Death Mark

Tyranny and savagery lock in a balletic embrace under the blood-red sun of desert planet laid waste by sorcery and war. This is Athas, the world of Dark Sun, a world where the weak are forever subjugated to the will of the strong, but nevertheless a place where a common street thief can thwart a dune trader's plot to seize a city's iron mines. Original.

Hermann Beckh’s masterful study of Mark’s Gospel offers much more than scholarly argument. It is the work of a true visionary who allows his readers to discover the meaning of the Earth and of humanity for themselves. Beckh was in the forefront of entirely new research and recovery of the Gospel, writing more for the future than for his own time. It is not uncommon for biblical scholars to view St. Mark’s Gospel as little more than an assemblage of fragmentary sources and a copy of uncertain, early memories. The Gospel is said to have little historical veracity, harmony or guiding structure. Beckh’s contemporary, the German writer Arthur Drews, even argued that the text was nothing more than a simplistic solar myth, wherein another Sun-hero pursued his way around the Greco-Roman constellations. Mark’s Gospel: The Cosmic Rhythm is a response to such twentieth-century materialistic thinking. He was asked to write the book in the 1920s by the leaders of The Christian Community, who sought to rescue the desecrated Gospel from its opponents. Inspired by Rudolf Steiner and a vast knowledge of ancient languages – Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali and Avestan along with Hebrew, Greek and Latin – the Rev. Professor Hermann Beckh perceived how the Gospel reflects God’s Everlasting Covenant, and meticulously expressed its aesthetic unity, the consonance of its parts and its consequent radiant clarity. His far-reaching understanding of sacred texts in the original languages, always associated with the disciplined meditation he had attained from anthroposophy, led to unprecedented insight. This new edition of his classic study has been revised and redesigned.

A Theology of Mark’s Gospel is the fourth volume in the BTNT series. This landmark textbook, written by leading New Testament scholar David E. Garland, thoroughly explores the theology of Mark’s Gospel. It both covers major Markan themes and also sets forth the distinctive contribution of Mark to the New Testament and the canon of Scripture, providing readers with an in-depth and holistic grasp of Markan theology in the larger context of the Bible. This substantive, evangelical treatment of Markan theology makes an ideal college- or seminary-level text.

The Chronicles of Conan Volume 19 collects "Deathmark," which mixes tattoos, severed arms, and a decadesold grudge into a gruesome mystery, and "Tower of Mitra," where a magically endowed beauty, seen in a previous Jones Conan story, returns to help defeat a demonic harpy. Writers Mary Jo Duffy, Alan Zelenetz, and Michael Fleisher also contribute oneshot stories to this collection, which finds Conan facing the Dragon of Solvanthia, numerous witches and wizards, rat demons, bloodthirsty swordsmen, and his own son by a priestess of the Cimmerian wilderness! * This volume collects Conan the Barbarian issues #143 to #150.

Mark's Gospel is the briefest of the four gospels, but is frequently more vivid and detailed than the parallel accounts in Matthew and Luke. Written principally for the Roman world, this Gospel presents Christ as the Servant of the Lord, emphasizing the Passion of Jesus, sent to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. It is a book of deeds and contains short discourses and few parables. Christ fulfills Messianic prophecies as found in Isaiah 42:1-21; 49:1-8; 50:4-11; 52:13-15; 53:1-12, and Zechariah 3:8-10. Christ’s ministry of miracles, fellowship with sinners, selection of disciples, and teaching of the multitudes revolve around self-giving love being climaxed at the Cross followed by His glorious Resurrection. Although Christ is depicted in the Gospel of Mark as a servant, the strong emphasis upon His miracles and His mission unveils His Power and Glory.

The short story that we now know as the Gospel according to Mark was written in Greek twenty centuries ago in the context of an agrarian society that had been developing its own characteristics in the circum-Mediterranean region. Mark's account presupposes the values, institutions, and relationships of the culture in which Jesus and his first followers lived. Modern readers of the Gospels, however, especially those born and raised in the North Atlantic postindustrial societies, have other values and institutions, and relate to each other according to other cultural codes. This temporal and cultural distance between the ancient texts and their present-day readers makes necessary an exegetical effort whose purpose is to recover, as far as possible, the reading scenarios presupposed by these texts. In order to reconstruct these scenarios, exegesis has turned in recent years to the social sciences, whose models permit us to imagine and describe the situations presupposed by these ancient texts. This book aims to show how the use of these scenarios elaborated with the help of the social sciences can contribute to a more considered and respectful reading of Mark's story.

What sets The Theological Intentions of Mark's Literary Devices apart from other books? What niche does it fill that makes its publication important? This volume will interest all those who value a literary approach to the Gospel of Mark. Dean Deppe introduces some new literary devices in the research of the Gospel of Mark as well as demonstrates the theological intentions of Mark when he employs these literary devices. Deppe argues that Mark employs the literary devices of intercalation, framework, allusionary repetitions, narrative surprises, and three types of mirroring to indicate where he speaks symbolically and metaphorically at two levels. Mark employs these literary devices not just for dramatic tension and irony, but also for theological reasons to apply the Jesus tradition to specific problems in his own day.

In the aftermath of revolution, King Kalak of Tyr is dead and all eyes fall on the lucrative iron mines of his once mighty city-state. Merchant houses scramble to seize what scraps they can while King Hamanu of Urik, the Lion of the Desert, rallies his armies to crush the Tyr rebellion underfoot. He cannot allow this insurrection to succeed and intends to seize the city’s precious resources for himself. The hope of the Tyr revolution seems destined to fail as the tyrannical specter of Hamanu’s war machine looms large on the horizon. But fate chooses the most unlikely heroes. Loren, a gladiator pressed into service by a corrupt merchant prince; the ambitious Alaeda Stel who hopes to secure her family’s future by exploiting Tyr’s sudden weakness; a street thief named Melech; and Korvak the disgraced templar are Tyr’s best and only hope. The promise of freedom rests on their ability to overcome the greed and lust for power that threatens to undermine the principles of Tyr’s revolution.