Invitation To The Torah

We all love a good story. The Torah, or Pentateuch, is regularly defamed as "law." Actually, it's a saga about our search for happiness and how the God of the Bible fits into it. Lacing legal material into narrative punctuated with poetry, the Torah contrasts two provocative personalities named Abraham and Moses. Fascinating and fickle, their adventures portray two visions of approaching God. The Torah was written to render a verdict on who is the best model. This book demonstrates that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are a unified narrative, framed as contrasting biographies, proclaiming a coherent message. It surveys each book's structure and themes to determine its argument and then articulates the Torah's message for people of all time, its vision of human happiness. It establishes that the Torah is the core of the Jewish and Christian Bibles and shows how the rest of the Bible elaborates its message. Ending with suggestions to help you read it, this book is your invitation to the Torah.

Reprint of a 1988 work (Harper & Row). Strictly speaking, Judaism is not a biblical religion according to Neusner (religious studies, U. of South Florida; Bard College, NY), who argues that Midrash--interpretations of the oral Torah-- reveal that the written Hebrew Scriptures are but half the ancien

The book addresses the way we are able to understand the radical invitation of Jesus. The invitation is to those who heard Jesus in the first century, the intervening centuries, and those in the twenty-first century urging them to turn away from a life that is self-centered and to seek a life that is God-centered, accepting the reign of God in one’s life rather than wealth, pleasure, power, and fame. Jesus says that we are to seek first the kingdom of God and all of our basic needs will be met, being transformed and finding meaning and purpose in our lives. The invitation is radical in that it calls on us to give up the accepted norms and values of our culture and world and give ourselves to a life of integrity and truthfulness, love and compassion, and justice and peace. We are invited to find our true identity, to be filled with and transformed by the God of love and to become one who is filled with grace and truth, as Jesus was.

Help sustain the Jewish tradition’s legacy of community leadership by building strong leaders today. “Great Jewish leadership has helped us survive slavery, guided us to the Promised Land, given us hope through exile and oppression, helped us enjoy membership in a nation of overachievers, and given birth to the State of Israel. Great Jewish leadership generates vision and, as a result, followers. It inspires us and helps us to stretch higher, see farther, and reach deeper.” —from the Introduction Drawing on the past and looking to the future, this practical guide provides the tools you need to work through important contemporary leadership issues. It takes a broad look at positions of leadership in the modern Jewish community and the qualities and skills you need in order to succeed in these positions. Real-life anecdotes, interviews, and dialogue stimulate thinking about board development, ethical leadership, conflict resolution, change management, and effective succession planning. Whether you are a professional or a volunteer, are looking to develop your own personal leadership skills or are part of a group, this inspiring book provides information, interactive exercises, and questions for reflection to help you define leadership styles and theories, expose common myths, and coach others on the importance of leading with meaning.

Christian readers of the Hebrew Bible are often faced with a troubling tension. On the one hand, they are convinced that this ancient text is relevant today, yet on the other, they remain perplexed at how this can be so, particularly when parts of it appear to condone violence. Barker’s volume seeks to address this tension in two parts: (1) by defending a particular form of theological interpretation and (2) by applying this interpretive method to the imprecatory psalms. Barker suggests that the goal of theological interpretation is to discover God’s voice in the text. While he recognizes that this goal could encourage a subjective methodology, Barker offers a hermeneutic that clearly locates God’s voice in the text of Scripture. Utilizing the resources of speech act theory, Barker notes that texts convey meaning at a number of literary levels and that God’s appropriation of speech acts at these levels is not necessarily uniform for each genre. He also discusses how the Christian canon alters the context of these ancient speech acts, both reshaping and enabling their continued function as divine discourse. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of this hermeneutic, Barker offers theological interpretations of Psalms 69 and 137. He demonstrates how christological fulfilment and the call to forgive one’s enemies are determinative for a theological interpretation of these troubling psalms, concluding that they continue to form an essential part of God’s voice that must not be ignored.

Christology Volume 2, Number 1, January 2013 Edited by Christopher McMahon and David Matzko McCarthy Christology and the Christian Life Paul J. Wadell Christology and Moral Theology Paulinus Ikechkwu Odozor, C.S.Sp The Light Burden of Discipleship: Embodying the New Moses and Wisdom in the Gospel of Matthew Patricia Sharbaugh Paul and the Cruciform Way of God in Christ Michael J. Gorman Modern Pluralism or Divine Plentitude? Toward a Chritological Ontology Elizabeth Newman Christ, Globalization, and the Church Neil Ormerod Body Work and the Work of the Body Jey P. Bishop Review Essay: Beyond the Historical Jesus: Embracing Christology in Scripture, Doctrine, and Ethics Christopher McMahon

Atonement has been described as the central doctrine of Christianity and yet, surprisingly, the church has never insisted on a particular understanding of how redemption in Christ was achieved. Instead, a miscellany of metaphors has been employed, each picturing "something" of Christ's work. Recent debate within Reformed Evangelicalism has been characterized by claims for hegemony to be granted to penal substitution versus counter-arguments for a kaleidoscopic, multi-model understanding. Notably absent in these discussions, however, are two considerations. One is any common nexus to draw atonement thought together. The other is any positive theological contribution deriving from God's preexisting relationship with Israel (the presumed role of which has rather been to provide a negative contrast of law-versus-grace and works-versus-faith, as the dark background against which the light of Christ may shine more brightly). Recent scholarship, however--particularly the "new perspective on Paul"--has comprehensively dismantled the old stereotypes concerning first-century Judaism. This book asks how differently we might think about the atonement once it is brought into conversation with the new scholarship. It concludes by proposing a "new perspective" on atonement in which Christ is central, Israel and Torah are affirmed, and the traditional metaphors continue to find their place.