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The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas

The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas The Biblical World: An Illustrated Atlas

Casting the tumultuous history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam against the rich canvas of the Near East, The Biblical World reveals how three great religions emerged from the same cradle. Author Jean-Pierre Isbouts employs a non-denominational perspective and a wide range of sources—from ancient hieroglyphic texts to the latest scientific findings—to place Bible stories in the framework of history. Chronologically arranged chapters detail battles, conquests, tribal migrations, natural calamities, and more, supporting the stories with intriguing archaeological evidence. To locate sites and events, National Geographic cartographers have created fifty all-new maps of stunning quality. Hundreds of photographs and artifacts add visual excitement. Quick-read timelines link events across cultures while illustrated sidebars focus on what life was like during each era: family roles, farming, trade, dress, childbirth, burial customs, and other aspects of daily existence.

The story traces the evolution of Judaism from Abraham to the Unified Kingdom of Israel... chronicles the emergence of Christianity in the context of Greco-Roman civilization... and identifies the unique circumstances that prepared for the rise of Islam. The multi-dimensional approach weighs similarities and differences among the three faiths and follows developments in nearby lands. With a foreword from bestselling author Bruce Chilton and text reviewed by distinguished advisers, The Biblical World offers a carefully researched, balanced view of history and religious tradition. For its scope, beauty, and relevance in today's world, this unparalleled atlas is destined to become a classic.

About the Author

Jean-Pierre Isbouts holds a Ph.D in archaeology and art, and is currently Professor of Culture and Media Studies at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, CA. He is the writer and producer of four programs that explore the legacy of the Bible, including the award-winning television mini-series The Quest For Peace.

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: National Geographic (November 6, 2007)

Biblical History and Israel's Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History Biblical History and Israel's Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History

Biblical History and Israel's Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History Biblical History and Israel's Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History

Although scholars have for centuries primarily been interested in using the study of ancient Israel to explain, illuminate, and clarify the biblical story, Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle describe how scholars today seek more and more to tell the story of the past on its own terms, drawing from both biblical and extrabiblical sources to illuminate ancient Israel and its neighbors without privileging the biblical perspective.

Biblical History and Israel’s Past provides a comprehensive survey of how study of the Old Testament and the history of Israel has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. Moore and Kelle discuss significant trends in scholarship, trace the development of ideas since the 1970s, and summarize major scholars, viewpoints, issues, and developments.

About the Author

Megan Bishop Moore is visiting assistant professor of religion at Wake Forest University. She is also author of Philosophy and Practice in Writing a History of Ancient Israel.

Paperback: 542 pages
Publisher: Eerdmans; First Edition edition (May 17, 2011)

A History of Biblical Interpretation: The Enlightenment through the Nineteenth Century A History of Biblical Interpretation: The Enlightenment through the Nineteenth Century

A History of Biblical Interpretation: The Enlightenment through the Nineteenth Century A History of Biblical Interpretation: The Enlightenment through the Nineteenth Century

A History of Biblical Interpretation provides detailed and extensive studies of the interpretation of the Scriptures by Jewish and Christian writers throughout the ages. Written by internationally renowned scholars, this multivolume work comprehensively treats the many different methods of interpretation, the important interpreters from various eras, and the key issues that have surfaced repeatedly over the long course of biblical interpretation.

This third installment examines the period after the Reformation until the dawn of the twentieth century. Its essays cover broad intellectual and historical movements such as historical criticism, textual criticism, and the quest for the historical Jesus. Other contributions focus on particular individuals, including Baruch Spinoza, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and F. C. Baur. Each chapter also includes a helpful bibliography for additional study.

About the Author

Duane F. Watson is professor of New Testament studies at Malone College, Canton, Ohio. He is also the author of Invention, Arrangement, and Style: Rhetorical Criticism of Jude and 2 Peter, editor of Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric, and coauthor of Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method."

Alan J. Hauser is professor of biblical studies at Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. He is also coeditor of Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature and coauthor of From Carmel to Horeb: Elijah in Crisis and Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible: A Comprehensive Bibliography with Notes on History and Method."

Series: History of Biblical Interpretation
Hardcover: 440 pages
Publisher: Eerdmans (June 29, 2017)

The Urantia Book The Urantia Book
The Urantia Book The Urantia Book

Love

Love is truly contagious and eternally creative. (p. 2018) “Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the world.” (p. 2047) “Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful.” (p. 2047) The Father’s love can become real to mortal man only by passing through that man’s personality as he in turn bestows this love upon his fellows. (p. 1289) The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the Master’s teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual trust. (p. 2065)

Prayer

Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. (p. 1002) The sincerity of any prayer is the assurance of its being heard. … (p. 1639) God answers man’s prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness. (p. 1002) …Never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment. (p. 999)

Suffering

There is a great and glorious purpose in the march of the universes through space. All of your mortal struggling is not in vain. (p. 364) Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation. (p. 556)

Angels

The angels of all orders are distinct personalities and are highly individualized. (p. 285) Angels....are fully cognizant of your moral struggles and spiritual difficulties. They love human beings, and only good can result from your efforts to understand and love them. (p. 419)

Our Divine Destiny

If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of sonship and spiritual progress. (p. 381) …They who know that God is enthroned in the human heart are destined to become like him—immortal. (p. 1449) God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. (p. 67)

Family

Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. (p. 765) The family is man’s greatest purely human achievement. ... (p. 939)

Faith

…Faith will expand the mind, ennoble the soul, reinforce the personality, augment the happiness, deepen the spirit perception, and enhance the power to love and be loved. (p. 1766) “Now, mistake not, my Father will ever respond to the faintest flicker of faith.” (p. 1733)

History/Science

The story of man’s ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. (p. 731) 2,500,000,000 years ago… Urantia was a well developed sphere about one tenth its present mass. … (p. 658) 1,000,000,000 years ago is the date of the actual beginning of Urantia [Earth] history. (p. 660) 450,000,000 years ago the transition from vegetable to animal life occurred. (p. 669) From the year A.D. 1934 back to the birth of the first two human beings is just 993,419 years. (p. 707) About five hundred thousand years ago…there were almost one-half billion primitive human beings on earth. … (p. 741) Adam and Eve arrived on Urantia, from the year A.D. 1934, 37,848 years ago. (p. 828)

From the Inside Flap

What’s Inside?

Parts I and II

God, the inhabited universes, life after death, angels and other beings, the war in heaven.

Part III

The history of the world, science and evolution, Adam and Eve, development of civilization, marriage and family, personal spiritual growth.

Part IV

The life and teachings of Jesus including the missing years. AND MUCH MORE…

Excerpts

God, …God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true. (p. 1431) If you truly want to find God, that desire is in itself evidence that you have already found him. (p. 1440) When man goes in partnership with God, great things may, and do, happen. (p. 1467)

The Origin of Human Life, The universe is not an accident... (p. 53) The universe of universes is the work of God and the dwelling place of his diverse creatures. (p. 21) The evolutionary planets are the spheres of human origin…Urantia [Earth] is your starting point. … (p. 1225) In God, man lives, moves, and has his being. (p. 22)

The Purpose of Life, There is in the mind of God a plan which embraces every creature of all his vast domains, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life. (p. 365) This new gospel of the kingdom… presents a new and exalted goal of destiny, a supreme life purpose. (p. 1778)

Jesus, The religion of Jesus is the most dynamic influence ever to activate the human race. (p. 1091) What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! (p. 2083)

Science, Science, guided by wisdom, may become man’s great social liberator. (p. 909) Mortal man is not an evolutionary accident. There is a precise system, a universal law, which determines the unfolding of the planetary life plan on the spheres of space. (p. 560)

Life after Death, God’s love is universal… He is “not willing that any should perish.” (p. 39) Your short sojourn on Urantia [Earth]…is only a single link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across universes and through the eternal ages. (p. 435) …Death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery. (p. 159)

About the Author

The text of The Urantia Book was provided by one or more anonymous contributors working with a small staff which provided editorial and administrative support during the book's creation. The book bears no particular credentials (from a human viewpoint), relying instead on the power and beauty of the writing itself to persuade the reader of its authenticity.

Leather Bound: 2097 pages
Publisher: Urantia Foundation; Box Lea edition (August 25, 2015)

The Oxford Bible Commentary The Oxford Bible Commentary

The Oxford Bible Commentary The Oxford Bible Commentary

Whether you see the Bible as the living word of God, or as a highly significant document from the ancient world, or as one of the classic works of world literature, The Oxford Bible Commentary will put in your hands everything you need to study and understand the biblical text.

Here is a monumental, line-by-line critical commentary on the Bible, covering all the books that appear in the NRSV. An essential reference work, this definitive book provides authoritative, non-denominational commentary written by an international team of more than 70 leading scholars from various religious backgrounds. Incorporating the latest research, the contributors examine the books of the Bible in exhaustive detail, taking a historical-critical approach that attempts to shed light on the scriptures by placing them in the context in which their first audiences would have encountered them, asking how they came to be composed and what were the purposes of their authors. The Commentary includes a general introduction, extensive introductions to both testaments and the Apocrypha, and briefer introductions to the particular books, plus an essay with commentary on important post-biblical Jewish and Christian literature. Each article concludes with a bibliography that points the reader toward the most important supplemental works in English, including major reference works, introductions, and so forth.

A truly stunning work of biblical scholarship, The Oxford Bible Commentary will be an invaluable resource for pastors preparing a sermon, for students, for those in study or discussion groups, and indeed for anyone--whether Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox Christian--who seeks a clearer perspective on a text that has been held in reverence for thousands of years. The OBC features a Logos Library System CD-ROM that, once unlocked, gives the reader access to its text and that of the New Revised Standard Version Bible. The CD is fully compatible with all Logos products.

  • Detailed verse-by-verse commentary, written by over 70 of the world's leading biblical scholars from all the major Christian traditions and Judaism.
  • Includes all the canonical books for the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, and non-biblical Jewish and Christian writings from the biblical era.
  • Combines the fruits of the historical-critical method with insights from other critical approaches to Bible study.
  • Includes major introductions to every biblical book.
  • Bibliographies of supplemental works in English are located throughout the book, making in-depth study of topics easier.
  • 11 full color, Oxford Bible Maps.
  • Two ribbon markers make it easy to keep one's place in the book.

Hardcover: 1416 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1st Edition edition (December 6, 2001)

The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible: Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible: Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture

The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible: Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible: Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture

From two leading Christian apologists, here is a fascinating survey of the most important Old and New Testament archaeological discoveries through the ages.

Biblical archaeology has always stirred excitement among believers and curiosity among unbelievers. The evidence dug up with a spade can speak volumes--and serve as a powerful testimony of the reliability of Scripture.

Norman Geisler and Joseph Holden have put together an impressive array of finds that confirm the biblical peoples and events of ages past. In a user-friendly format written in popular style, they...

  • examine the latest finds and explain their significance
  • includes more than 150 of photographs
  • provide an instructive chart of artifacts (along with fast facts)
  • sample a variety of finds--papyri, inscriptions, scrolls, ossuaries, and more

If readers are looking for just one book to cover this topic both concisely and comprehensively, this is it!

About the Author

Joseph M. Holden (PhD, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter, Wales) is the President of Veritas International University in southern California (ves.edu). He is the general editor of the forthcoming The Harvest Handbook of Apologetics (Harvest House Publishers, 2018), general editor of the forthcoming The Harvest Handbook of Bible Lands (Harvest House Publishers, 2019), producer of the documentary Archaeology and the Bible: The Top 10 Amazing Discoveries, associate editor of The Apologetics Study Bible for Students (B&H, 2017), coauthor of Charts of Apologetics and Christian Evidences (Zondervan, 2006), and Living Loud: Defending Your Faith (B&H, 2002). His research and travel in biblical lands and participation in archaeological work in the Middle East have made him well acquainted with current developments in the field of archaeology.

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (August 1, 2013)

The Oxford History of the Biblical World The Oxford History of the Biblical World

The Oxford History of the Biblical World The Oxford History of the Biblical World

Here, in one impressively illustrated volume, leading scholars offer compelling glimpses into the biblical world, the world in which prophets, poets, sages, and historians created one of our most important texts--the Bible.

For more than a century, archeologists have been unearthing the tombs, temples, texts, and artifacts of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world. Using new approaches, contemporary scholars have begun to synthesize this material with the biblical traditions. The Oxford History of the Biblical World incorporates the best of this scholarship, and in chronologically ordered chapters presents the reader with a readable and integrated study of the history, art, architecture, languages, literatures, and religion of biblical Israel and early Judaism and Christianity in their larger cultural contexts. The authors also examine such issues as the roles of women, the tensions between urban and rural settings, royal and kinship social structures, and official and popular religions of the region. Readers will find that 200 photographs, line drawings, and maps as well as an insert containing 25 color photographs vividly illustrate the history discussed.

Understanding the biblical world is a vital part of understanding the Bible. Broad, authoritative, and visually engaging, The Oxford History of the Biblical World will illuminate for any reader the ancient world from which the Bible emerged.

Hardcover: 672 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (January 21, 1999)


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Harmonies of Liberty

By

Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins

National Prayer Service
January 21, 2009

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Barack and Michelle Obama at National Prayer Service January 21, 2009
Barack and Michelle Obama at National Prayer Service January 21, 2009
Barack and Michelle Obama at National Prayer Service
January 21, 2009

Isaiah 58:6-12, Mt 22:36-40


Mr. President and Mrs. Obama, Mr. Vice President and Dr. Biden, and your families, what an inaugural celebration you have hosted! Train ride, opening concert, service to neighbor, dancing till dawn...

And yesterday... With your inauguration, Mr. President, the flame of America's promise burns just a little brighter for every child of this land!

There is still a lot of work to do, and today the nation turns its full attention to that work. As we do, it is good that we pause to take a deep spiritual breath. It is good that we center for a moment.

What you are entering now, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, will tend to draw you away from your ethical center. But we, the nation that you serve, need you to hold the ground of your deepest values, of our deepest values.

Beyond this moment of high hopes, we need you to stay focused on our shared hopes, so that we can continue to hope, too.

We will follow your lead.

There is a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom:

One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.

"There are two wolves struggling inside each of us," the old man said.

"One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear...

"The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love..."

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: "Which wolf wins, Grandfather?"

His grandfather replied, "The one you feed."

There are crises banging on the door right now, pawing at us, trying to draw us off our ethical center - crises that tempt us to feed the wolf of vengefulness and fear.

We need you, Mr. President, to hold your ground. We need you, leaders of this nation, to stay centered on the values that have guided us in the past; values that empowered to move us through the perils of earlier times and can guide us now into a future of renewed promise.

We need you to feed the good wolf within you, to listen to the better angels of your nature, and by your example encourage us to do the same.

This is not a new word for a pastor to bring at such a moment. In the later chapters of Isaiah, in the 500's BCE, the prophet speaks to the people. Back in the capital city after long years of exile, their joy should be great, but things aren't working out just right. Their homecoming is more complicated than expected. Not everyone is watching their parade or dancing all night at their arrival.

They turn to God, "What's going on here? We pray and we fast, but you do not bless us. We're confused."

Through the prophet, God answers, what fast? You fast only to quarrel and fight and strike with the fist...

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice... to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house . .? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly...

At our time of new beginning, focused on renewing America's promise -yet at a time of great crisis - which fast do we choose? Which "wolf" do we feed? What of America's promise do we honor?

Recently Muslim scholars from around the world released a document, known as "A Common Word Between Us and You." It proposes a common basis for building a world at peace. That common basis? Love of God and love of neighbor! What we just read in the Gospel of Matthew!

So how do we go about loving God? Well, according to Isaiah, summed up by Jesus, affirmed by a worldwide community of Muslim scholars and many others, it is by facing hard times with a generous spirit: by reaching out toward each other rather than turning our backs on each other. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "people can be so poor that the only way they see God is in a piece of bread."

In the days immediately before us, there will be much to draw us away from the grand work of loving God and the hard work of loving neighbor. In crisis times, a basic instinct seeks to take us over - a fight/flight instinct that leans us toward the fearful wolf, orients us toward the self-interested fast...

In international hard times, our instinct is to fight - to pick up the sword, to seek out enemies, to build walls against the other - and why not? They just might be out to get us. We've got plenty of evidence to that effect. Someone has to keep watch and be ready to defend, and Mr. President - Tag! You're it!

But on the way to those tough decisions, which American promises will frame those decisions? Will you continue to reason from your ethical center, from the bedrock values of our best shared hopes? Which wolf will you feed?

In financial hard times, our instinct is flight - to hunker down, to turn inward, to hoard what little we can get our hands on, to be fearful of others who may take the resources we need. In hard financial times, which fast do we choose? The fast that placates our hunkered-down soul - or the fast that reaches out to our sister and our brother?

In times, such as these, we the people need you, the leaders of this nation, to be guided by the counsel that Isaiah gave so long ago, to work for the common good, for the public happiness, the well-being of the nation and the world, knowing that our individual wellbeing depends upon a world in which liberty and justice prevail.

This is the biblical way. It is also the American way - to believe in something bigger than ourselves, to reach out to neighbor to build communities of possibility, of liberty and justice for all. This is the center we can find again whenever we are pulled at and pawed at by the vengeful wolf, when we are tempted by the self-interested fast.

America's true character, the source of our national wisdom and strength, is rooted in a generous and hopeful spirit.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,...
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 1

Emma Lazarus' poetry is spelled out further by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,: "As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy... I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made." 2

You yourself, Mr. President, have already added to this call, "If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child... . It's that fundamental belief - I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper - that makes this country work."

It is right that college classes on political oratory already study your words . You, as our president, will set the tone for us. You will help us as a nation choose again and again which wolf to feed, which fast to choose, to love God by loving our neighbor.

We will follow your lead - and we will walk with you. And sometimes we will swirl in front of you, pulling you along.

At times like these - hard times -we find out what we're made of. Is that blazing torch of liberty just for me? Or do we seek the "harmonies of liberty", many voices joined together, many hands offering to care for neighbors far and near?

Though tempted to withdraw the offer, surely Lady Liberty can still raise that golden torch of generosity to the world. Even in these financial hard times, these times of international challenge, the words of Katherine Lee Bates describe a nation with more than enough to share: "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain..."

A land of abundance guided by a God of abundance, generosity, and hope - This is our heritage. This is America's promise which we fulfill when we reach out to each other.

Even in these hard times, rich or poor, we can reach out to our neighbor, including our global neighbor, in generous hospitality, building together communities of possibility and of hope. Even in these tough times, we can feed the good wolf, listen to the better angels of our nature. We can choose the fast of God's desiring.

Even now in these hard times let us

Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring,
... with the harmonies of Liberty;

Even now let us Sing a song full of hope...

Especially now, from the center of our deepest shared values, let us pray, still in the words of James Weldon Johnson:

Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us... in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land. 3


Footnotes

1. Emma Lazarus

2. The Words of MLK, Jr., selected by Coretta Scott King, 21

3. James Weldon Johnson


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Disclaimer

Disclaimer:
Some material presented will contain links, quotes, ideologies, etc., the contents of which should be understood to first, in their whole, reflect the views or opinions of their editors, and second, are used in my personal research as "fair use" sources only, and not espousement one way or the other. Researching for 'truth' leads one all over the place...a piece here, a piece there. As a researcher, I hunt, gather and disassemble resources, trying to put all the pieces into a coherent and logical whole. I encourage you to do the same. And please remember, these pages are only my effort to collect all the pieces I can find and see if they properly fit into the 'reality aggregate'.

Personal Position

Personal Position:
I've come to realize that 'truth' boils down to what we 'believe' the facts we've gathered point to. We only 'know' what we've 'experienced' firsthand. Everything else - what we read, what we watch, what we hear - is what someone else's gathered facts point to and 'they' 'believe' is 'truth', so that 'truth' seems to change in direct proportion to newly gathered facts divided by applied plausibility. Though I believe there is 'truth', until someone representing the celestial realm visibly appears and presents the heavenly records of Facts And Lies In The Order They Happened, I can't know for sure exactly what "the whole truth' on any given subject is, and what applies to me applies to everyone. Until then I'll continue to ask, "what does The Urantia Book say on the subject?"
~Gail Bird Allen

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