City Temple

City, Temple, Stage is a new interpretation of the art, architecture, and liturgy created for the conversion of Aztecs and other native peoples of central Mexico by European Franciscan missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century. Jaime Lara contends that the design of missionary centers, or so-called fortress monasteries, can only be understood against the backdrop of the eschatological concerns of the age and the missionary techniques of the mendicant friars. Lara argues that these architectural constructions are quasi-theatrical sets for elaborate educational and liturgical events that acted as rehearsals for the last age of world history. Euro-Christian apocalyptic texts, Lara has been able to identify a consistent thread connecting the religious and liturgical imaginations of these juxtaposed cultures. The close parallels between the symbols and metaphors of Aztec religion and medieval Catholicism fostered an unusual synthesis between their different world visions. These visual, literary, and cultic metaphors survive in what we today call Mexican Catholicism. Drawing on his expertise as a medievalist, Latin Americanist, and architectural and liturgical historian, Lara offers an astonishingly comprehensive and compelling examination of the churches and liturgies created by the Franciscans for new Aztec Christians. Lara's fascinating narrative is supplemented by more than 230 images.

This volume offers a systematic approach to the Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Hasmonean period, correlating social contexts with the biblical and post-biblical literature that each period generated. The list of contributors includes many of the pioneers of the field of Second Temple sociology, including Kenneth Hoglund, John Wright, Lester Grabbe, Richard Horsley, James Pasto, Robert Doran and the editors. The volume, which also includes an introductory essay on the methods and outcomes of this kind of exercise, furnishes an excellent introduction to the agenda of interpreting biblical texts as social products.

Slightly revised and expanded version of the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--Duke University, Durham, 2008.

This is a book about an ancient writer, the J writer—the Yahwist—who produced a work of political imagination. This work is embedded mainly in the first four books of the Bible, best known for some of the most popular and influential biblical stories in Genesis and Exodus. The purpose of the book is to represent the whole of the original story with attention to its own meaning, without the influence of the other literary strands with which it was later supplemented. Therefore the work includes a fresh, complete translation of the text of the J writer, who produced the Bible’s first history. The translation itself helps to establish more clearly than ever the integrity of the J writer. The concern here is WHEN and WHY this history was written, especially in light of the concerns for justice and prosperity. Throughout it is demonstrated HOW and WHY this history comes from the court of David; it is a royal history of David’s subjects as though they were descended from pastoral nomads such as Abram, Isaac, and Jacob. It is argued that the intended audience of the history was probably those bedouin who regularly visited the court of David in Hebron and Jerusalem. Here is a bold and brilliant representation of the J writer’s composition, perhaps as it was originally intended to be read or heard. This ancient tour de force takes on new life in the hands of these skilled interpreters.

The Temple Scroll and Related Texts, one of the series Companion to the Qumran Scrolls, is a comprehensive roadmap to the Temple Scroll, the longest and one of the most complex of the manuscripts from Qumran. The central chapter contains a discussion of the contents of the Temple Scroll, including sections on the Temple and its courts, purity regulation, the festival calendar, and the Deuteronomic Paraphrase with the Law of the King. The Companion also includes a chapter on the Description of the New Jerusalem, as well as one on the relationship of the Temple Scroll to the Book of Jubilees, 4QMiqsat Ma'aseh ha-Torah, and the Damascus Document. Written in accessible language and featuring extensive bibliographies, this Companion is ideal for undergraduate and graduate classes.

Paul's view of the church as the temple and his concern about its purity in 1-2 Corinthians has traditionally been interpreted from the perspective of a Jewish background. However, Yulin Liu reveals that the pagans were very aware of temple purity when visiting some temples in the Greco-Roman world, and the purification concerns of three pagan temples in Corinth are documented in his work. The author affirms that the Gentile believers among the Corinthian community were able to grasp Paul's message because of it. Also, Liu investigates Paul's use of temple purity to address the necessity of unity, holiness and faithfulness of the Corinthian Christians in an eschatological sense. The separation of God's people from profane matters actually points to a new exodus and a progressive consummation of the construction of the eschatological temple-community.

History Book