Spiritually nourishing approaches to help you become more insightful, inspired parents and raise soulfully engaged children. Kipnes and November share their hard-won parenting techniques and spirit-filled activities, rituals and prayers to help you cultivate strong Jewish values and cherished spiritual memories in your own family.

The Apostle Paul was the greatest early missionary of the Christian gospel. He was also, by his own admission, an Israelite. How can both these realities coexist in one individual? This book argues that Paul viewed his mission to the Gentiles, in and of itself, as the primary expression of his Jewish identity. The concept of Israel’s divine vocation is used to shed fresh light on a number of much-debated passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Reviewing what we now know about actual synagogues in the land of Israel and their public role in Jewish life and culture, Jordan J. Ryan shows that Gospel narratives placed in synagogues accurately reflect the ancient synagogue setting. He argues for the historical plausibility of the setting of these narratives and suggests that synagogue research must be a starting point for their interpretation. He further argues that Jesus‘s efforts at the restoration of Israel were intentionally aimed at the synagogue as an institution of public and political life.

A groundbreaking new portrait of the apostle Paul, from one of today’s leading historians of antiquity Often seen as the author of timeless Christian theology, Paul himself heatedly maintained that he lived and worked in history’s closing hours. His letters propel his readers into two ancient worlds, one Jewish, one pagan. The first was incandescent with apocalyptic hopes, expecting God through his messiah to fulfill his ancient promises of redemption to Israel. The second teemed with ancient actors, not only human but also divine: angry superhuman forces, jealous demons, and hostile cosmic gods. Both worlds are Paul’s, and his convictions about the first shaped his actions in the second. Only by situating Paul within this charged social context of gods and humans, pagans and Jews, cities, synagogues, and competing Christ-following assemblies can we begin to understand his mission and message. This original and provocative book offers a dramatically new perspective on one of history’s seminal figures.

Paul's letter to the Romans, says Nanos, is an example of Jewish correspondence, addressing believers in Jesus who are steeped in Jewish ways-whether of Jewish or gentile origin. Arguing against those who think Paul was an apostate from Judaism, Nanos maintains Paul's continuity with his Jewish heritage. Several key arguments here are: Those addressed in Paul's letter were still an integral part of the Roman synagogue communities. The "weak" are non- Christian Jews, while the "strong" included both Jewish and gentile converts to belief in Jesus. Paul as a practicing devout Jew insists on the rules of behavior for "the righteous gentiles." Christian subordination to authorities (Romans 13:1-7) is intended to enforce submission to leaders of the synagogues, not Roman government officials. Paul behaves in a way to confirm the very Jewish portrait of him in Acts: going first to the synagogues.

Did Jesus claim to be the "bridegroom"? If so, what did he mean by this claim? When Jesus says that the wedding guests should not fast "while the bridegroom is with them" (Mark 2:19), he is claiming to be a bridegroom by intentionally alluding to a rich tradition from the Hebrew Bible. By eating and drinking with "tax collectors and other sinners," Jesus was inviting people to join him in celebrating the eschatological banquet. While there is no single text in the Hebrew Bible or the literature of the Second Temple Period which states the "messiah is like a bridegroom," the elements for such a claim are present in several texts in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea. By claiming that his ministry was an ongoing wedding celebration he signaled the end of the Exile and the restoration of Israel to her position as the Lord's beloved wife. This book argues that Jesus combined the tradition of an eschatological banquet with a marriage metaphor in order to describe the end of the Exile as a wedding banquet.

Galatians is one of the earliest of the Pauline letters and is therefore among the first documents written by Christians in the first century. Paul’s letter to the Galatians deals with the first real controversy in the early church: the status of Jews and gentiles in this present age and the application of the Law of Moses to gentiles. Paul argues passionately that gentiles are not “converting” to Judaism and therefore should not be expected to keep the Law. Gentiles who accept Jesus as Savior are “free in Christ,” not under the bondage of the Law. Galatians also deals with an important pastoral issue in the early church as well. If gentiles are not “under the Law,” are they free to behave any way they like? Does Paul’s gospel mean that gentiles can continue to live like pagans and still be right with God? For Paul, the believer’s status as an adopted child of God enables them to serve God freely as dearly loved children. Galatians: Freedom through God's Grace is commentary for laypeople, Bible teachers, and pastors who want to grasp how the original readers of Galatians would have understood Paul’s letter and how this important ancient letter speaks to Christians living in similar situations in the twenty-first century.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oxford, 1984. Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-244) and index.

Delio DelRio offers a fresh perspective on the contemporary quest for Paul by doing the hard work to uncover the milieu few have attempted to integrate into our understanding of Paul--the Jewish synagogue. By all accounts, Paul was centered in the synagogue. Paul himself in his own letters indicates his synagogue priority in preaching the gospel, and the narrative of Acts corroborates this emphasis. We have a window into that synagogue world, says DelRio, in the literature of the Targums. DelRio uses a study of Jewish interpretive traditions in the Isaiah Targum to uncover an internal debate in the synagogue over the role of the Gentiles in the coming messianic kingdom. When Paul coined the phrase "obedience of faith" in Rom 1:5, a phrase found only in Romans in all of ancient literature, little did we realize, DelRio shows, that with this coined phrase at a crucial rhetorical juncture in Romans, Paul was plunging headlong into this synagogue debate with his own solution to this synagogue conundrum in his hermeneutic of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A brave collection of essays by rabbis, educators, lawyers, and psychotherapists on sexual abuse within the Jewish clergy