman Emperor to this date. I also discovered that the church worships three gods: Jesus Christ, who is a legend in itself; Jehovah, because the whole Bible is a book that talks about him and his relationship with Judaism; and God, the almighty father. Christianity confuses and mixes these three gods. I also found out that the act of consecration during mass represents the sacrifice and dismembering of Jesus Christ as an offering to Jehovah, and that all Catholics are happy with this crime because Jesus Christ, upon being sacrificed, gets rid of all the sins committed by everyone present. The assembly finishes by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, similar to a voodoo ceremony or to an act of cannibalism. There are many other things you should take the time to consider.

A sociorhetorical analysis of First Corinthians Robert H. von Thaden Jr.'s sociorhetorical analysis examines Paul's construction of sexual Christian bodies in First Corinthians by utilizing new insights from conceptual integration (blending) theory about the embodied processes of meaning making. Paul's teaching about proper sexual behavior in this letter is best viewed as an example of early Christian wisdom discourse. This discourse draws upon apocalyptic and priestly cognitive frames to increase the rhetorical force of the argument. Reading Paul's argument through the lens of rhetorical invention, von Thaden demonstrates that Paul first attempts to show the Corinthians why sexual immorality is the worst of all bodily sins before shifting rhetorical focus to explain to them how they can best avoid this infraction against the body of Christ. Features: A programmatic application of conceptual integration theory using a sociorhetorical mode of interpretation A vivid account of key aspects of conceptual integration theory and how they function in sociorhetorical interpretation A detailed application of these strategies to interpret 1 Corinthians 1-4; 6:12-7:7