Yahweh S Elegant Speeches Of The Abrahamic Narratives

This work is a study in the attribution, aesthetics and representations of Yahweh’s speeches in the Hebrew Bible. It describes the literary elegance and beauty of the speeches of Yahweh in the Abrahamic narratives. Employing a synchronic reading of the Abrahamic cycle, it underscores the presence of various literary devices in the divine speeches (12:1-9, 13:1-18, 15:1-21, 17:1-27, 18:1-33, and 22: 1-19). Specifically, it engages the high concentration, literary effects and use of metaphors/metaphoric language, similes, alliterations, wordplays, euphemisms, hyperboles, repetitions, allusions and other distinctive literary features in the speeches of Yahweh which are deliberately denied, and glaringly absent in the speeches of the other main characters of the Abrahamic narratives (e.g. Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar). Similarly, it demonstrates the importance of these elevated speeches in the narrative world of Abrahamic epic. Most importantly, it also highlights the ideological significance of these decorated speeches of Yahweh to the original audience of the narrator who presumably identified with their excessive optimism and rhetoric. Consequently, this book is a pioneering work in the contemporary study of stylistics, characterizations and functions of attributed speeches in the Hebrew narratives.

This valuable resource introduces readers to the Old Testament books of wisdom and poetry--Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs--and helps them better understand each book's overall flow. Estes summarizes some of each book's key issues, offers an exposition of the book that interacts with major commentaries and recent studies, and concludes with an extensive bibliography. Now in paperback.

Provides a ground-breaking new interpretation with which to consider and contextualize the name Yahweh before its relationship with Israel.

Africa needs leaders and Christians from every walk of life to rediscover their identity and purpose in all spheres of society. African Public Theology sounds a clarion call to accomplish this vital task. God created all humans equally, intending for us to live in community and take responsibility for the world around us – a mandate we need to act on. Through faithful application of Scripture to contexts common in the continent today, contributors from across Africa join as one to present a vision for the Africa that God intended. No simplistic solutions are offered – instead African Public Theology challenges every reader to think through the application of biblical principles in their own community, place of work and sphere of influence. If we heed the principles and lessons that God’s word has for society, culture and public life, then countries across Africa can have hope of a future that is free from corruption and self-promotion and is instead characterized by collective stewardship and servant-hearted leadership.

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry