As It Was In The Beginning

Paul's comments regarding the new creation in 2 Cor 5:17 and Gal 6:15 have tended to be understood somewhat myopically. Some argue the phrase "new creation" solely refers to the inward transformation believers have experienced through faith in Jesus Christ. Others argue this phrase should be understood cosmologically and linked with Isaiah's "new heavens and new earth." Still others advocate an ecclesiological interpretation of this phrase that views Paul referring to the new community formed around Jesus Christ. In As It Was in the Beginning, Mark Owens argues that the concept of "new creation" should be understood (like the gospel) within the realm of Paul's anthropology, cosmology, and ecclesiology. At the same time, he also argues that Paul's understanding of new creation belongs within an Urzeit-Endzeit typological framework, especially within 2 Cor 5-6 and Eph 1-2. This reading of new creation attempts to give due weight to the use of Isaianic traditions in 2 Cor 5:17 and Eph 2:13, 17. Owens demonstrates that the vision of new creation in 2 Corinthians and Galatians is starkly similar to that of Ephesians.

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.

The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.

This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us chapter by chapter through its most important stories--from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows how a group of anonymous, ancient interpreters radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.

Acts is the sequel to Luke's gospel and tells the story of Jesus's followers during the 30 years after his death. It describes how the 12 apostles, formerly Jesus's disciples, spread the message of Christianity throughout the Mediterranean against a background of persecution. With an introduction by P.D. James