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Mountain Holiness
A Photographic Narrative
Deborah Vansau Mccauley
University of Tennessee Press, 2003
“A remarkable achievement. Mountain Holiness combines Warren Brunner’s poignant and sensitive photographs with a succinct narrative by Deborah McCauley, the preeminent authority on Appalachian mountain religion. This is a landmark study that sheds light on one of the most neglected subjects in American religion.”—Randall Balmer, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University

Hidden deep in the hills of central Appalachia, tiny churches have quietly carried on their worship practices in an unbroken chain for two centuries. Harking back to the camp-meeting movement of the early nineteenth century, independent Holiness churches are considered by some to represent Appalachia's single largest religious tradition. Yet it is one that remains uncounted in any census of American church life because of the lack of formal institutions or written records. Through vivid images and perceptive words, this book documents this rich history, showing how these independent churches have sustained both faith and followers.
The authors spent five years interviewing and photographing Appalachia's Holiness people and participating in their services. From thousands of photographs, they have selected nearly three hundred fifty images for this large-format volume. Here are small one-room churches—many built to hold no more than a dozen people—scattered in the hills of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Yet Warren Brunner's striking images depict not only buildings but also the people and their faith practices: river baptisms and homecomings, serpent handling and tent evangelism, radio preaching and special holiday services.

Deborah McCauley and Laura Porter's text combines descriptions of the pictures with the history of the churches and interviews with members. They create a representative window into the material and oral culture of central Appalachia's independent Holiness heritage. Mountain Holiness is a book that will fascinate anyone who cares about these traditions, as well as anyone concerned with the preservation of America's most vital folkways.

About the Authors: Deborah Vansau McCauley is a leading authority on
religion in Appalachia and is the author of Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History.
Laura E. Porter became familiar with Appalachian religion while pursuing a Master of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary; she is presently a computer consultant for religious and relief organizations.

Warren E. Brunner is a renowned photographer of Appalachia who has lived and worked in Berea, Kentucky, for nearly half a century. He has published three collections of photographs of the region. Patricia Parker Brunner, his wife, is an ordained Southern Baptist deacon who holds an M.A. in biblical studies.
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Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism
Edited by Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker
University of Illinois Press, 1999
American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
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The Fire Spreads
Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South
Randall J. Stephens
Harvard University Press, 2008

Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country.

Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology. Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them.

The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders such as John Ashcroft.

With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active political conservatives.

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Heaven Below
Early Pentecostals and American Culture
Grant Wacker
Harvard University Press, 2003
In this lively history of the rise of pentecostalism in the United States, Grant Wacker gives an in-depth account of the religious practices of pentecostal churches as well as an engaging picture of the way these beliefs played out in daily life.The core tenets of pentecostal belief—personal salvation, Holy Ghost baptism, divine healing, and anticipation of the Lord’s imminent return—took root in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Wacker examines the various aspects of pentecostal culture, including rituals, speaking in tongues, the authority of the Bible, the central role of Jesus in everyday life, the gifts of prophecy and healing, ideas about personal appearance, women’s roles, race relations, attitudes toward politics and the government. Tracking the daily lives of pentecostals, and paying close attention to the voices of individual men and women, Wacker is able to identify the reason for the movement’s spectacular success: a demonstrated ability to balance idealistic and pragmatic impulses, to adapt distinct religious convictions in order to meet the expectations of modern life.More than twenty million American adults today consider themselves pentecostal. Given the movement’s major place in American religious life, the history of its early years—so artfully told here—is of central importance.
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Testing Prayer
Science and Healing
Candy Gunther Brown
Harvard University Press, 2012

When sickness strikes, people around the world pray for healing. Many of the faithful claim that prayer has cured them of blindness, deafness, and metastasized cancers, and some believe they have been resurrected from the dead. Can, and should, science test such claims? A number of scientists say no, concerned that empirical studies of prayer will be misused to advance religious agendas. And some religious practitioners agree with this restraint, worrying that scientific testing could undermine faith.

In Candy Gunther Brown’s view, science cannot prove prayer’s healing power, but what scientists can and should do is study prayer’s measurable effects on health. If prayer produces benefits, even indirectly (and findings suggest that it does), then more careful attention to prayer practices could impact global health, particularly in places without access to conventional medicine.

Drawing on data from Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians, Brown reverses a number of stereotypes about believers in faith-healing. Among them is the idea that poorer, less educated people are more likely to believe in the healing power of prayer and therefore less likely to see doctors. Brown finds instead that people across socioeconomic backgrounds use prayer alongside conventional medicine rather than as a substitute. Dissecting medical records from before and after prayer, surveys of prayer recipients, prospective clinical trials, and multiyear follow-up observations and interviews, she shows that the widespread perception of prayer’s healing power has demonstrable social effects, and that in some cases those effects produce improvements in health that can be scientifically verified.

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The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself
Pietism and Women's Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century Germany
Johanna Eleonora Petersen
University of Chicago Press, 2005
In a time when the Pauline dictum decreed that women be silent in matters of the Church, Johanna Eleonora Petersen (1644–1724) was a pioneering author of religious books, insisting on her right to speak out as a believer above her male counterparts. Publishing her readings of the Gospels and the Book of Revelation as well as her thoughts on theology in general, Petersen and her writings created controversy, especially in orthodox circles, and she became a voice for the radical Pietists—those most at odds with Lutheran ministers and their teachings. But she defended her lay religious calling and ultimately printed fourteen original works, including her autobiography, the first of its kind written by a woman in Germany—all in an age in which most women were unable to read or write.

Collected in The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen are Petersen's autobiography and two shorter tracts that would become models of Pietistic devotional writing. A record of the status and contribution of women in the early Protestant church, this collection will be indispensable reading for scholars of seventeenth-century German religious and social history.
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Athanasius and Constantius
Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire
Timothy D. Barnes
Harvard University Press, 1993

As the high-ranking Bishop of Alexandria from 328 to 373, Athanasius came into conflict with no fewer than four Roman emperors—Constantine himself, his son Constantius, Julian the Apostate, and the “Arian” Valens. In this new reconstruction of Athanasius’s career, Timothy D. Barnes analyzes the nature and extent of the Bishop’s power, especially as it intersected with the policies of these emperors.

Repeatedly condemned and deposed by church councils, the Bishop persistently resurfaced as a player to contend with in ecclesiastic and imperial politics. Barnes’s work reveals that Athanasius’s writings, though a significant source for this period, are riddled with deliberate misinterpretations, which historians through the ages have uncritically accepted.

Untangling longstanding misconceptions, Barnes reveals the Bishop’s true role in the struggles within Christianity, and in the relations between the Roman emperor and the Church at a critical juncture.

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Promiscuous Grace
Imagining Beauty and Holiness with Saint Mary of Egypt
Sonia Velázquez
University of Chicago Press, 2023
A meditation on holiness and beauty through the study of Saint Mary of Egypt.
 
Saint Mary of Egypt has fascinated theologians, poets, and artists since the seventh century. Her story is richly evocative, encompassing sin and sanctity, concupiscence and asceticism, youth and old age. In Promiscuous Grace, Sonia Velázquez thinks with Saint Mary of Egypt about the relationship between beauty and holiness. Drawing on an archive spanning Spanish medieval poetry, Baroque paintings, seventeenth-century hagiography, and Balzac’s Le chef-d’œuvre  inconnu, Velázquez argues for the importance of the senses on the surface of religious texts on her way to revealing why the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt still matters today.
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Cross and Creation
A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria
Mark E. Therrien
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
Even though the theology of Origen of Alexandria has shaped the Christian Tradition in almost every way, the controversies over his legacy have been seemingly endless. One major interpretative trend, for example, has suggested Origen’s theology is really akin to the heterodox Gnostics against whom he wrote than the actual teaching of the Gospel, since he (supposedly) had a disdainful attitude towards Creation and ultimately saw little redemptive meaning in the Passion. In Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria, Mark Therrien offers an original interpretation of Origen’s theology. Focusing on some of Origen’s most important works (especially On First Principles and the Commentary on John, but ultimately making reference to his writings more broadly), this book retrieves and examines some of the foundational pillars of Origen’s theology through close readings and re-examinations of those texts. It examines eight of these theological foundations: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the end, the soul, the world, the cross, and deification. Moreover, by showing the connections between Origen’s understanding of these foundational pillars, it also shows the coherence of his theology as a whole. Taken collectively, what emerges from these eight chapters is that two doctrines specially shape Origen’s theology: Cross and Creation. As Therrien shows, Origen did not hold contempt for Creation. Rather, Origen thinks that Creation emerges from the very life of God as eternally foreknown and provided for in the person of Christ, the Wisdom of God the Father. Moreover, he also holds that, though fallen, Creation will be restored according to its original, eternal intention in God precisely through the Passion of Jesus Christ on the Cross. The Cross is thus not minimalized in Origen’s theology; it is rather its very center.
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Erasmus's Life of Origen
Thomas P. Scheck
Catholic University of America Press, 2016
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) hailed Origen of Alexandria (185-254) as a holy priest, a gifted homilist, a heroic Christian, and a celebrated exegete and theologian of the ancient Church. In this book Thomas Scheck presents one of the fruits of Erasmus's endeavors in the field of patristic studies (a particularly neglected field of scholarship within Erasmus studies) by providing the first English translation, annotated and thoroughly introduced, of Erasmus' final work, the Prefaces to his Edition of Origen's writings (1536). Originally published posthumously two months after Erasmus's death, the work surveys Origen of Alexandria's life, writings, preaching, and contribution to the Catholic Church. The staggering depth and breadth of Erasmus's learning are exhibited here, as well as the maturity of his theological reflections, which in many ways anticipate the irenicism of the Second Vatican Council with respect to Origen. Erasmus presents Origen as a marvelous doctor of the ancient Church who made a tremendous contribution to the Catholic exegetical tradition and who lived a saintly life.
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The New Prophecy and "New Visions"
Evidence of Montanism in The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas (Patristic Monograph Series, Volume 18)
Rex D. Butler
Catholic University of America Press, 2006
In this book, Rex D. Butler examines the Passion for evidence of Montanism and proposes that its three authors--Perpetua, Saturus, and the unnamed editor--were Montanists.
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Le Martyre de Pionios
Pretre de Smyrne
Louis Robert
Harvard University Press, 1994

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Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace
The Life and Thought of Prosper of Aquitaine
Alexander Y. Hwang
Catholic University of America Press, 2009
Intrepid Lover of Perfect Grace provides students and scholars with the first biography of Prosper of Aquitaine (388-455) and the first book-length study in English of this important figure in the history of Christianity
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Socrates of Constantinople
Historian of Church and State
Theresa Urbainczyk
University of Michigan Press, 1997
The fourth century c.e. saw the death of the ancient world and the birth of the medieval. Pagan temples crumbled through disuse, while Christian churches sprang up around the fledgling Holy Roman Empire. The emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity changed history: pagans blamed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire on Christianity, but Christians explained events differently.
The church history written by Socrates of Constantinople is one of the most important sources, Eastern or Western, pagan or Christian, for these complex centuries. Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State is the first detailed study of Socrates' history--it describes the historical situation in which he wrote his work, and it pulls together all the personal information available about the author. The volume then examines Socrates' own work: how it was composed, which sources were used and how, and it looks at the relationship between Socrates' work and other church histories. It goes on to consider Socrates' attitudes towards bishops, emperors, and their enemies.
Socrates is sometimes dismissed by modern scholars for being a poor ecclesiastical historiographer. However, Theresa Urbainczyk carefully demonstrates Socrates' theory of causation, which affected the way he wrote his history, and she argues that he introduced secular material deliberately. In his view arguments and division in the church caused trouble in the state. In other words, when church leaders quibbled over theology, they endangered the state. It was therefore their duty, for the sake of church and state, to unite--under the emperor. This study not only calls on scholars to reexamine Socrates of Constantinople but makes the wider arguments that the ancients were far less concerned with genre than are modern scholars, and that ecclesiastical history is a continuation of, not a deviation from, political history.
Socrates of Constantinople: Historian of Church and State will be of interest to students and scholars interested in late Roman and early Christian history, theology, and historiography. Anyone studying late antiquity will find an examination of Socrates' attitudes essential.
Theresa Urbainczyk is College Lecturer in the Department of Classics, University College, Dublin.
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The Life and Miracles of Thekla
A Literary Study
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Harvard University Press, 2006

The Life and Miracles of Thekla offers a unique view on the reception of classical and early Christian literature in Late Antiquity. This study examines the Life and Miracles as an intricate example of Greek writing and attempts to situate the work amidst a wealth of similar literary forms from the classical world. The first half of the Life and Miracles is an erudite paraphrase of the famous second-century Acts of Paul and Thekla. The second half is a collection of forty-six miracles that Thekla worked before and during the composition of the collection.

This study represents a detailed investigation into the literary character of this ambitious Greek work from Late Antiquity.

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The Roles of Christ's Humanity in Salvation
Insights from Theodore of Mopsuestia
Frederick G. McLeod S.J.
Catholic University of America Press, 2005
This book enables one to judge Theodore's christological statements in the wider context of how he conceives of Christ's roles in salvation.
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Theodoret of Cyrrhus
The Bishop and the Holy Man
Theresa Urbainczyk
University of Michigan Press, 2002
The writing of a saint's life can be as political as it is pious. In this, her second book, Theresa Urbainczyk demonstrates how one collection of saints' lives--the Religious History of Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus--both prescribes and describes the relationship between ascetics and the early Church.
With the conversion of Constantine and his subsequent championing of the Christian cause, the Church rapidly began to increase its wealth and status. As coins filled the coffers of God, some Christians came to feel that their religion had become corrupted. They fled to the desert wastes, seeking a purer, holier life. These recluses and ascetics are the subjects of Theodoret's Religious History. The Syrian bishop had known many of them, some for all his life.
Urbainczyk argues that Theodoret's work was not merely written as an act of piety, but was in fact a very political treatise, addressing the theological disputes of his day. The main tensions of the early fifth century lay between the sees of Syrian Antioch and Egyptian Alexandria. One of Theodoret's aims was to show that Syria had produced individuals as pious as those of Egypt, about whom much had already been written. Urbainczyk studies the social background of these Syrian ascetics, describes the relationship between Theodoret's heroes and the Church community, and investigates how Theodoret presents his own personal relationship with the holy men.
This book is the first to examine Theodoret's role in his own work. Urbainczyk argues that the intimate details of Theodoret's life were not let slip accidentally but were inserted deliberately to buttress his own threatened position and to show how these independent men of God deferred to no one but himself.
Theodoret of Cyrrhus is an invaluable study for students of late antiquity, scholars of early Church history, early medieval historiographers and hagiographers.
Theresa Urbainczyk is College Lecturer in Classics, University College, Dublin.
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The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios
Robert H. Jordan
Harvard University Press, 2021

Theodore (759–826), abbot of the influential Constantinopolitan monastery of Stoudios, is celebrated as a saint by the Orthodox Church for his stalwart defense of icon veneration. Three important texts promoting the monastery and the memory of its founder are collected in The Life and Death of Theodore of Stoudios.

In the Life of Theodore, Michael the Monk describes a golden age at Stoudios, as well as Theodore’s often antagonistic encounters with imperial rulers. The Encyclical Letter of Naukratios, written in 826 by his successor, informed the scattered monks of their leader’s death. Translation and Burial contains brief biographies of Theodore and his brother, along with an eyewitness account of their reburial at Stoudios.

These works, translated into English for the first time, appear here alongside new editions of the Byzantine Greek texts.

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Family Matters
James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home
Hilde Løvdal Stephens
University of Alabama Press, 2019
The first full-length study of a pivotal figure in American evangelical faith

James Dobson—child psychologist, author, radio personality, and founder of the Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family—published his first book, Dare to Discipline, in 1970 and quickly became the go-to family expert for evangelical parents across the United States as American evangelicalism rose as a major political force. The family expert became a leading voice in the Reagan Revolution, and played a role in making American evangelicals even more firmly associated with the Republican Party. Dobson’s principle beliefs are that the family is the center of Christian America and that the traditional family must be defended from perceived threats such as gay rights, feminism, abortion, and the secularization of public schools. Dobson and Focus on the Family dominated Christian media through print, radio, and online venues, and their message reached millions of American evangelical households, shaping the cultural sensibilities and political attitudes of evangelical families throughout the culture wars from the 1980s into the 2000s.
 
Family Matters: James Dobson and Focus on the Family’s Crusade for the Christian Home by Hilde Løvdal Stephens is an insightful history and analysis of James Dobson’s rise to fame, effect on American evangelical culture, and subsequent descent from relevance. Extensively researched, Løvdal Stephens scoured through Dobson’s books, articles, and other materials published by Focus on the Family in order to explore how evangelicals defined and defended the traditional family as an ideal and as a symbol in an ever-changing world.
 
By contextualizing the history of Dobson’s reign, Løvdal Stephens’s discerning analysis fills an important gap in our understandings of the politics and culture of late twentieth-century conservative Christianity in the United States. She explores complex topics ranging from Dobson’s celebration of what he believes are timeless biblical values, such as maintaining strict and defined gender roles, to the ways Dobson and Focus on the Family balanced their basic ideals with real everyday lives of average American evangelical families, facing the realities of divorce, working mothers, and other perceived threats to the traditional family.
 
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Waiting for the Call
From Preacher's Daughter to Lesbian Mom
Jacqueline Taylor
University of Michigan Press, 2007

“Well-written, absorbing, and a great pleasure to read . . . will appeal to Christians struggling to square their traditional beliefs with acceptance of homosexuality as well as to all those interested in adoption, lesbian marriage, and the changing shape of America’s families.”

—Elizabeth C. Fine, Virginia Tech University

Waiting for the Call takes readers from the foothills of the Appalachians—where Jacqueline Taylor was brought up in a strict evangelical household—to contemporary Chicago, where she and her lesbian partner are raising a family. In a voice by turns comic and loving, Taylor recounts the amazing journey that took her in profoundly different directions from those she or her parents could have ever envisioned.

Taylor’s father was a Southern Baptist preacher, and she struggled to deal with his strictures as well as her mother’s manic-depressive episodes. After leaving for college, Taylor finds herself questioning her faith and identity, questions that continue to mount when—after two divorces, a doctoral degree, and her first kiss with a woman—she discovers her own lesbianism and begins a most untraditional family that grows to include two adopted children from Peru.

Even as she celebrates and cherishes this new family, Taylor insists on the possibility of maintaining a loving connection to her religious roots. While she and her partner search for the best way to explain adoption to their children and answer the inevitable question, “Which one is your mom?” they also seek out a church that will unite their love of family and their faith. Told in the great storytelling tradition of the American South, full of deep feeling and wry humor, Waiting for the Call engagingly demonstrates how one woman bridged the gulf between faith and sexual identity without abandoning her principles.

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The King James Version at 400
Assessing Its Genius as Bible Translation and Its Literary Influence
David G. Burke
SBL Press, 2013
In this collection of essays, thirty scholars from diverse disciplines offer their unique perspectives on the genius of the King James Version, a translation whose 400th anniversary was recently celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. While avoiding nostalgia and hagiography, each author clearly appreciates the monumental, formative role the KJV has had on religious and civil life on both sides of the Atlantic (and beyond) as well as on the English language itself. In part 1 the essayists look at the KJV in its historical contexts—the politics and rapid language growth of the era, the emerging printing and travel industries, and the way women are depicted in the text (and later feminist responses to such depictions). Part 2 takes a closer look at the KJV as a translation and the powerful precedents it set for all translations to follow, with the essayists exploring the translators’ principles and processes (with close examinations of “Bancroft’s Rules” and the Prefaces), assessing later revisions of the text, and reviewing the translation’s influence on the English language, textual criticism, and the practice of translation in Jewish and Chinese contexts. Part 3 looks at the various ways the KJV has impacted the English language and literature, the practice of religion (including within the African American and Eastern Orthodox churches), and the broader culture. The contributors are Robert Alter, C. Clifton Black, David G. Burke, Richard A. Burridge, David J. A. Clines, Simon Crisp, David J. Davis, James D. G. Dunn, Lori Anne Ferrell, Leonard J. Greenspoon, Robin Griffith-Jones, Malcolm Guite, Andrew E. Hill, John F. Kutsko, Seth Lerer, Barbara K. Lewalski, Jacobus A. Naudé, David Norton, Jon Pahl, Kuo-Wei Peng, Deborah W. Rooke, Rodney Sadler Jr., Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Harold Scanlin, Naomi Seidman, Christopher Southgate, R. S. Sugirtharajah, Joan Taylor, Graham Tomlin, Philip H. Towner, David Trobisch, and N. T. Wright.
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A Restless Search
A History of Persian Translations of the Bible
Kenneth J. Thomas
SBL Press, 2015

A literary detective story, a historical survey, and an important contribution to translation studies

This book from Kenneth J. Thomas is both a philological and linguistic analysis of Persian translations and a call for interfaith cooperation. Thomas appraises biblical translation efforts from the fifth to the twenty-first centuries of Persian history when successive translators and groups of translators, sometimes of different faiths, worked to reshape and refine versions of the Bible in the supple Persian language of their times. Restless, impelled, and wide-ranging, this is a story of translations commissioned by shahs, undertaken by Christian and Jewish communities, and produced by teams working outside the country.

Features

  • Demonstration of the effects of the lack of a standard Persian vocabulary for key biblical terms on literary style and word choice
  • Technical analyses and overviews of Persian biblical translations
  • A careful examination of sixteen centuries' worth of Bible translations
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Teaching the Bible
Practical Strategies for Classroom Instruction
Mark Roncace
SBL Press, 2005
While books on pedagogy in a theoretical mode have proliferated in recent years, there have been few that offer practical, specific ideas for teaching particular biblical texts. To address this need, Teaching the Bible, a collection of ideas and activities written by dozens of innovative college and seminary professors, outlines effective classroom strategies—with a focus on active learning—for the new teacher and veteran professor alike. It includes everything from ways to incorporate film, literature, art, and music to classroom writing assignments and exercises for groups and individuals. The book assumes an academic approach to the Bible but represents a wide range of methodological, theological, and ideological perspectives. This volume is an indispensable resource for anyone who teaches classes on the Bible.
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Bibles
An Illustrated History from Papyrus to Print
Christopher de Hamel
Bodleian Library Publishing, 2011

A unique visual history of the world’s best-selling book of all time, Bibles provides a rich snapshot of the biblical bookmaking tradition through images from fifty rare and important Bibles. As the captivating and colorful images collected here reveal, in many ways the history of the Bible mirrors the history of the book and publishing.

Presented chronologically, the Bibles provide a fascinating look into the book making techniques and characteristics of their time. From the fragile papyrus fragments of the ancient world to medieval illuminated manuscripts and glorious modern printed editions, each image is accompanied by a caption which explains its particular significance. In addition, each chapter includes a short introduction that contextualizes each book within its time period. Featuring many unusual examples—some of which have never been illustrated in print before—Bibles includes many of the great biblical texts of the Eastern and Western traditions, including the Magdalen Papyrus, the Laudian Acts, the Anglo-Saxon Exodus, St Margaret’s Gospel-book, the Douce Apocalypse, the Bible Moralisée (MS. Bodley 270b), the Kennicott Bible, the Guttenberg Bible, and the King James Bible.

Drawing exclusively from one of the finest collections of Bibles in the world, which is held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, this book tells the remarkable story of the development of the Bible across media, language, and provenance.

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The Making of the Bible
From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture
Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter
Harvard University Press, 2021

The Making of the Bible is invaluable for anyone interested in Scripture and in the intertwined histories of Judaism and Christianity.”
—John Barton, author of A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths


The authoritative new account of the Bible’s origins, illuminating the 1,600-year tradition that shaped the Christian and Jewish holy books as millions know them today.

The Bible as we know it today is best understood as a process, one that begins in the tenth century BCE. In this revelatory account, a world-renowned scholar of Hebrew scripture joins a foremost authority on the New Testament to write a new biography of the Book of Books, reconstructing Jewish and Christian scriptural histories, as well as the underappreciated contest between them, from which the Bible arose.

Recent scholarship has overturned popular assumptions about Israel’s past, suggesting, for instance, that the five books of the Torah were written not by Moses but during the reign of Josiah centuries later. The sources of the Gospels are also under scrutiny. Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter reveal the long, transformative journeys of these and other texts en route to inclusion in the holy books. The New Testament, the authors show, did not develop in the wake of an Old Testament set in stone. Rather the two evolved in parallel, in conversation with each other, ensuring a continuing mutual influence of Jewish and Christian traditions. Indeed, Schmid and Schröter argue that Judaism might not have survived had it not been reshaped in competition with early Christianity.

A remarkable synthesis of the latest Old and New Testament scholarship, The Making of the Bible is the most comprehensive history yet told of the world’s best-known literature, revealing its buried lessons and secrets.

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Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Scott S. Elliott
SBL Press, 2012
Translation is a fundamental aspect of biblical scholarship and an ever-present reality in a global context. Scholars interested in more than linguistically oriented translation problems of a traditional nature often struggle to find an interdisciplinary venue in which to share their work. These essays, by means of critical engagement with the translation, translation practices, and translation history of texts relevant to the study of Bible and ancient and modern Christianity, explore theoretical dimensions and contemporary implications of translations and translation practice. The contributors are George Aichele, Roland Boer, Virginia Burrus, Alan Cadwallader, K. Jason Coker, John Eipper, Scott S. Elliott, Raj Nadella, Flemming A. J. Nielsen, Christina Petterson, Naomi Seidman, Jaqueline du Toit, Esteban Voth, and Matt Waggoner.
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A Translator’s Defense
Giannozzo Manetti
Harvard University Press, 2016
Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was an Italian diplomat and a celebrated humanist orator and scholar of the early Renaissance. Son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, he turned away from a commercial career to take up scholarship under the guidance of the great civic humanist, Leonardo Bruni. Like Bruni he mastered both classical Latin and Greek, but, unusually, added to his linguistic armory a command of Biblical Hebrew as well. He used his knowledge of Hebrew to make a fresh translation of the Psalms into humanist Latin, a work that implicitly challenged the canonical Vulgate of St. Jerome. His Apologeticus (1455–59) in five books was a defense of the study of Hebrew and of the need for a new translation. As such, it constituted the most extensive treatise on the art of translation of the Renaissance. This ITRL edition contains the first complete translation of the work into English.
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When Texts Are Canonized
Timothy H. Lim
SBL Press, 2017

How did canonization take place, and what difference does it make?

Essays in this collection probe the canonical process: Why were certain books, but not others, included in the canon? What criteria were used to select the books of the canon? Was canonization a divine fiat or human act? What was the nature of the authority of the laws and narratives of the Torah? How did prophecy come to be included in the canon? Others reflect on the consequences of canonization: What are the effects in elevating certain writings to the status of “Holy Scriptures”? What happens when a text is included in an official list? What theological and hermeneutical questions are at stake in the fact of the canon? Should the canon be unsealed or reopened to include other writings?

Features:

  • Essays that contribute to our understanding of the complex processes of canonization
  • Exploration of early concepts of canonicity
  • Discussion of reopening the New Testament canon
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Ecclesial Exegesis
A Synthesis of Ancient and Modern Approaches to Scripture
Gregory Vall
Catholic University of America Press, 2022
There is broad support today for the idea that biblical scholarship ought to be informed by the faith of the Church and serve the life of the Church. In a word, it should be ecclesial. There is far less agreement, however, when one asks how this goal is to be achieved and what ecclesial exegesis ought to look like. In 1988, Joseph Ratzinger put forth his “Method C” proposal, calling for the development of a new exegetical and hermeneutical synthesis. This would be neither a retreat to the patristic-medieval approach (Method A) nor the continued hegemony of the historical-critical approach (Method B). The latter must be purified of its positivism through a transformational encounter with the former, so that the gifts of both might be released for the life of the Church. Such a synthesis, Ratzinger claimed, would require the philosophical, theological, exegetical, and hermeneutical work of “at least a whole generation” of scholars. Gregory Vall has devoted over thirty years to the development of ecclesial exegesis, and the present volume represents the mature fruit of his labor. Over against those who treat Dei Verbum as Vatican II’s endorsement of the historical-critical method, he demonstrates that the dogmatic constitution actually points to something very much like Ratzinger’s Method C. Employing a dialogic movement between the inductive-exegetical and the deductive-dogmatic, Vall offers nine studies that bring to the surface issues such as the relationship between Old Testament and New Testament, literal sense and spiritual sense, and Scripture and Tradition. While Vall brings theological knowledge and hermeneutical skill to the quest for Method C, he also provides a great deal of valuable exegesis of both testaments. Ecclesial Exegesis is not simply another book of theory. It demonstrates how Method C can be done.
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Bible and Transformation
The Promise of Intercultural Bible Reading
Hans de Wit
SBL Press, 2015

Engage the delightful and inspiring, sometimes rough and rocky road to inclusive and transformative Bible reading

This book offers the results of research within a new area of discipline—empirical hermeneutics in intercultural perspective. The book includes interpretations from the homeless in Amsterdam, to Indonesia, from African Xhosa readers to Norway, to Madagascar, American youths, Germany, Czech Republic, Colombia, and Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic.

Features:

  • Interpretations from ordinary readers in more than twenty-five countries
  • Background introduction with history of the text
  • Discussion of intertextual connections with Greco-Roman authors
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Global Hermeneutics. Reflections and Consequences
Knut Holter
SBL Press, 2010

A collection of essays from the International Cooperation Initiative of the Society of Biblical Literature

This first volume in the International Voices in Biblical Studies series stimulates and facilitates a global hermeneutic in which centers and margins fade. The collection explores the global context within which biblical studies and interpretation take place, includes three case studies from different regions, and reflections on the consequences of global hermeneutics on biblical interpretation and on translation.

Features

  • Case studies from different regions
  • Essays explore both the positive and negative aspects of globalization
  • Seven essays represent scholarship from Africa and Latin America
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    front cover of Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics
    Latino/a Biblical Hermeneutics
    Problematics, Objectives, Strategies
    Francisco Lozada Jr.
    SBL Press, 2014

    Engage essays that are profoundly theological and resolutely social

    In this collection of essays, contributors seek to analyze the vision of the critical task espoused by Latino/a critics. The project explores how such critics approach their vocation as critics in the light of their identity as members of the Latino/a experience and reality. A variety of critics—representing a broad spectrum of the Latino/a American formation, along various axes of identity—address the question in whatever way they deem appropriate: What does it mean to be a Latino/a critic?

    Features:

    • Essays from sixteen scholars
    • Articles bring together the fields of biblical studies and racial-ethnic studies
    • Conclusion addresses directions for future research
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    front cover of A New Approach to Textual Criticism
    A New Approach to Textual Criticism
    An Introduction to the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method
    Tommy Wasserman
    SBL Press, 2017

    An essential introduction for scholars and students of New Testament Greek

    With the publication of the widely used 28th edition of Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece and the 5th edition of the United Bible Society Greek New Testament, a computer-assisted method known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was used for the first time to determine the most valuable witnesses and establish the initial text. This book offers the first full-length, student-friendly introduction to this important new method. After setting out the method’s history, separate chapters clarify its key concepts, including genealogical coherence, textual flow diagrams, and the global stemma. Examples from across the New Testament are used to show how the method works in practice. The result is an essential introduction that will be of interest to students, translators, commentators, and anyone else who studies the Greek New Testament.

    Features

    • A clear explanation of how and why the text of the Greek New Testament is changing
    • Step-by-step guidance on how to use the CBGM in textual criticism
    • Diagrams, illustrations, and glossary of key terms
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    front cover of Inspiration and Interpretation
    Inspiration and Interpretation
    A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture
    Denis Farkasfalvy
    Catholic University of America Press, 2010
    Inspiration and Interpretation provides readers with a much needed general theological introduction to the study of Sacred Scripture.
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    A Theology of the Christian Bible
    Revelation - Inspiration - Canon
    Denis Farkasfalvy
    Catholic University of America Press, 2018
    A Theology of the Christian Bible is built upon the thesis that divine revelation, the inspiration and canonization of Scripture should be viewed as “sequentially linked movements” of a single process wherein God reveals his Word in history and ensures permanent accessibility of revelation for his People, both of Israel and of the Church. The starting point is the view expressed in the Second Vatican Council’s document Dei Verbum that revelation consists of the “words and realities” of Salvation History. This marks a shift away from the neo-scholastic concept that approached revelation primarily as a set of propositional truths. Farkasfalvy begins with the notion of revelation as a historical process: God reveals his Word in a “salvation history,” which culminates in the Incarnation. The transmission of revelation always involves human mediation by chosen individuals or, in the language of the biblical and patristic tradition, “Prophets and Apostles.” Farkasfalvy then moves on to review some of the major contributors to the theology of inspiration around the time of Vatican II (Bea, Rahner, Alonso-Schökel), the teaching of Dei Verbum proper, and finally the 2014 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission and biblical inspiration and the truth of the Bible, treating each of these in its individual context. According to Farkasfalvy, the theology of inspiration was greatly handicapped by the neo-scholastic notion of God as a “literary author” of the scriptural texts. Advocating God as true and genuine “author” of Scripture, but in a non-literary sense, Farkasfalvy also reviews afresh the tradition inspiration-incarnation analogy. Scripture should be thought of in light of God progressively revealing himself in limited and located contexts to chosen human beings, through whom revelation is transmitted in verbal and, eventually, written form. God guides the complex compositional processes of the biblical books so that his word becomes accessibly and permanently preserved in writing for his people, the Church. The final chapters of A Theology of the Christian Bible take up the extension of these dynamics into canonization. These largely exegetical and historical chapters focus on the transmission of the revelation in Christ through both Testaments by means of Jesus’ Apostles, embracing the Hebrew Scriptures and setting in motion the formation and, in early patristics, the canonization of the New Testament.
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    front cover of The Word of Truth, Sealed by the Spirit
    The Word of Truth, Sealed by the Spirit
    Perspectives on the Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture
    Matthew C. Genung
    Saint Paul Seminary Press, 2022
    The Word of Truth, Sealed by the Spirit is a collection of seven essays pertaining to the topic of biblical inspiration and truth. Two chapters provide a critical analysis of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2014 document The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture and reflect upon its relevance and outcome. Five chapters respond to a particular aspect of this document by investigating a hermeneutical or exegetical question in order to advance the dialogue on the questions of biblical inspiration and truth. This book is intended not only for Catholic seminary and university professors and students but also Protestant scholars and students, as well as catechized lay people of all Christian denominations. Luis Sánchez-Navarro, DCJM, writes on the importance of understanding the relationship between revelation, biblical inspiration, and truth for both biblical interpretation and for Christian living. Michael Magee provides a critical analysis of the PBC document by situating it within the recent history of the Church’s attempts to clarify the theology of biblical inspiration and truth. Matthew C. Genung studies Exodus 19 in its context, showing that the Bible itself indicates that its nature as emended Scripture pertains to its inspired character. Anthony Pagliarini writes about the Book of Ezekiel as inspired Scripture given the non-fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophetic vision of the restored Temple. Aaron Pidel, SJ, analyzes Joseph Ratzinger’s writings on hermeneutics and biblical theology, to propose a reliable methodology for determining the historicity of conflicting biblical reports. Marcin Kowalski, analyzing 1 Corinthians 11:2–16, addresses the question of the inspired character of a text at variance with changing gender roles in society. Kelly Anderson evaluates biblical texts depicting an inner-trinitarian dialogue in order to shed light on the relationship of inspired Scripture to the eternal dialogue of God.
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    front cover of The Bible in the Sixteenth Century
    The Bible in the Sixteenth Century
    David C. Steinmetz
    Duke University Press, 1990
    A distinguished group of authors here illuminate a broad spectrum of themes in the history of biblical interpretation. Originally published in 1990, these essays take as their common ground the thesis that the intellectual and religious life of the sixteenth century cannot be understood without attention to the preoccupation of sixteenth-century humanists and theologians with the interpretation of the Bible. Topics explored include Jewish exegesis and problems of Old Testament interpretation and the relationship between the Bible and social, political, and institutional history.

    Contributors. Irena Backus, Guy Bedouelle, Kalman P. Bland, Kenneth G. Hagen, Scott H. Hagen, Scott H. Hendrix, R. Gerald Hobbs, Jean-Claude Margolin, H. C. Erik Midelfort, Richard A. Muller, John B. Payne, David C. Steinmetz

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    front cover of Editing the Bible
    Editing the Bible
    Assessing the Task Past and Present
    John S. Kloppenborg
    SBL Press, 2012
    The Bible is likely the most-edited book in history, yet the task of editing the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts of the Bible is fraught with difficulties. The dearth of Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Scriptures and the substantial differences among those witnesses creates difficulties in determining which text ought to be printed as the text of the Jewish Scriptures. For the New Testament, it is not the dearth of manuscripts but the overwhelming number of manuscripts—almost six thousand Greek manuscripts and many more in other languages—that presents challenges for sorting and analyzing such a large, multivariant data set. This volume, representing experts in the editing of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, discusses both current achievements and future challenges in creating modern editions of the biblical texts in their original languages. The contributors are Kristin De Troyer, Michael W. Holmes, John S. Kloppenborg, Sarianna Metso, Judith H. Newman, Holger Strutwolf, Eibert Tigchelaar, David Trobisch, Eugene Ulrich, John Van Seters, Klaus Wachtel, and Ryan Wettlaufer.
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    front cover of Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism
    Empirical Models Challenging Biblical Criticism
    Raymond F. Person
    SBL Press, 2016

    Cutting edge reflections on biblical text formation

    Empirical models based on ancient Near Eastern literature and variations between different textual traditions have been used to lend credibility to the identification of the sources behind biblical literature and the different editorial layers. In this volume, empirical models are used to critique the exaggerated results of identifying sources and editorial layers by demonstrating that, even though much of ancient literature had such complex literary histories, our methods are often inadequate for the task of precisely identifying sources and editorial layers. The contributors are Maxine L. Grossman, Bénédicte Lemmelijn, Alan Lenzi, Sara J. Milstein, Raymond F. Person Jr., Robert Rezetko, Stefan Schorch, Julio Trebolle Barrera, Ian Young, and Joseph A. Weaks.

    Features:

    • Evidence that many ancient texts are composite texts with complex literary histories
    • Ten essays and an introduction cover texts from Mesopotamia, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
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    front cover of Opening Scripture
    Opening Scripture
    Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England
    Lisa M. Gordis
    University of Chicago Press, 2003
    "Opening Scripture provides a thorough and original account of ministerial and lay strategies for interpreting Scripture in the Massachusetts Bay. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast literature and history of the period, Lisa Gordis moves deftly through discussions of major figures and events. This is a significant intervention in the study of Puritan New England."—Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame

    What role did the Bible really play in Puritan New England? Many have treated it as a blunt instrument used to cudgel dissenters into submission, but Lisa M. Gordis reveals instead that Puritan readings of the Bible showed great complexity and literary sophistication—so much complexity, in fact, that controversies over biblical interpretation threatened to tear Puritan society apart.

    Drawing on Puritan preaching manuals and sermons as well as the texts of early religious controversies, Gordis argues that Puritan ministers did not expect to impose their views on their congregations. Instead they believed that interpretive consensus would emerge from the process of reading the Bible, with the Holy Spirit assisting readers to understand God's will. Treating the conflict over Roger Williams, the Antinomian Controversy, and the reluctant compromises of the Halfway Covenant as symptoms of a crisis that was as much literary as it was social or spiritual, Opening Scripture explores the profound consequences of Puritan negotiations over biblical interpretation for New England's literature and history.
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