The Therapeutic Bible 1 Samuel

The Therapeutic Bible is an original edition, perhaps unique in the world today. A group of highly regarded Christian mental health professionals — supported by the Brazilian Body of Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists and by the Bible Society of Brazil — have dedicated themselves to the task of commentating the therapeutic content of the biblical text, using their gifts and professional experience to explain how the Holy Scriptures foster our physical, mental, and spiritual health. This volume is the first fruit of this work in the English language, in the hope and prayer that the Wonderful Counselor will use it to help bring rest and relief to many souls who seek comfort from God's Word.

This addition to the well-received Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible offers theological exegesis of 1 Samuel. This commentary, like each in the series, is designed to serve the church--providing a rich resource for preachers, teachers, students, and study groups--and demonstrate the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of the Bible. "The Brazos Commentary offers just the right level of light to make illuminating the word the joy it was meant to be."--Calvin Miller, author of A Hunger for the Holy and Loving God Up Close

The troubles and ills of the church today can only be understood and healed when Christians begin to face up to their hidden alliances with the Corinthians of the first century and embrace both the Apostle’s diagnosis and therapy offered in the epistle. This is the challenge of The Malady and Therapy of the Christian Body, a two-volume commentary by two leading theologians that presents the fruits of a reading strategy that deliberately reflects ecclesial commitment by “reading the Apostle over against ourselves.” Sharing their discoveries about the way Paul deals with questions of factionalism, sexuality, legal conflict, idolatry, dress codes, and eating habits, Brock and Wannenwetsch demonstrate how neither the malady nor the therapy that Paul describes conforms to dominant analyses of the malaise of the contemporary church, which tend to be as “organ centered” as modern medicine. The authors describe the way the Apostle engages in “feeling-into” the organic whole of the body in order to detect blockages to the healthy flow of powers by redirecting their vision to how God is working among them toward the “building up” of the Christian body. The book breaks new ground in crossing the traditional disciplinary boundaries between biblical studies, systematic theology, and theological ethics.

Music was integral to the daily life of ancient Israel. It accompanied activities as diverse as manual labor and royal processionals. At key junctures and in core institutions, musical tones were used to deliver messages, convey emotions, strengthen communal bonds and establish human-divine contact. This book explores the intricate and multifaceted nature of biblical music through a detailed look into four major episodes and genres: the Song of the Sea (Exod. 15), King Saul and David's harp (1 Sam. 16), the use of music in prophecy, and the Book of Psalms. This investigation demonstrates how music helped shape and define the self-identity of ancient Israel.

This study of the book of 1 Samuel espouses a "critical narratology: informed by such cultural practices as feminism and psychoanalysis, following a tradition which finds meaning more in the text's mythic patterns than in the text itself.

Albrecht Dürer’s master engraving, Melencolia I, has stood for centuries as a pictorial summa of knowledge about melancholia and an allegory of the limits of earthbound arts and sciences. Zealously interpreted since the nineteenth century, the work also presides over the origins of modern iconology. Yet more than a century of research has left us with a tangle of mutually contradictory theories. In Perfection’s Therapy, Mitchell Merback discovers in Melencolia’s opacity a fascinating possibility: that Dürer’s masterpiece is not only an arresting diagnosis of melancholic distress, but an innovative instrument for its undoing. Merback deftly analyses the visual and narrative structure of Dürer’s image, revisits its philosophical and medical contexts, and resituates it within the long history of the therapeutic artifact. Placing Dürer’s project in dialogue with that of humanism’s founder, Francesco Petrarch, Merback also unearths the German artist’s ambition to act as a physician of the soul. Celebrated by contemporaries as the “Apelles of our age,” and ever since as Germany’s first Renaissance painter-theorist, the Dürer we encounter here is also the first modern Christian artist, addressing himself to the distress of souls, including his own. Melencolia thus emerges as a key reference point in a project of spiritual-ethical therapy, a work designed to exercise the mind, rebalance the passions, remedy the soul, and help in getting on with the project of perfection.

Ephrem the Syrian was one of the founding voices in Syriac literature. While he wrote in a variety of genres, the bulk of his work took the form of madrashe, a Syriac genre of musical poetry or hymns. In Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia, Jeffrey Wickes offers a thoroughly contextualized study of Ephrem’s magnum opus, the Hymns on Faith, delivered in response to the theological controversies that followed the First Council of Nicaea. The ensuing doctrinal divisions had tremendous impact on the course of Christianity and led in part to the development of a uniquely Syriac Church, in which Ephrem would become a central figure. Drawing on literary, ritual, and performance theories, Bible and Poetry shows how Ephrem used the Syriac Bible to construct and conceive of himself and his audience. In so doing, Wickes resituates Ephrem in a broader early Christian context and contributes to discussions of literature and religion in late antiquity.

Twice as many women as men will experience depression sometime in their lifetime, and episodes for women are likely to start at earlier ages, last longer, and recur more frequently, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. Many women are given medication to treat the disease, but medication alone does not always address the underlying emotions which trouble the mind and spirit. Counselor Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dr. Laura Hendrickson provide biblical guidance on how to balance medical intervention with biblical encouragement.