Jesus The Oracle

In Jesus the Oracle, Annelies Gisela Moeser reads Jesus’s journey from Capernaum to Jerusalem in Mark’s gospel through the cultural context of second/third century Roman Egypt. Moeser provides a rich description of the Egyptian practice of oracles, including processional oracles, to build a model with which to read Mark. This prism brings attention to descriptions of Jesus’s supernatural knowledge and wisdom, such as in the story of the Rich Man (Mk 10:17–22). In contrast to Clement of Alexandria’s homily on the Rich Man which counseled detachment from possessions, this reading from a non-elite perspective considers Jesus’s advice to be more radical. This model of processional oracles highlights the importance of access to the divine, including by non-elite crowds, by persons with disabilities (e.g., in comparing Bartimaeus [Mk 10:46–52] with Gemellus Horion of Karanis [a town in Egypt]), and by children. Traditional Egyptian religion upheld the existing sociopolitical regime. However, Jesus’s procession and proclamation of the basileia (reign) of G*d subverts the Roman world order and that of their local, elite allies.

This highly original commentary, part of the New International Commentary, is unique for the way it combines concerns with first-century culture in the Roman world with understanding the text of Luke as a wholistic, historical narrative.

Blight and the heresy and the darker of the membrane and the sticky knife and the worm of the eunuch and the woeful of the powers and the many often and the gladiators and the praetorian guards and the murderers and the seekers of the stream and the elixir of the pond and the seas of the dead; Doom ye; And thine throat and the pardonable and the Nicodemus and the disciples and the row and the seed for thou and the many of the cotton and the winch of the tidy sum for the body of the sarong and the Christ undies and the worm often and the filth and the sewers of the bubonic plague and the Hermes and the leper and the colonies of the undeniably and the dead and the many of the avarice and the jackal and the Nero claims and the worm and the seed and the short fat woman and the winch of the cock and the harder.

A wondrous book of unimaginable power...A mission to prevent the conception of the antichrist.And in the midst of it all, a fallen archangel prince seeks to escape millennial imprisonment within the bottomless pit known as the Abyss. In the days leading up to the second coming of Jesus Christ, a young woman named Monet Devereaux receives the Oracle Book-an ancient text capable of revealing past, present and future events-from her grandmother. As time progresses and Monet survives her abduction to the kingdom of hell, she soon learns from an archangel swore to protect her from the forces of darkness that God has chosen her as the one who will prevent the conception of the antichrist from coming to pass. Aided by the aforementioned archangel Acacia and a seasoned pastor named Benjamin Masterson, Monet embarks on an astonishing mission that will not only pit her and her companions against Satan but will also put her faith in God to the ultimate test as well.

For two centuries, Jesus has connected the Latter-day Saints to broader currents of Christianity, even while particular Mormon beliefs have been points of differentiation. From the author of the definitive life of Brigham Young comes a biography of the Mormon Jesus that enriches our understanding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.