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Francis Watson “Agape, Eros, Gender: Towards a Pauline Sexual Ethic"
Cambridge University Press | 2000-01-13 | ISBN: 052166263X | 278 pages | PDF | 1,7 Mb



Issues of gender and sexuality have recently come to the fore in all humanities disciplines, and this book reflects this broad interdisciplinary situation. It focuses on issues of gender and sexuality (eros) in the light of the comprehensive divine-human love (agape) which, for the New Testament, lies at the heart of Christian faith and practice. The intention is to outline a distinctively Christian understanding of the male/female relationship reflecting the priority of agape over eros. Key Pauline texts are read alongside modern texts by Virginia Woolf, Freud and Irigaray.



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Bart D. Ehrman, "The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings"
Oxford University Press (1997) | English | ISBN 0195084810 | 460 pages | DjVu | 13.7 MB

This lucid introduction approaches the New Testament from a consistently historical and comparative perspective, emphasizing the rich diversity of the earliest Christian literature. Rather than shying away from the critical problems presented by these books, Ehrman addresses the historical and literary challenges they pose and shows why scholars continue to argue over such significant issues as how the books of the New Testament came into being, who produced them, what they mean, how they relate to contemporary Christian and non-Christian literature, and how they came to be collected into a canon of Scripture.

Distinctive to this study is its emphasis on the historical, literary, and religious milieu of the Greco-Roman world, including early Judaism. As part of its historical orientation, this text also discusses works by other Christian writers who were roughly contemporary with the New Testament, such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the letters of Ignatius. Instead of simply setting forth scholarly views without explanations, Ehrman includes the evidence that scholars have found persuasive for their views, engaging students and demonstrating why scholars have taken the positions they have. Ideal for undergraduate and seminary classes in the New Testament, biblical studies, and Christian origins, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings is an accessible, clearly written introduction that encourages students to consider the historical issues surrounding these writings. Ehrman's The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader serves as an ideal companion to this text. [Cover (above) from the 4th edition]



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Arthur E. Palumbo, Jr., "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Personages of Earliest Christianity"
Algora Publishing (2004) | English | ISBN 0875862969 | 317 pages | PDF | 1.83 MB

Who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? Paleographical dating has tended to downplay the Scrolls' importance and to distance them from the personages of earliest Christianity, but a carefully worked out theory based on radiocarbon dating and other tests connects Scroll allusions to personages and events in a specific time period and suggests a new view on how and why the Romans crucified Jesus. Part I of this study is an attempt to deal more realistically with the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls; very few scholars have ever examined the period from 37 BC to AD 71 as the possible setting for the scrolls. Nevertheless, everyone would admit the existence of scroll allusions that only have real relevance in this time period. Part II takes up Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity.

Admittedly, the explanation put forward in this work as to how and why the Romans crucified Jesus is a surprising one and we will not divulge it in this synopsis. However, the way the author sees it, if something like that explanation did not take place, then it is simply inexplicable why the Romans would have crucified Jesus - a peaceful teacher and healer - as a rebel. The only alternative would then have to be that the historical Jesus was really a political revolutionary who attempted in some way to free Israel from the Romans and become its King, a theory that has been offered in various forms beginning in the 18th century. But if he was indeed a rebel, then the later Christians, who strenuously strove to live at peace with Rome, must have been the actual creators of the pacifistic Jesus of the New Testament -- and these unique and time-honored teachings of peace, non-violence, and love were fabrications. That seems less credible than the compelling hypothesis proposed in this work.



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Daniel Boyari, "Sparks of the Logos: Essays in Rabbinic Hermeneutics" (The Brill Reference Library of Judaism)
Brill Academic Publishers (2003) | English | ISBN 9004126287 | 317 pages | PDF | 2.08 MB

There are two major themes running through the essays reprinted in this book: the first is the typological relation of rabbinic Judaism to Christianity, while the second is the re-animation, by going back to the roots, of a rabbinic Judaism that would not manifest some of the deleterious social ideologies and practices that modern orthodox Judaism generally does, a project that was thought of as "radical orthodoxy," long before that term achieved its current—and almost diametrically opposing—sense among Christian theologians.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of several essays on midrash, exploring various aspects of rabbinic culture and their relation to hermeneutic practices. These papers are essentially more detailed studies of particular issues that were raised in two of Boyarin's books, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash and Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley, 1993). The second part of the book consists of reprints of four essays published in the journal Diacritics during that same decade. The material treated in the book should be of interest to historians of Judaism and Christianity, Talmudists, and scholars and readers interested in the cultural study of religion.

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Jacob Neusner, "Rabbinic Narrative: A Documentary Perspective, Vol. 1, 2 & 3" (The Brill Reference Library of Judaism)
Brill Academic Publishers (2003) | English | ISBN 9004130233 (v.1), 9004130349 (v.2), 9004130357 (v.3) | PDF | 3.32 MB

Each Rabbinic document, from the Mishnah through the Bavli, defines itself by a unique combination of indicative traits of rhetoric, topic, and particular logic that governs its coherent discourse. But narratives in the same canonical compilations do not conform to the documentary indicators that govern in these compilations, respectively. They form an anomaly for the documentary reading of the Rabbinic canon of the formative age.

To remove that anomaly, this project classifies the types and forms of narratives and shows that particular documents exhibit distinctive preferences among those types. This detailed, systematic classification of Rabbinic narrative supplies these facts concerning the classification of narratives and their regularities: [1] what are the types and forms of narrative in a given document? [2] how are these distinctive types and forms of narrative distributed across the canonical documents of the formative age, the first six centuries C.E.? The answers for the documentary preferences are in Volumes One through Three, for the Mishnah-Tosefta, the Tannaite Midrash-compilations, and Rabbah-Midrash-compilations, respectively. This project opens an entirely new road toward the documentary analysis of Rabbinic narrative. It fills out an important chapter in the documentary hypothesis of the Rabbinic canon in the formative age.



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Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions
ABC-CLIO | 2007-11-15 | ISBN: 1851099808 | 665 pages | PDF | 7,6 MB

There are few subjects that interest us more than love, yet for all the ways we use and abuse the notion, just what is love? It bears such profound importance in so much of human religiosity yet are we prepared to offer a definition for it? This volume will surely be of great use to those of us who are thirsting to understand love's place in the teachings of the great religions. Every library should invest in a copy. I believe it's destined to be one of those important, comprehensive resources that must not be overlooked.



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Kenneth L. Schenck, "Cosmology and Eschatology in Hebrews: The Settings of the Sacrifice" (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series)
Cambridge University Press (2007) | English | ISBN 0521883237 | 236 pages | PDF | 2.54 MB

Scholars argue over where Hebrews fits in the first century world. Kenneth L. Schenck works towards resolving this question by approaching Hebrews' cosmology and eschatology from a text-orientated perspective. After observing that the key passages in the background debate mostly relate to the 'settings' of the story of salvation history evoked by Hebrews, Schenck attempts to delineate those settings by asking how the 'rhetorical world' of Hebrews engages that underlying narrative. Hebrews largely argues from an eschatology of two ages, which correspond to two covenants. The new age has come despite the continuance of some old age elements. The most characteristic elements of Hebrews' settings, however, are its spatial settings, where we find an underlying metaphysical dualism between the highest heaven, which is the domain of spirit, and the created realm, including the created heavens. This creation will be removed at the eschaton, leaving only the unshakeable heaven.

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Carter Lindberg, "Love: A Brief History Through Western Christianity" (Blackwell Brief Histories of Religion)
Blackwell Publishing (2008) | English | ISBN 063123599X | 208 pages | PDF | 1.20 MB

Love in all its guises has been debated since the beginning of recorded history. Its fascinating evolution in Western culture is traced here in this concise history; one which spans the depth and complexity of this elusive topic. By examining the significant lives, works, and movements associated with love, this enlightening little book contributes valuable insights into one of history's most inexhaustible and timeless topics. From the theological and philosophical texts of figures such as Augustine, Luther, and Feuerbach to intellectual movements like Romanticism and tragic historic figures like Abelard and Heloise, Love: A Brief History Through Western Christianity propels the reader across 3,000 years of the idea of love.

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Nils Arne Pedersen, "Demonstrative Proof in Defence of God: A Study of Titus of Bostra's Contra Manichaeos" (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies)
Brill (2004) | English | ISBN 9004138838 | 595 pages | PDF | 1.83 MB

This volume is the first extensive study of a Christian work from the 4th century, Titus of Bostra's "Contra Manichaeos, which is the only text from the early Greek Church setting out a comprehensive theodicy.The study illuminates the text's relation to contemporary theology and philosophy and interprets it in the light of the ideological conflicts between pagans, Catholic Christians and Manichaeans in the 4th century. It includes an examination of the possible Manichaean sources used by Titus, and, furthermore, a critical text study and translation of central passages in "Contra Manichaeos, based both on the Greek text and the Syriac version of it.



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James H. Charlesworth, "The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Princeton Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls"
Baylor University Press (2006) | 3 volume set | English | ISBN 1932792783 | 1598 pages | PDF | 6.61 MB

The recovery of 800 documents in the eleven caves on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea is one of the most sensational archeological discoveries in the Holy Land to date. These three volumes, the very best of critical scholarship, demonstrate in detail how the scrolls have revolutionized our knowledge of the text of the Bible, the character of Second Temple Judaism, and the Jewish beginnings of Christianity.



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