Download or read book Caesar s Census God s Jubilee written by W. Scott McAndless and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus of Nazareth was born during a census that had been ordered by Caesar Augustus and, because of this census, his parents made a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, arriving just in time for his birth. It is a wonderful story that has inspired millions down through the ages, but it is also a story that has left some very puzzled.Questions abound for many readers of the story who have any knowledge of the history of those times. Questions like:• Did Caesar really conduct a census of the whole world at once?• When did such a census take place?• When is Luke saying that Jesus was born?• Why does Luke say that all the people registered for the census in the places where their ancestors came from?• Doesn't it make more sense to register people where they actually live?• What was the normal Roman procedure for taking censuses?This book is an attempt to work through questions like this is a way that takes the scriptural story seriously but that also deals honestly and openly with what we know about the historical situation. It does this in two ways.RethinkingThis book suggests that we have simply misunderstood some things about Luke's nativity story. This is partly because we have insisted on harmonizing his story with the nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew. It also explores how the Old Testament notion of jubilee might offer a better reason for the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.ReimaginingThe nativity story has been painted and drawn by some of the greatest artists who have ever lived, sung by some of the greatest singers and told by some of the greatest storytellers. A whole rich and well-populated world has grown up around the nativity story—a world so detailed that it seems very real even if much of it has little connection with the Biblical accounts. Because of this, it is not enough to just an attempt to correct a few misunderstandings about the Christmas story. New ideas would seem to attack that entire imaginative world that has grown up around the story over the centuries and would be resisted for that reason alone.Therefore this book also includes some retelling of the Christmas story in short vignettes (called interludes) that help us to imagine the journey of Mary and Joseph within a historical setting that Luke would recognize.Warning: if you read this book, you just might not be able to see the old familiar Christmas story in the same way ever again.
Download or read book God and Caesar written by George Pell and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a deep knowledge of history and human affairs, the essays pinpoint the key issues facing Christians and non-believers in determining the future of modern democratic life
Download or read book Why This Jubilee written by James C. Howell and published by Upper Room Books. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music is such an important part of Advent and Christmas. Can you imagine Advent without "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"? How about Christmas without carols like "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Silent Night," and "Joy to the World"? It pleases the Lord Jesus when we sing of his coming with carols we know by heart. It pleases him even more when we think about the words we are singing. In 24 reflections on well-known carols and Christmas songs, James Howell explores the birth of Jesus. He ponders the meaning of certain phrases from these songs and relates them to our daily lives. The four weeks of devotions are arranged by topic: The Place The Men (Joseph, shepherds, magi) The Mother The Child A guide for weekly discussion is included. Join Howell in this rich remembrance for the Advent and Christmas seasons.
Download or read book End Time Prophecies Revelation written by Jimmy Poon and published by Word Alive Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happened in 2020 is just the beginning of a series of wakeup calls God is sending to mankind regarding the impending tribulations and judgments prophesied about in the Bible which will precede Jesus Christ’s return to Jerusalem. he mysteries of raptures and jubilee cycles (the “seventy sevens” in Daniel 9) have been unsealed. The final seven years of this age, foretold in Daniel 9, will begin in 2025 when the Antichrist will sign a seven-year covenant with Israel. The fourth seal in Revelation 6, predicting massive death by war, violence, pestilence, and famine involving a quarter of the earth, is beginning to open. This book will open your eyes to biblical prophecies to see what has been sealed up until now. Following sound hermeneutic principles, Dr. Poon has decoded all the symbols and metaphors used in the books of Revelation and Daniel so that the events which will happen between now and 2032 have been written in plain language for all to understand. Through a Jewish perspective, he explains how Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled in Revelation, even digging into the original text on certain key words. This is a must-read for our generation.
Download or read book Reading Acts in the Discourses of Masculinity and Politics written by Eric Barreto and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the Acts of the Apostles through two lenses that highlight the two topics of masculinity and politics. Acts is rich in relevant material, whether this be in the range of such characters as the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Peter and Paul, or in situations such as Timothy's circumcision and Paul's encounters with Roman rulers in different cities. Engaging Acts from these two distinct but related perspectives illuminates features of this book which are otherwise easily missed. These approaches provide fresh angles to see how men, masculinity, and imperial loyalty were understood, experienced, and constructed in the ancient world and in earliest Christianity. The essays present a range of topics: some engage with Acts as a whole as in Steve Walton's chapter on the way Luke-Acts perceives the Roman Empire, while others focus on particular sections, passages, and even certain figures, such as in an Christopher Stroup's analysis of the circumcision of Timothy. Together, the essays provide a tightly woven and deeply textured analysis of Acts. The dialogue form of essay and response will encourage readers to develop their own critiques of the points raised in the collection as a whole.
Download or read book Holy Bible NIV written by Various Authors, and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 6793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.
Download or read book Baxter s Explore the Book written by J. Sidlow Baxter and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 1846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.
Download or read book The Justice Demand written by Ronald J. J. Wong and published by Graceworks. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where is social justice in the Gospel? Where is social justice in the Singapore Church? These are the two main questions this book seeks to explore. Through the recount of the author's journey of discovering social justice in the Bible, on the streets of Singapore, in the long history of the Singapore and global Church, a survey of local Christians and interviews with Christian justice-seekers and pastors, this book challenges the Singapore Church, as God's Kingdom community, to reclaim biblical social justice as an integral facet of living the Gospel and manifesting God's Kingdom.
Download or read book Seeing Like a State written by James C. Scott and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University
Download or read book Church and State in 21st Century Britain written by R. Morris and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Church establishment largely locked in the geopolitics of the late 17th century, this study examines the case for change. How should the constitution respond to an ever more pluralized society; what are the implications for the religious character of the monarchy? This book helps readers consider such questions and reach their own judgments.
Download or read book Remembering Jesus written by Allen Verhey and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2005-06-14 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of the "What Would Jesus Do?" movement, Allen Verhey's Remembering Jesus takes a serious look at what Jesus really did and what he might do in the strange world of contemporary ethics. Verhey asserts that following Jesus requires remembering him, and this entails immersing ourselves in Scripture and Christian community, where the memory of Jesus is found. This book, which promises to be Verhy's magnum opus, explores how Christians can practice medical, sexual, economic, and political ethics with integrity. An ideal text for courses in Christian ethics, Remembering Jesus is also a valuable resource for pastors and general readers in search of readable, biblically based guidance for living in today's complex world.
Download or read book A Light to the Centurions written by Robert R. Beck and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Robert Beck proposes to read Luke-Acts from the perspective of its implied reader. In making this reader a gentile sympathetic to Judaism, like the “God-fearing” centurions inscribed in his text, Luke reverses the empire-critical narrative perspectives of Mark and Matthew. And yet he profoundly challenges imperial cultural values. Luke launches his double narrative with Jesus’ proclamation in the Nazareth synagogue. In lieu of the tradition of Ezra with its safeguarding customs, this programmatic announcement promises a path to the gentiles in the tradition of Third Isaiah, with both its releases and its risks. Luke shows a way for the outsider to enter into the traditions of Israel, and not replace them. This reading regards the full narrative sweep of Luke’s double work. It yields a fresh look at his Gospel, as well as the largely neglected narrative structure of Acts.
Download or read book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church written by Alan Kreider and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why did the early church grow in the first four hundred years despite disincentives, harassment, and occasional persecution? In this unique historical study, veteran scholar Alan Kreider delivers the fruit of a lifetime of study as he tells the amazing story of the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Challenging traditional understandings, Kreider contends the church grew because the virtue of patience was of central importance in the life and witness of the early Christians. They wrote about patience, not evangelism, and reflected on prayer, catechesis, and worship, yet the church grew--not by specific strategies but by patient ferment.
Download or read book Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism written by Stanley E. Porter and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism, Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts assemble an international team of scholars whose work has focused on reconstructing the social matrix for earliest Christianity through reference to Hellenistic Judaism and its literary forms.
Download or read book Luke s Characters in their Jewish World written by Jenny Read-Heimerdinger and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jenny Read-Heimerdinger explores the characters of Luke-Acts in order to situate them in the Jewish world to which they belong. Through a close reading of the Greek text, she argues that Luke emerges as a person thoroughly steeped in a Jewish view of Scripture, familiar with a range of associated oral traditions; and that taking account of the Jewish features allows new insights into the way that the author situates events and characters firmly within the history of Israel, before the Church was a separate institution or religion. Read-Heimerdinger proposes that such a view of his work implies an addressee capable of understanding what he received and that one eminently qualified candidate is Theophilus, the high priest in Jerusalem 37-41 and brother-in-law of Caiaphas. The Jewish perspective of Luke's two volumes is more visible in forms of the text not used for modern translations, notably that of Codex Bezae and the early versions, which are rejected by the editors of the Greek New Testament on which translations are based. Read-Heimerdinger draws on the analysis of the variants of the Greek text analysed in her previous Luke in his Own Words (2022), in a manner more accessible to readers unfamiliar with Greek. The variant readings make use of a sophisticated knowledge of Jewish exegetical techniques that would generally be discarded by later generations of Christians but which are increasingly being recognized by NT scholars, in line with Jewish historical studies of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. Seeing the characters of Luke-Acts through Theophilus' eyes brings exciting insights and a fresh understanding of the author's message.
Download or read book The Flavians written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in the LACTOR Sourcebooks in Ancient History series offers a generous selection of primary texts on the Flavians, with accompanying maps, glossary and explanatory notes. It provides for the needs of students at schools and universities who are studying ancient history in English translation and has been written and reviewed by experienced teachers. The texts selected include extracts from the important literary sources but also numerous inscriptions, coins, inscriptions, papyri and extracts from legal texts, many of these being otherwise difficult for students to access.
Download or read book Rome in the Bible and the Early Church written by Peter S. Oakes and published by Paternoster. This book was released on 2002 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Six notable scholars illuminate key aspects of Rome and its impact on early Christianity, emphasizing Roman culture, Roman authority, and the Christian community in Rome.
