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What Noam Chomsky did for political commentary, and Stephen Hawking did for cosmology, Donald Harman Akenson does for the Bible and its interpreters - and the resulting conclusions are just as astounding. Surpassing Wonder illuminates how the greatest cultural artifacts of our civilization are related to one another and constitute the very core of our consciousness.
What Noam Chomsky did for political commentary, and Stephen Hawking did for cosmology, Donald Harman Akenson does for the Bible and its interpreters, and the resulting conclusions are just as astounding. Surpassing Wonder illuminates how the greatest cultural artifacts of our civilization are related to one another and constitute the very core of our consciousness. With biting irreverence for denominational prejudices and the pretensions of academics, Akenson renews our sense of awe before these religious works. He challenges received doctrines, arguing that the ancient Jews were indeed idol worshippers and that Saint Paul did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth or in the virgin birth. With wit, elegance, and clarity Surpassing Wonder makes the ancient Hebrew scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and the Talmuds of the Rabbis accessible to all and shows they can be understood only in relation to each other and against their specific historical settings. Akenson argues that each of the great texts must be considered as the product of a single author and thus as a religious invention - that is, as a self-consciously formed unity rather than an anthology of disparate works. He also argues that the great inventor of the Hebrew scriptures should be credited with constructing the very concept of narrative history and thus the foundations of Western civilization. Using a rich and imagistic language that combines tractor mechanics, Winnie-the-Pooh, and architecture with analogies from astronomy, evolutionary biology, and economics, Akenson brings about nothing less than a radical reformation of how to think about the sacred texts. He restores their spiritual power through a just appreciation of the achievement of their authors while leaving readers to decide for themselves on the presence of a "guiding hand." Surpassing Wonder is a penetrating study of the historian's craft and a brilliant exposé of how theologians and biblical scholars abuse historical reasoning and evidence in their treatment of the sacred texts. Just as a previous reformation cast out the priestly intercessors, so Akenson casts the scholars out of the temple and lets readers in to see the texts anew. In so doing he reinvests religion with meaning for a contemporary world and shows us how Western civilization was created not by the Greeks of Athens or the patricians of Rome but by the desert worshippers of Yahweh.
What Noam Chomsky did for political commentary, and Stephen Hawking did for cosmology, Donald Harman Akenson does for the Bible and its interpreters, and the resulting conclusions are just as astounding. Surpassing Wonder illuminates how the greatest cultural artifacts of our civilization are related to one another and constitute the very core of our consciousness. With biting irreverence for denominational prejudices and the pretensions of academics, Akenson renews our sense of awe before these religious works. He challenges received doctrines, arguing that the ancient Jews were indeed idol worshippers and that Saint Paul did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth or in the virgin birth. With wit, elegance, and clarity Surpassing Wonder makes the ancient Hebrew scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and the Talmuds of the Rabbis accessible to all and shows they can be understood only in relation to each other and against their specific historical settings. Akenson argues that each of the great texts must be considered as the product of a single author and thus as a religious invention - that is, as a self-consciously formed unity rather than an anthology of disparate works. He also argues that the great inventor of the Hebrew scriptures should be credited with constructing the very concept of narrative history and thus the foundations of Western civilization. Using a rich and imagistic language that combines tractor mechanics, Winnie-the-Pooh, and architecture with analogies from astronomy, evolutionary biology, and economics, Akenson brings about nothing less than a radical reformation of how to think about the sacred texts. He restores their spiritual power through a just appreciation of the achievement of their authors while leaving readers to decide for themselves on the presence of a "guiding hand." Surpassing Wonder is a penetrating study of the historian's craft and a brilliant exposé of how theologians and biblical scholars abuse historical reasoning and evidence in their treatment of the sacred texts. Just as a previous reformation cast out the priestly intercessors, so Akenson casts the scholars out of the temple and lets readers in to see the texts anew. In so doing he reinvests religion with meaning for a contemporary world and shows us how Western civilization was created not by the Greeks of Athens or the patricians of Rome but by the desert worshippers of Yahweh.
The Annual of Rabbinic Judaism by Alan Jeffery Avery-Peck,William Scott Green,Jacob Neusner Pdf
"The Annual of Rabbinic Judaism: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern," the first and only annual with a special focus on Rabbinic Judaism, will publish principal articles, essays on method and criticism, systematic debates ("Auseinandersetzungen"), occasional notes, long book reviews, reviews of issues of scholarly journals, assessments of textbooks and instructional materials, and other media of academic discourse, scholarly and educational alike. "The Annual" fills the gap in the study of Judaism, the religion, which is left by the prevailing division of Rabbinic Judaism into the standard historical periods (ancient, medieval, modern) that in fact do not apply; and by the common treatment of Judaism in bits and pieces (philosophy, mysticism, law, homiletics, institutional history, for example), which obscures the fundamental unity and continuity of Rabbinic Judaism from beginning to the present. The 2000 issue contains articles by Ithamar Gruenwald, Dvora Weisberg, Jacob Neusner, Jose Faur, Simcha Fishbane, Norman Solomon, and Dov Schwartz, as well as reviews by Jacob Neusner, Herbert W. Basser, and Gunter Stemberger.
Offers a lively and provocative account of what we can learn about Jesus by reading the letters of Paul, providing fresh new insights into both Jesus and Paul. The author painstakingly recreates the world of Christ, a time rich with ideas, prophets, factions, priests, savants and god-drunk fanatics. He insistently stresses throughout the Jewishness of Jesus (e.g., referring to Jesus and Paul as Yeshua and Saul, as they were then known). Equally important, he dismisses the traditional method of searching for facts about Jesus by looking for parallels among the four Gospels; they were handed down to us as a unit by a later generation, he argues. Saul, although he did not know Yeshua personally, knew his most important followers and wrote immediately after Yeshua's death. His teachings were approved (though sometimes reluctantly) by Yeshua's brothers and other early leaders.
This book answers a simple question: How would one redesign the American education system if the aim was to take advantage of everything that has been learned by countries with the world’s best education systems? With a growing number of countries outperforming the United States on the most respected comparisons of student achievement—and spending less on education per student—this question is critical. Surpassing Shanghai looks in depth at the education systems that are leading the world in student performance to find out what strategies are working and how they might apply to the United States. Developed from the work of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which has been researching the education systems of countries with the highest student performance for more than twenty years, this book provides a series of answers to the question of how the United States can compete with the world’s best.
Author : Julius Steinberg,Timothy J. Stone Publisher : Penn State Press Page : 385 pages File Size : 40,9 Mb Release : 2015-09-02 Category : History ISBN : 9781575063744
The Shape of the Writings by Julius Steinberg,Timothy J. Stone Pdf
Are the Writings a miscellaneous collection of books, as is so often asserted, or do they have a purposeful design or arrangement? Over the past 35 years, there has been a significant amount of scholarly interest in the shape of the Law, Former Prophets, Twelve Minor Prophets and the Psalms, while examinations of the shape of the Writings were almost nonexistent until very recently. The 11 essays in this volume explore this often-neglected issue from a variety of critical perspectives—reader-centered approaches, canonical, structural-canonical, and redactional—made more robust by the mix of German- and English-language scholarship on this question, including 4 articles translated from German into English. Essays range from the historical development of the collection, to analysis of the collection’s different arrangements, to the relationship of books and subcollections within the Writings, to the reception of the collection in Jewish and Christian sources. Every book in the Writings is discussed, with particular attention given to Job, Ruth, and 1 and 2 Chronicles. The volume closes with 3 critical responses from John Barton, Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, and Christopher Seitz.
The Americanization of the Apocalypse by Donald Harman Akenson Pdf
In the early twentieth century, a new, American scripture appeared on the scene. It was the product of a school of theological thinking known as Dispensationalism, which offered a striking new way of reading the Bible, one that focused attention squarely on the end-times. That scripture, The Scofield Reference Bible, would become the ur-text of American apocalyptic evangelicalism. But while the Scofield took hold in the United States, the belief system from which it emerged, Dispensationalism, was not primarily a homegrown American phenomenon. In The Americanization of the Apocalypse: Creating America's Own Bible Donald Harman Akenson examines the creation and spread of Dispensationalism. The story is a transnational one: created in southern Ireland by evangelical Anglicans, who were terrified by the rise of Catholicism, then transferred to England, where it was expanded upon and next carried to British North America by "Brethren" missionaries and then subsequently embraced by American evangelicals. Akenson combines a respect for individual human agency with an equal recognition of the complex and persuasive ideational system that apocalyptic Dispensationalism presented. For believers, the system explained the world and its future. For the wider culture, the product of this rich evolution was a series of concepts that became part of the everyday vocabulary of American life: end-times, apocalypse, Second Coming, Rapture, and millennium. The Americanization of the Apocalypse is the first book to document, using direct archival evidence, the invention of the epochal Scofield Reference Bible, and thus the provenance of modern American evangelicalism.
In Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson offers a lively and provocative account of what we can learn about Jesus by reading the letters of Paul. As the only direct evidence of Jesus we have that were composed before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE forever altered the outlook of the Christian and Jewish faiths, Akenson claims that these letters are the most reliable source of information. He dismisses the traditional method of searching for facts about Jesus by looking for parallels among the four gospels because they were handed down to us as a unit by a later generation. Akenson painstakingly recreates the world of Christ, a time rich with ideas, prophets, factions, priests, savants, and god-drunk fanatics. He insistently stresses throughout the Jewishness of Jesus, referring to Jesus and Paul as Yeshua and Saul, as they were then known. As an eminent historian, Akenson approaches his subject with a fresh eye and a scholarly rigor that is all too rare in this hotly disputed field.
The Canon Debate by Lee Martin McDonald,James A. Sanders Pdf
What does it mean to speak of a "canon" of scripture? How, when, and where did the canon of the Hebrew Bible come into existence? Why does it have three divisions? What canon was in use among the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora? At Qumran? In Roman Palestine? Among the rabbis? What Bible did Jesus and his disciples know and use? How was the New Testament canon formed and closed? What role was played by Marcion? By gnostics? By the church fathers? What did the early church make of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha? By what criteria have questions of canonicity been decided? Are these past decisions still meaningful faith communities today? Are they open to revision? These and other debated questions are addressed by an international roster of outstanding experts on early Judaism and early Christianity, writing from diverse affiliations and perspectives, who present the history of discussion and offer their own assessments of the current status. Contributors William Adler, Peter Balla, John Barton, Joseph Blenkinsopp, François Bovon, Kent D. Clarke, Philip R. Davies, James D. G. Dunn, Eldon Jay Epp, Craig A. Evans, William R. Farmer, Everett Ferguson, Robert W. Funk, Harry Y. Gamble, Geoffrey M. Hahneman, Daniel J. Harrington, Everett R. Kalin, Robert A. Kraft, Jack P. Lewis, Jack N. Lightstone, Steve Mason, Lee M. McDonald, Pheme Perkins, James A. Sanders, Daryl D. Schmidt, Albert C. Sundberg Jr., Emanuel Tov, Julio Trebolle-Barrera, Eugene Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, Robert W. Wall.
Do you long for genuine relationships where you can know others and be known by them? Do you desire more than just gathering in the same space with others without any real connection? Yet, simultaneously, do you find yourself occasionally pushing back when someone gets too close? Why do you think you have that longing, and why do you think deep-abiding relationships are such a struggle to find and maintain? In this book, Pastor Neal Ledbetter makes the case that the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us answers. In the gospel, we are offered the endless treasure of Jesus and the never-ending, overflowing supply of treasures found in him. One of the rare jewels that comes with a new identity in Christ is a new gospel community, kingdom-family, and people to which we belong and in which we can know and be known. Paul calls it our inheritance in the saints (Eph 1:18), our citizenship with the saints, and our membership among the household of God (Eph 2:19–22). This new gospel community and kingdom-family is simply too important and too wonderful a treasure to ignore, avoid, or treat as unnecessary, unimportant, or secondary to our lives. This study will explore the extraordinary gift we have been given in gospel community. We’ll see how the gospel transforms us individually and simultaneously forms us into a new people. We’ll survey how we are intended to live together and the only sustaining motive and power for doing so. And finally, we’ll examine several characteristics necessary to experience the rare jewel of gospel community.
