Reading the Sacred Scriptures: From Oral Tradition to Written Documents and their Reception examines how the scriptures came to be written and how their authority has been constructed and reinforced over time. Highlighting the measures taken to safeguard the stability of oral accounts, this book demonstrates the care of religious communities to maintain with reverence their assembled parchments and scrolls. Written by leading experts in their fields, this collection chronicles the development of the scriptures from oral tradition to written documents and their reception. It features notable essays on the scriptures of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Daoism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Shinto, and Baha'i. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the belief systems of the featured religions. It offers an ideal starting point from which undergraduate and postgraduate religious studies students, teachers and lecturers can explore religious traditions from their historical beginnings.

Should Christians be embarrassed by the book of Revelation? The Revelation of John has long confused and disturbed readers. The Apocalypse of John among Its Critics confronts the book's difficulties. Leading experts in Revelation wrestle honestly with a question raised by critics: Should John's Apocalypse be in the canon? (Alan S. Bandy) Was John intentionally confusing? (Ian Paul) Was John a bully? (Alexander E. Stewart) Did John delight in violence? (Dana M. Harris) Was John a chauvinist? (Külli Tõniste) Was John intolerant to others? (Michael Naylor) Was John antisemitic? (Rob Dalrymple) Did John make things up about the future? (Dave Mathewson) Did John advocate political subversion? (Mark Wilson) Did John misuse the Old Testament? (G.K. Beale) Engaging deeply with Revelation's difficulties helps the reader understand the book's message—and respond rightly. The book of Revelation does not need to be avoided or suppressed. It contains words of life.

Many preachers and teachers of preaching talk about the gospel; few name it. Theologies of the Gospel in Context assembles a gifted group of homileticians who think that preachers need to be able to articulate the gospel not "in general," but in a certain time and place, in context. They consider what gospel sounds like for people under oppression, in capitalist economies, in neocolonial contexts, for survivors of trauma, and for disestablished mainline churches marred by racism. Preachers will appreciate these preacher/scholars' desire to articulate the gospel with clarity, especially since the term is so often left unexplained. Homileticians will see a new genre of doing their work as teachers and researchers in preaching: a vision that helps preaching see itself not just as an adjunct to exegesis or communication, but a place of doing theology. In these pages homiletics is more than technique, it is a truly theological discipline.

The NIV Application Commentary helps you communicate and apply biblical text effectively in today's context. What can we know about the book of Revelation? What should we make of its visions of apocalyptic horsemen, horns with faces, flying angels, and fantastic beasts? Most important, what meaning does it hold for us here and now, and how can we apply it to our lives? Craig S. Keener shares perspectives on Revelation and helps us strengthen our hope in the future while living out our faith wisely in the present. To bring the ancient messages of the Bible into today's context, each passage is treated in three sections: Original Meaning. Concise exegesis to help readers understand the original meaning of the biblical text in its historical, literary, and cultural context. Bridging Contexts. A bridge between the world of the Bible and the world of today, built by discerning what is timeless in the timely pages of the Bible. Contemporary Significance. This section identifies comparable situations to those faced in the Bible and explores relevant application of the biblical messages. The author alerts the readers of problems they may encounter when seeking to apply the passage and helps them think through the issues involved. This unique, award-winning commentary is the ideal resource for today's preachers, teachers, and serious students of the Bible, giving them the tools, ideas, and insights they need to communicate God's Word with the same powerful impact it had when it was first written.

While Muslims in Indonesia have begun to turn towards a strict adherence to Islam, the reality of the socio-religious environment is much more complicated than a simple shift towards fundamentalism. In this volume, contributors explore the multifaceted role of Islam in Indonesia from a variety of different perspectives, drawing on carefully compiled case studies. Topics covered include religious education, the increasing number of Muslim feminists in Indonesia, the role of Indonesia in the greater Muslim world, social activism and the middle class, and the interaction between Muslim radio and religious identity.

This Book Explores the variety of ways John contextually uses the Old Testament in the Apocalypse. The introduction surveys and evaluates recent studies, which have been divided over the issue of whether or not John uses the Old Testament with sensitivity to its original literary context (Beale, Fekkes and Bauckham argue in the affirmative, while Ruiz and Moyise contend that this was not John's focus and see implications for 'reader-response criticism'). The remainder of the book looks at various ways in which John uses the Old Testament and argues that there is a reciprocal interpretative relationship between the Old Testament and the Apocalypse.

An accessible introduction to the New Testament, offering up-to-date historical-critical scholarship and diverse critical perspectives The New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction presents a concise account of the emergence of Jesus traditions in the broader context of ancient Mediterranean history. Incorporating established historical approaches and alternative academic analyses, this innovative textbook helps students understand the historical and political contexts of the authors and their audiences, and how different social identities and lived experiences influenced the formation of the Bible and its later interpretations. Accomplished scholar Colleen Conway emphasizes the cultural and literary context of the New Testament while drawing from historical, postcolonial, gender, feminist, and intersectional analyses of biblical texts. Throughout the book, students explore how issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and power dynamics contributed to the production of the New Testament texts and continue to inform their interpretation in the 21st century. Through twelve chronologically organized chapters, this book examines Paul's mission to the Gentiles, unity and conflict in Paul's communities, the four Gospel narratives, the Revelation to John, Hebrews, 1 Peter, the New Testament canon, early Christian writings, and more. The New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction: Provides an up-to-date introduction to historical and critical methods and central questions in the field Helps students contextualize the different writings of the New Testament as part of the Mediterranean world of the first century, for example exploring how Roman Imperial rule and social stratification affected the authors of New Testament texts Discusses how ideas about gender and race affect the meaning and application of New Testament texts Features "Contemporary Voices" sections highlighting the work of modern New Testament scholars Includes numerous pedagogical tools such as chapter review questions, key term lists, suggested readings, a timeline, maps, illustrations, photographs, a glossary, and much more Designed for undergraduate students with varying levels of biblical knowledge, The New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction is an ideal textbook for one-semester religious studies courses on the Bible, the New Testament, or early Christianity, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in history, sociology and philosophy.

Over several decades, scholarship in New Testament and early Christianity has drawn attention both to the ways in which ancient Mediterranean conceptions of embodiment, sexual difference, and desire were fundamentally different from modern ones and also to important lines of genealogical connection between the past and the present. The result is that the study of "gender" and "sexuality" in early Christianity has become an increasingly complex undertaking. This is a complexity produced not only by the intricacies of conflicting historical data, but also by historicizing approaches that query the very terms of analysis whereby we inquire into these questions in the first place. Yet at the same time, recent work on these topics has produced a rich and nuanced body of scholarly literature that has contributed substantially to our understanding of early Christian history and also proved relevant to ongoing theological and social debates. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in the New Testament provides a roadmap to this lively scholarly landscape, introducing both students and other scholars to the relevant problems, debates, and issues. Leading scholars in the field offer original contributions by way of synthesis, critical interrogation, and proposals for future questions, hypotheses, and research trajectories.

"The claim to possession of revealed truth is not unique to any single religion, nor confined to the so-called "axial" ("world") religions. But what kind of work is necessary before a term like "revelation" can be used in comparing two religious traditions - and to what end? What does the problem of revelation have to do with the history of religions, and the plurality of religions?" "In Revelation, History, and the Dialogue of Religions David Carpenter, an expert in medieval Catholic theology as well as Indian religious thought, approaches the doctrine of revelation in the writings of the medieval Christian theologian, St. Bonaventure, a prime exemplar of Logos theology, and of Bhartrhari, a classical Indian grammarian and philosopher of language who is an analogous figure in the Hindu religious tradition. In examining and comparing the writings of these two figures from two distinct traditions and cultures, Carpenter explores the phenomenon of revelation as a dynamic, linguistically-mediated process that needs to be located within the historical horizons of the religious traditions in which it is found."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved