Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination

 

Amos N Wilder

Academic Renewal Press, 2001 - 106 pages

Many today have difficulty in relating to religious language. This can happen when we reduce religious meaning to a specific kind of spiritual experience or give undue importance to one aspect of human life. The reduction of life to human will or intellect is often accompanied by the turn to mystical practices and cults. Amos Wilder calls for a renewal of our deep religious imagination as we reflect on biblical faith and on the basic needs and longings of contemporary persons. This requires a new appreciation for mystery and for deep speaking to deep. Wilder assumes that the depths of biblical truth have scarcely begun to be plumbed and have untapped power to renew life even in our technological Western societies. This requires that we go beyond the objective, surface meaning to the deeper orientation: Before the message, the vision; before the sermon, the hymn; before the prose, the poem. --Amos Wilder Chapter titles: 1.Theology and Theopoetic 2.The Recovery of the Sacred 3.Contemporary Mythologies and Theological Renewal 4.Traditional Pieties and the Religious Imagination 5.Ecstasy, Imagination, and Insight 6.Theopoetic and Mythopoetic Sparks of wit and insight make Theopoetic a notable monument to the ongoing vitality of Wilder's lifelong determination to remain faithful both to the biblical witness and the imperatives of the imagination. -- Journal of the American Academy of Religion This is a wise and unpretentious book. . .it offers no fancy programs or catchy formulas. Its prescription for our spiritual illness, far from being some esoteric pilgrimage, is the long and unspectacular remedy of developing spiritual health. -- The Christian Century For most of his career, Amos Niven Wilder taught at Harvard Divinity School. A former president of the Society of Biblical Literature, his books remain influential in bringing together the disciplines of biblical studies, theology, literature, and mythical imagination.

 

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Isaiah 13-27: A Continental Commentary

Hans Wildberger

Fortress Press, 1990 - 624 pages

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Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash

Hermann Leberecht Strack, Günter Stemberger

Fortress Press, 1991 - 472 pages

Gunter Stemberger's revision of H. L. Strack's classic introduction to rabbinic literature, which appeared in its first English edition in 1991, was widely acclaimed. Gunter Stemberger and Markus Bockmuehl have now produced this updated edition, which is a significant revision (completed in 1996) of the 1991 volume. Following Strack's original outline, Stemberger discusses first the historical framework, the basic principles of rabbinic literature and hermeneutics and the most important Rabbis. The main part of the book is devoted to the Talmudic and Midrashic literature in the light of contemporary rabbinic research. The appendix includes a new section on electronic resources for the study of the Talmud and Midrash. The result is a comprehensive work of reference that no student of rabbinics can afford to be without.

 

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The Anchor Bible: The Wisdom of Ben Sira, Volume 39

Alexander Di Lella, Patrick W. Skehan

Doubleday, 1987 - 620 pages

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The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary

 

Paul F. Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, L. Edward Phillips, Harold W. Attridge

Fortress Press, 2002 - 249 pages

 

"The anonymous early church order that became known as the Apostolic Tradition and conventionally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome has generated enormous scholarly discussion since its discovery in the nineteenth century. Surprisingly, however, there has never before been a comprehensive commentary on it such as there is for other patristic works. We have here attempted to remedy this defect, and at the same time we have offered the first full synoptic presentation in English of the various witnesses to its text. We have also taken the opportunity to develop our argument that it is neither the work of Hippolytus nor of any other individual. Instead, we believe that it is a composite document made up of a number of layers and strands of diverse provenance and compiled over a period of time, and therefore not representing the practice of any one Christian community."? from the Preface This Hermeneia volume provides an important contribution to New Testament research as well as the study of the patristic era.

 

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Leadership Succession in the World of the Pauline Circle

 

Perry Leon Stepp

Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited, 2006-06-30 - 227 pages

Since New Testament times, the discussion of leadership succession in the church has always been polemical. But what the New Testament, especially in the Pastoral Epistles, means in speaking of succession deserves a more sober investigation in the light of the literary tradition about succession in the ancient Mediterranean world. How is succession actually depicted in Graeco-Roman texts and in Jewish and early Christian texts of that world? This book undertakes, for the first time, a thoroughgoing analysis of the evidence, deftly laying out the data from a wide range of Greek and Roman writers. The question then becomes how the early readers of the New Testament, conditioned by prior knowledge of such epistolary and other literary conventions, would have interpreted Paul's relationship with his delegates like Timothy and Titus, and how they would have conceived the ministry portrayed in the Pastorals as passing from a leader to a successor. Stepp's study has important implications both for our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world and for our conceptions of ordination and ministry in the New Testament.

 

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To the Hebrews

George Wesley Buchanan

Doubleday, 1972 - 271 pages

The New Testament letter to the Hebrews carried much-needed encouragement and advice for Jewish converts to Christianity in the late first century. Composed in an exquisite style, Hebrews urged new Christians to hold fast to their new faith lest they lose their opportunity to witness the long-awaited fulfillment of God's covenant with Israel. The sage and persuasive Christian writer draws analogies between the heroes and drama of Jewish sacred Scriptures and first-century Christian experience. With the rich heritage of Jewish Christians in mind, he implores his readers not to lose faith during trials and tribulations. The unswerving faith of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and the prophets serves as an example for them not to forsake God's covenant and incur God's judgment. He praises Jesus as the ultimate, once-and-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world, the means of a renewed relationship with God.

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Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature

Annette Yoshiko Reed

Cambridge University Press, 2005-11-28 - 318 pages

 

This book considers the early history of Jewish-Christian relations focussing on traditions about the fallen angels. In the Book of the Watchers, an Enochic apocalypse from the third century BCE, the 'sons of God' of Gen 6:1-4 are accused of corrupting humankind through their teachings of metalworking, cosmetology, magic, and divination. By tracing the transformations of this motif in Second Temple, Rabbinic, and early medieval Judaism and early, late antique, and Byzantine Christianity, this book sheds light on the history of interpretation of Genesis, the changing status of Enochic literature, and the place of parabiblical texts and traditions in the interchange between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In the process, it explores issues such as the role of text-selection in the delineation of community boundaries and the development of early Jewish and Christian ideas about the origins of evil on the earth.

 

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Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible

Brevard S. Childs

Fortress Press, 2011-04-01 - 774 pages

This monumental work is the first comprehensive biblical theology to appear in many years and is the culmination of Brevard Child's lifelong commitment to constructing a biblical theology that surmounts objections to the discipline raised over the past generation.Childs rejects any approaches that overstress either the continuity or discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments. He refuses to follow the common pattern in Christian thought of identifying biblical theology with the New Testament's interest in the Old. Rather, Childs maps out an approach that reflects on the whole Christian Bible with its two very different voices, each of which retains continuing integrity and is heard on its own terms.

 

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Haggai, Zechariah 1-8

 

Carol L. Meyers, Eric M. Meyers

Yale University Press, 2004-01-07 - 552 pages

 

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A Biblical Theology of Exile

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

Fortress Press, 2002 - 209 pages

The Christian church continues to seek ethical and spiritual models from the period of Israel's monarchy and has avoided the gravity of the Babylonian exile. Against this tradition, the author argues that the period of focus for the canonical construction of biblical thought is precisely the exile. Here the voices of dissent arose and articulated words of truth in the context of failed power.

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The Wisdom of Solomon

 

David Winston

Doubleday, 1987 - 359 pages

Anchor Bible Commentary 

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The Early Enoch Literature

Gabriele Boccaccini, John Joseph Collins

BRILL, 2007 - 367 pages

In recent years there has been a lively debate about the early Enoch literature and its place in Judaism. This volume is intended to represent that debate, by juxtaposing pairs of articles on several key issues: the textual evidence, the relationship to the Torah, the calendar, the relation to wisdom, the relation to the temple, the sociological setting and the relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is not the intention of the editors to impose a consensus, but rather to stimulate discussion by bringing together divergent viewpoints. The book should be a useful textbook not only on the Enoch literature and apocalypticism, but more generally on Second Temple Judaism.

 

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Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Parting of the Ways Between Qumran and Enochic Judaism

 

Gabriele Boccaccini

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998 - 230 pages

 

Respected scholar Gabriele Boccaccini here offers readers a new and challenging view of the ideology of the Qumran sect, the community closely related with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Boccaccini moves beyond the Essene hypothesis and posits a unique relationship between what he terms "Enochic Judaism" and the group traditionally known as the Essenes. Building his case on what the ancient records tell us about the Essenes and on a systematic analysis of the documents found at Qumran, Boccaccini argues that the literature betrays the core of an ancient and distinct variety of Second Temple Judaism. Tracing the development of this tradition, Boccaccini shows that the Essene community at Qumran was really the offspring of the Enochic party, which in turn contributed to the birth of parties led by John the Baptist and Jesus. Convincingly argued, this work will surely spark fresh debate in the discussion on the Qumran community and their famous writings.

 

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Theology of the Psalms

 

Hans-Joachim Kraus

Fortress Press, 1992 - 235 pages

 

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Elusions of Control: Biblical Law on the Words of Women

Jione Havea

BRILL, 2003 - 223 pages

The very utterance of a vow both brings the vow into existence and makes possible its annulment. How difficult is it for a woman to keep her vows when her father or husband has the right to break them?Inspired by the transoceanic experiences of South Pacific islanders, Havea explores the circularity of vow-making and vow-breaking and performs a" circumreading, "reading around and" across legal and narrative biblical texts.

 From Numbers 30, where women's vows are regulated, to various narratives where women's words are monitored, this circumreading exposes the ways in which words elude control and control eludes words within the world of the text and in the very act of reading itself and demonstrates an alternative "transtextual" way to read biblical law.

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The Pauline Epistles

 

John Muddiman, John Barton

Oxford University Press, 2010-04-22 - 292 pages

 

The Oxford Bible Commentary is a Bible study and reference work for 21st century students and readers that can be read with any modern translation of the Bible. It offers verse-by-verse explanation of every book of the Bible by the world's leading biblical scholars. From its inception, OBC has been designed as a completely non-denominational commentary, carefully written and edited to provide the best scholarship in a readable style for readers from all different faith backgrounds. It uses the traditional historical-critical method to search for the original meaning of the texts, but also brings in new perspectives and insights - literary, sociological, and cultural - to bring out the expanding meanings of these ancient writings and stimulate new discussion and further enquiry. Newly issued in a series of part volumes, the OBC is now available in an affordable and portable format for the commentaries to the Pauline Epistles. Includes a general introduction to using the Commentary, in addition to an introduction to study of the New Testament, and to the Pauline Corpus in particular.

 

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Isaiah 40-55: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary

 

Joseph Blenkinsopp

Doubleday, 2002 - 411 pages

 

Scholars have traditionally isolated three distinct sections of what is known as the Book of Isaiah, and in Isaiah 40—55, distinguished biblical scholar Joseph Blenkinsopp provides a new translation and critical commentary on the section usually referred to as Second or Deutero Isaiah. The second volume in a three-volume commentary, it easily maintains the high standards of academic excellence established by Isaiah 1—39.Second Isaiah was written in the sixth century b.c.e., in the years just before the fall of the mighty Babylonian Empire, by an anonymous prophet whom history has erroneously identified with the real Isaiah (born ca. 765 b.c.e.). Scholars know Second Isaiah was written by someone other than Isaiah because the contexts of these prophecies are so very different. When Second Isaiah was written, the prophet believed that Israel’s time of suffering was drawing to a close. There was, he insisted, a new age upon them, a time of hope, peace, and renewed national prosperity. The main thrust of the prophet’s argument was intended to rally the spirits of a people devastated by war and conquest. One of the most famous examples of this optimistic tone is the well-known and beloved Song of the Suffering Servant, which is found in Chapters 52—53, and about which Blenkinsopp has some challenging new ideas. The final chapters of Second Isaiah, however, are in an entirely different key as it becomes clear that the new world the prophet foresaw earlier was not going to come to pass. This despair finds its most poignant expression in the final section of the Book of Isaiah, which Blenkinsopp will address in his forthcoming third volume.

 

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Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and in Matthew

 

Leslie W. Walck

Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010-07-31 - 216 pages

An examination of all the relevant passages containing the term "Son of Man" in both Matthew and the Parables of Enoch.

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Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity

 

Luke Timothy Johnson

Yale University Press, 2009-11-10 - 461 pages

The question of Christianity’s relation to the other religions of the world is more pertinent and difficult today than ever before. While Christianity’s historical failure to appreciate or actively engage Judaism is notorious, Christianity’s even more shoddy record with respect to “pagan” religions is less understood. Christians have inherited a virtually unanimous theological tradition that thinks of paganism in terms of demonic possession, and of Christian missions as a rescue operation that saves pagans from inherently evil practices.

In undertaking this fresh inquiry into early Christianity and Greco-Roman paganism, Luke Timothy Johnson begins with a broad definition of religion as a way of life organized around convictions and experiences concerning ultimate power. In the tradition of William James’s Variety of Religious Experience, he identifies four distinct ways of being religious: religion as participation in benefits, as moral transformation, as transcending the world, and as stabilizing the world. Using these criteria as the basis for his exploration of Christianity and paganism, Johnson finds multiple points of similarity in religious sensibility. 

Christianity’s failure to adequately come to grips with its first pagan neighbors, Johnson asserts, inhibits any effort to engage positively with adherents of various world religions.  This thoughtful and passionate study should help break down the walls between Christianity and other religious traditions.

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