Astonishingly, Israeli lesbians and gays have been able to achieve many political goals that still elude America's gay community. Israel's Supreme Court has mandated same-sex spousal benefits; the military, which never barred gays to begin with, has removed its last official restrictions; Israel's parliament boasts a Subcommittee for the Prevention of Sexual Orientation Discrimination; and school curricula are gay-friendly—all of this in a country where religious interests wield extraordinary power and whose identity today is the object of fierce struggle. Between Sodom and Eden, the first book to explore this rapidly changing landscape, is based on interviews with over one hundred Israelis, as well as Palestinians. Lee Walzer explores how, within a decade, Israel has evolved from a society that marginalized homosexuals to one that offers some of the most extensive legal protections in the world. He traces the political, religious, and social factors that make Israel a gay rights trendsetter, examining the interplay between Judaism and homosexuality, the growing prominence of gay themes in Israeli literature, film, music, and television, and the role of the media in advancing lesbian and gay political progress.

Of all the perplexing mysteries in this world, none have endured longer or have captured the imaginations of men more than the mysterious fate of the Garden of Eden. What ever happened to man’s first home? What ever became of the Tree of Life and its awful counterpart, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Is the Bible silent on this subject, or have we simply missed something? Eden’s Fate shines new light upon this mystery by closely examining the Biblical record and promoting a literal interpretation of the events, people, and places recorded in Genesis chapters 1-3. Herein you will learn what Eden really was, what really happened in the misty dawn of mankind’s history, and most of all you will discover the truth about Eden’s fate.

Both John the Baptist and Jesus said, Behold, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Yet we know that heaven will only come when sin ends. Therefore, humankind needs to know which sin removed us from the first paradise Eden. In A Law from EdenSolving the Mystery of Original Sin, author Marilyn Taplin looks to the Bible to show that the true original sin is not pride or the seeking of knowledge about good and evil; rather, she shows that the true original sin is an act of sexual perversion. A misunderstanding of human sexuality has led to this morally wicked society, and biblical research shows how sexual acts originating in ancient pagan societies and now found in contemporary LGBT communities have distorted the way even those professing to be Christians view their own sexuality. Many believe that the world is moving in the wrong direction, and Jesus shows us how to reverse that direction and bring Eden to the earth once again. If those professing to be Christians learn the powerful truth about original sin and end this sexual act, then they will be able to help usher in the heaven on earth promised by God.

This book is a study in the law that exists before the beginnings of law. It looks at one foundational moment, the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Drawing upon nearly two thousand years of Hebrew commentary, often scattered and fragmentary, The Law Before the Law seeks to ...

The history of archaeology is generally told as the making of a secular discipline. In nineteenth-century Britain, however, archaeology was enmeshed with questions of biblical authority and so with religious as well as narrowly scholarly concerns. In unearthing the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, travellers, archaeologists and their popularisers transformed thinking on the truth of Christianity and its place in modern cities. This happened at a time when anxieties over the unprecedented rate of urbanisation in Britain coincided with critical challenges to biblical truth. In this context, cities from Jerusalem to Rome became contested models for the adaptation of Christianity to modern urban life. Using sites from across the biblical world, this book evokes the appeal of the ancient city to diverse groups of British Protestants in their arguments with one another and with their secular and Catholic rivals about the vitality of their faith in urban Britain.

Multiple authors offer alternative visions of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. No Lot. No Lot's wife. No Lot's daughters. Just people struggling to survive.

She shows that images both from Melville and from popular sources of the time represented New York variously as Capital, Labyrinth, City of Man, and City of God, and she goes on to demonstrate that he resisted a generalizing or totalizing representation of the city by revealing its hybrid identity and giving voice to the poor, the displaced, and the racially excluded.

In Sodoms ThresholdThe Desire for the Unthinkable, author Dr. Isaac B. Rosler deconstructs the narrative of Sodom and highlights how religion borrows its fervor and passion from a nonreligious impetus that is not only other than religion but also other than God. He invites us to trespassto think about what has already trespassed our senses and to make sense of an overabundant excess that remains unsacrificable even through ruins, ashes, and forgetfulness. Sodoms Threshold explores concepts of alterity and otherness, and it calls us to think about a space of passion that keeps returning in spite of interruptionsin spite of religious, family, or state mandates that command us not to touch an alterity that has already arrived and is in excess of every touch. The Sodomites forbidden passion is an excess that impassionsit is a surplus that will be usurped and neutralized ad infi nitum by the multiple religions that both rise against its mystery and yet are also founded by it. Though Sodom was erased, its alterity and its surplus are indestructible.

How do we make sense of Ezekiel 40–48? Ezekiel’s temple vision has long mystified Bible readers and scholars. Is this a temple that is going to be built in the future? Or is this merely symbolic? Why so many details? Is there any relevance to this section of the Old Testament at all? This book addresses these important questions, showing how Ezekiel’s temple is more than just symbolic. Yet its ultimate fulfillment is not in any physical building, but, according to the New Testament, in Jesus and the new heavens and new earth. Not only will this book illuminate Ezekiel 40–48 for you, it will also help you understand important issues of interpretation in our day, such as typology, the role of the temple in biblical theology, and the New Testament use of the Old Testament. You will learn that yes, in fact, Ezekiel 40–48 is very relevant to the Bible’s storyline.