LITMIR.BIZ

"One of the great joys of the academic life is to pay homage in a Festschrift to a scholar who has influenced both colleagues and students over years of interaction and friendship both professional and personal. This volume honors a scholar and theologian of historical theology, a theorist and a practitioner of religion and the arts, and a keen analyst of cultural trends both ancient and modern. . . . "[Margaret R.] Miles's prodigious production as a scholar has legendary qualities. Her dozen-plus books alone explore history, patristics, ancient philosophy, art and art history, spiritual formation and religious practice, critical theory, film, ethics and values, personal growth, gender and women's studies, as well as her true academic loves, Augustine and Plotinus. . . . The breadth and depth of her own work and her influence upon others demands an expansive volume, which the editors of this Festschrift unfortunately had to restrict to four categories–Historical Theology, Religion and Culture, Religion and Gender, and Religion and the Visual Arts–in order to capture the heart of our appreciation for her." –from the Introduction

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Harry S. Guntrip was best known for his affiliation with two famous psychoanalysts from what is known as the British Independent tradition of psychoanalysis in England: Ronald Fairbairn and Donald Winnicott. This book traces the various influences on the development of his clinical and theological thinking in context of the historical tension between religion and psychoanalysis. The central feature of his development will be demonstrated as a series of polarities, both theoretical and personal, conflicts with which he wrestled theologically, psychologically, and interpersonally on the professional level and in his own personal psychoanalyses. A critical evaluation of the outcome of Guntrip's own personal psychoanalyses with Fairbairn and Winnicott will demonstrate the autobiographical nature of his theoretical analysis of schizoid phenomena: a psychological state of self-preoccupation and way of being in the world. –from the Introduction

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Discussions of the Pentateuch still progress in the shadow of Wellhausen's classic source theory known as the Documentary Hypothesis. The theory continues to stimulate a lively and informative exchange in pentateuchal circles, even in the face of significant adjustments to the hypothesis and its alleged abandonment by some. In the midst of this discussion, the priestly literature holds a unique position as the most identifiable of the sources of the Pentateuch. Nevertheless, clarity regarding the character of the Priestly source has been obscured by the disjunction between the P narratives in Genesis and the predominantly legal material assigned to P in the rest of the Pentateuch. This book addresses that disjunction by recognizing the priestly narrative in the book of Genesis as a unique document, which has been incorporated into the larger Priestly source. This discovery also serves to bring further clarity to the redactional relationship between P and H. As a result, this study enriches our understanding of the priestly writings in the Pentateuch.

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In the book of Acts divine involvement is everywhere. From the beginning God is responsible for promised action, including the geographic expansion–"in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (1:7)–referenced in Jesus' response to the disciples, clearly related to Luke's purpose in writing the book. Geographic expansion, however, is only the second part of Jesus' reply. Is it possible that the first half of Jesus' reply–"It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority"–has even greater bearing on the actions that follow and on Luke's purpose? Is the Father setting times and seasons related to the kingdom's establishment? Does this phrase explain the conspicuous divine involvement throughout the plot? In Restoring the Kingdom, Michael Salmeier answers these questions in the affirmative by exploring Luke's characterization of God in three strands: God as the King who establishes and restores Israel's king, who establishes his people, and who directs events. This unfolds Luke's purpose in assuring the reader concerning the events that have taken place, helping to more fully illuminate Luke's theology concerning God and his kingdom.

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Jesus was a Jew, living in a Jewish culture and under Jewish laws, laws that governed the people of Israel at a time of conflict with their Roman overlords. A Book of Evidence takes into consideration the history of first-century Jerusalem and is a unique presentation of the passion event, written from a Jewish legal standpoint. Find out why and how Jesus came to trial, how the politics of the age and a corrupt government played a role in bringing him to death. An examination of the numerous crimes of which Jesus was accused results in a reasonable explanation of the real blasphemy that caused him to be executed, and an investigation into «crucifixion» as it was known during first-century Jewish law. Was the Jewish trial legal? Was it a trial at all? Was there a Roman trial or a simple hearing? Where was the real execution site and burial tomb? All these questions are answered in this gripping book. Follow, step by step, along the path of Jesus during the Passover, from the Garden of Gethsemane, through the trials, to the brutality of the execution, and on to the garden tomb at Bethphage from which he was resurrected!

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In ancient religion and societies the concept of purity was of central importance; in many modern societies it is either irrelevant or, when it is used, attached to extremely conservative agendas. This suggests an interesting story to be told within the history of ideas and, at the same time, raises questions about the place, meaning, and use of purity in religious traditions. What does purity mean in different scriptural contexts? Is it synonymous with holiness or different? How has it been used within various strands of theology? What should we make of it today? Have we moderns, by discarding purity as an organizing social form, lost something essential or made a significant moral advance? Or both? This volume begins to address these questions in essays on biblical genres and books, and different theological traditions. Accessibly written and incisive in its scholarship, it will be of interest to both specialists and non-specialists alike.

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New Testament scholarship uncovers much about first-century Christianity. Early Christian masters such as Origen and Augustine draw great attention to the third and following centuries. Yet oddly, despite this flood of attention to both the first century and to the third and later centuries, the second century often escapes notice, this despite its almost living memory of Jesus and his apostles from only a generation or two prior. A distinctive biblical exegesis was used by those second-century apologists who challenged Greco-Roman pagan religionists. Along with introducing the general shape of this ancient apologetic exegesis, Ancient Apologetic Exegesis aims at its recovery as well. Current literature often misunderstands or dismisses second-century exegetical approaches. But by looking behind anachronistic views of ancient genre, literacy, and rhetoric, we can rediscover a forgotten form of early Christian exegesis.

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The Greek family of words characterizing the doctrine of «justification by faith» (as it is known in English) is most prominent in the writings of the Apostle Paul. It was this doctrine that lay at the heart of the sixteenth-century Reformation; Martin Luther and his followers considered it to be at the very center of the gospel. Protestants came to understand «justification» differently from the Catholic Church they had left. Instead of the Catholic «realist» view, in which God makes a sinner righteous, they came to a «forensic» understanding, by which God, as judge, declares a sinner righteous. During the nineteenth century a third, «relational» view began to emerge: it viewed «justification» as God's gift of a right relationship to a sinner. This monograph examines Paul's concept from three perspectives: the New Testament data; the way the doctrine has developed historically; and how the doctrine has been expressed in English translations of the Scriptures. The author concludes that it is the relational view that most accurately depicts Paul's concept of «justification.»

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In Christ Died for Our Sins, Jarvis J. Williams argues a twofold thesis: First, that Paul in Romans presents Jesus' death as both a representation of, and a substitute for, Jews and Gentiles. Second, that the Jewish martyrological narratives in certain Second Temple Jewish texts are a background behind Paul's presentation of Jesus' death. By means of careful textual analysis, Williams argues that the Jewish martyrological narratives appropriated and applied Levitical cultic language and Isaianic language to the deaths of the Torah-observant Jewish martyrs in order to present their deaths as a representation, a substitution, and as Israel's Yom Kippur for non-Torah-observant Jews. Williams seeks to show that Paul appropriated and applied this same language and conceptuality in order to present Jesus' death as the death of a Torah-observant Jew serving as a representation, a substitution, and as the Yom Kippur for both Jews and Gentiles. Scholars working in the areas of Romans, Pauline theology, Second Temple Judaism, atonement in Paul, or early Christian origins will find much to stimulate and provoke in these pages.

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A Dangerous Mind is a celebration of the ideas and influence of Delbert L. Wiens. It contains tributes to him, essays inspired by him, and some of his unpublished works. This effort has been brought together by his students, colleagues, and friends at the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his «New Wineskins for Old Wine,» which hoped to guide the Mennonite Brethren as they faced the challenges of modernity–it has proven useful for other denominations facing similar transitions. This year also marks the sixtieth anniversary of Delbert's foundation of the Mennonite mission in Vietnam. In addition to celebrating his ideas and influence through our writing, we have also endeavored to capture the spirit of his work through art illustrating each section of this volume.

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