Download or read book God s Court and Courtiers in the Book of the Watchers written by Philip Francis Esler and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Enoch is an ancient Judean work that inaugurated the genre of apocalypse. Chapters 1–36 tell the story of the descent of angels called “Watchers” from heaven to earth to marry human women before the time of the flood, the chaos that ensued, and God’s response. They also relate the journeying of the righteous scribe Enoch through the cosmos, guided by angels. Heaven, including the place and those who dwell there (God, the angels, and Enoch), plays a central role in the narrative. But how should heaven be understood? Existing scholarship, which presupposes “Judaism” as the appropriate framework, views the Enochic heaven as reflecting the temple in Jerusalem, with God’s house replicating its architecture and the angels and Enoch functioning like priests. Yet recent research shows the Judeans constituted an ethnic group, and this view encourages a fresh examination of 1 Enoch 1–36. The actual model for heaven proves to be a king in his court surrounded by his courtiers. The major textual features are explicable in this perspective, whereas the temple-and-priests model is unconvincing. The author was a member of a nontemple, scribal group in Judea that possessed distinctive astronomical knowledge, promoted Enoch as its exemplar, and was involved in the wider sociopolitical world of their time.

Download or read book Class Struggle in the New Testament written by Robert J. Myles and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Class Struggle in the New Testament engages the political and economic realities of the first century to unmask the mediation of class through several New Testament texts and traditions. Essays span a range of subfields, presenting class struggle as the motor force of history by responding to recent debates, historical data, and new evidence on the political-economic world of Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels. Chapters address collective struggles in the Gospels; the Roman military and class; the usefulness of categories like peasant, retainer, and middling groups for understanding the world of Jesus; the class basis behind the origin of archangels; the Gospels as products of elite culture; the implication of capitalist ideology upon biblical interpretation; and the New Testament’s use of slavery metaphors, populist features, and gifting practices. This book will become a definitive reference point for future discussion.

Download or read book The Entangled Enoch 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity written by Grant Macaskill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study reframes and reorients the study of 2 Enoch, moving beyond debates about Christian or Jewish authorship and considering the work in the context of eclectic and erudite cultures in late antiquity, particularly Syria. The study compares the work with the Parables of Enoch and then with a variety of writings associated with late antique Syrian theology, demonstrating the distinctively eclectic character of 2 Enoch. It offers new paradigms for research into the pseudepigrapha.

Download or read book Priesthood Cult and Temple in the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran written by Robert E. Jones and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-06-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hellenistic period was a pivotal moment in the history of the Jewish priesthood. The waning days of the Persian empire coincided with the continued ascendance of the high priest and Jerusalem temple as powerful political, cultural, and religious institutions in Judea. The Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran, only recently published in full, testify to the existence of a flourishing but previously unknown Jewish literary tradition dating from the end of Persian rule to the rise of the Hasmoneans. Throughout this book, Robert Jones analyzes how Israel’s priestly institutions are represented in these writings, and he demonstrates that they are essential for understanding the Jewish priesthood at this crucial stage in its history.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Deification written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-06 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern theological engagements on deification have undergone two major paradigm shifts. First, the study of deification shifted from the periphery of theological discourse to its center. For Adolf von Harnack, deification was a pagan import that fatally corrupted and distorted the Gospel message of salvation. In response, the positive retrieval of the concept of deification belongs to the early years of the twentieth century. By the 1910s in Russian religious thought and by the 1930s in much Roman Catholic theology, deification had become a magnet concept attracting attention from many different viewpoints. The second important shift relates to how deification is characterized. Recent studies question the exclusively 'Eastern' character of deification and draw attention to the engagements of this theme in Latin patristic and later Western Christian sources. Reassessing the evidence for these two major shifts, The Oxford Handbook of Deification comprehensively explores the points of convergence and difference on the constitutive elements of deification in different traditions, and offers a foundation for ecumenical and interreligious dialogues. The Handbook's first part analyzes the cultural and scriptural roots of deification; the second part explores the most significant historical contributions to the understanding of deification in the early, medieval, and modern periods; the third part develops systematic connections. Readers will discover a surprizing breadth, depth, and diversity of theologies of deification in Christian traditions. Throughout the Handbook, leading scholars in the field of Deification Studies propose vital new insights from a variety of perspectives for this central mystery at the heart of the Christian faith.

Download or read book Angels Associated with Israel in the Dead Sea Scrolls written by Matthew L. Walsh and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-known characteristic of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls are their assertions that membership in the Qumran movement included present and eschatological fellowship with the angels, but scholars disagree as to the precise meaning of these claims. To gain a better understanding of angelic fellowship at Qumran, Matthew L. Walsh utilizes the early Jewish concept that certain angels were closely associated with Israel. Moreover, these angels, which included guardians and priests, were envisioned within apocalyptic worldviews that assumed that realities on earth corresponded to those of the heavenly realm. A comparison of non-sectarian texts with sectarian compositions reveals that the Qumran movement's lofty assertions of communion with the guardians and priests of heavenly Israel would have made a significant contribution to their identity as the true Israel.

Download or read book John within Judaism written by Wally V. Cirafesi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In John within Judaism Wally V. Cirafesi offers a reading of the Gospel of John as an expression of the fluid and flexible nature of Jewish ethnic identity in Greco-Roman antiquity.

Download or read book The New Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation written by Ian Boxall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an up-to-date introduction to the diverse ways the Bible is being interpreted by scholars in the field.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature written by Colin McAllister and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-26 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apocalytic literature has addressed human concerns for over two millennia. This volume surveys the source texts, their reception, and relevance.

Download or read book Atonement written by Max Botner and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical survey of atonement theology through ancient Jewish and Christian sources What is the historical basis for today’s atonement theology? Where did it come from, and how has it evolved throughout time? In Atonement, a sterling collection of renowned biblical scholars investigates the early manifestations of this core concept in ancient Jewish and Christian sources. Rather than imposing a particular view of atonement upon these texts, these specialists let the texts speak for themselves so that the reader can truly understand atonement as it was variously conceived in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Pseudepigrapha, the New Testament, and early Christian literature. The resulting diverse ideas mirror the manifold perspectives on atonement today. Contributors to this volume—Christian A. Eberhart, Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Martha Himmelfarb, T. J. Lang, Carol A. Newsom, Deborah W. Rooke, Catrin H. Williams, David P. Wright, and N. T. Wright—attend to the linguistic elements at work in these ancient writings without limiting their scope to explicit mentions of atonement. Instead, they explore atonement as a broader phenomenon that negotiates a constellation of features—sin, sacrifice, and salvation—to capture a more accurate and holistic picture. Atonement will serve as an indispensable resource for all future dialogue on these topics within Jewish and Christian circles.

Download or read book The Jesus Revolution written by James M. Scott and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-02-24 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to a biblical theology of the New Testament seeks to revitalize our engagement with the Scriptures for the twenty-first century by showing not only how the assemblage of ancient writings consisting of both Old and New Testaments is intrinsically relevant, but also how we can remain faithful to Jesus Christ, the organizing principle of those writings, in the process. The book is an invitation to all people of goodwill--believers and unbelievers, liberals and conservatives--to put aside their differences in order to cooperate in the revolution that Jesus inaugurated, the creation of a new and better world in the here and now as an anticipation of the eschatological finale. In an age in which many people are overwhelmed by life and looking for ways to cope, this book offers fresh perspectives and penetrating insights that are grounded in solid biblical scholarship with the aid of contemporary philosophical concepts.

Download or read book The Apocalyptic Letter to the Galatians written by James M. Scott and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One “apocalyptic” reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians has been attempted before and is now widely accepted, but that reading is not based on a thorough engagement with Jewish apocalyptic traditions of the Second Temple period. In this book, James M. Scott argues that there is an essential continuity between Galatians and Paul’s Jewish past, and that Paul uses the apocalyptic Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 92–105) as a literary model for his own letter. Scott first contextualizes the Epistle of Enoch using the entire Enochic corpus and explores the extensive similarities (and some significant differences) between the Enochic tradition and early Stoicism. Then he turns to deal specifically with Paul’s letter to the Galatians, showing that, despite their obvious differences, the two apocalyptic letters have some remarkable features in common as well. This approach to the interpretation of Galatians fundamentally stands to change the way biblical scholars understand Paul’s letter and the gospel that he preached. Paul is “within Judaism,” if the net for what is included in “Judaism” is wide enough to encompass the Enochic tradition.

Download or read book Never Give Up written by Philip Church and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-01-27 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a commentary on Hebrews designed for use as textbook for undergraduate and graduate level studies. It works through the text of Hebrews paragraph by paragraph, with additional notes on a variety of theological topics along the way. In Hebrews and the Temple Church argued for an eschatological reading of Hebrews, and this book applies that reading to the discipline of a commentary. It grows out of postgraduate level lectures on Hebrews delivered at Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand, Myanmar Evangelical Graduate School of Theology in Yangon, Myanmar; Asia Graduate School of Theology in Kathmandu, Nepal; and Christian Leaders' Training College at Banz, Papua New Guinea.

Download or read book Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters written by Matthias Henze and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2020-11-29 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential resource for scholars and students Since the publication of the first edition of Early Judaism and Its Modern Interpreters in 1986, the field of early Judaism has exploded with new data, the publication of additional texts, and the adoption of new methods. This new edition of the classic resource honors the spirit of the earlier volume and focuses on the scholarly advances in the past four decades that have led to the study of early Judaism becoming an academic discipline in its own right. Essays written by leading scholars in the study of early Judaism fall into four sections: historical and social settings; methods, manuscripts, and materials; early Jewish literatures; and the afterlife of early Judaism.

Download or read book Revelations of Ideology Apocalyptic Class Politics in Early Roman Palestine written by Anthony Keddie and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Revelations of Ideology, G. Anthony Keddie critically investigates the social motivations and implications of apocalyptic class rhetoric in late Second Temple Judaism, including the Jesus movement.

Download or read book Gospel as Work of Art written by David Brown and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-07 with total page 1057 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lushly illustrated, magisterial exploration of the imaginative truth of the gospel In the modern academy, truth and imagination are thought to be mutually exclusive. But what if truth can spring from other fonts, like art, literature, and invention? The legacy of the Enlightenment favors historical and empirical inquiry above all other methods for searching for truth. But this assumption stymies our theological explorations. Though the historicity of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection is important, it is not of sole importance. For instance, is John’s Gospel any less “true” than the Synoptics just because it’s less historically accurate? David Brown challenges us to expand our understanding of the gospel past source criticism and historical Jesus studies to include works of imagination. Reading Scripture in tandem with works of art throughout the centuries, Brown reenvisions the gospel as an open text. Scholars of theology and biblical studies, freed from literalism, will find new avenues of revelation in Gospel as Work of Art. This volume includes over one hundred color illustrations.

Download or read book The Blessing of Enoch written by Philip Francis Esler and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades the ancient apocalyptic work 1 Enoch has been intensively explored for its historical meaning and its contribution to Israelite and Christ-movement thought and identity. Yet its theological meaning, what it can contribute to understanding of the divine-human interface today, has been neglected by scholarship. This is surprising given that 1 Enoch is Scripture for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches and has been a major influence on Christian theology, experience, and art in Ethiopia since the fifth and sixth centuries CE. This book inaugurates a project in Western scholarship to bring 1 Enoch into theological discussion. It contains a number of essays delivered at meetings in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Cheltenham, England, involving scholars from Ethiopia, Germany, the UK, and the USA. The papers cover topics such as the appropriate theological response to a text that is Scripture for only some Christians; the role of 1 Enoch in Ethiopian ecclesial and theological tradition; the theological potential of 1 Enoch in areas such as the environment, politics, social justice, Christology, persecution, the problem of evil and how 1 Enoch stimulates artistic expression today. The Blessing of Enoch aims to launch a wider discussion on 1 Enoch and contemporary theology.