It has been just over 40 years since a gallows was last used in Great Britain, and the secrets behind the men who pulled the lever and dropped the condemned to their deaths are still shrouded in mystery. This account tells the story of the working-class men who carried out this profession until its abolition in the late 1960s. The hangman's rope was part of an exact science, and in their day, the men who undertook the job assumed the profiles of infamous celebrities, their reputations often rivaling the notorious criminals they were charged with dispatching. From the bungling hangmen sacked for incompetence and those driven to guilt-ridden suicide to the last to pull the lever at the height of the swinging sixties, the secrets of this form of capital punishment are finally revealed. They were the last of their kind, the hangmen of the 20th century; and this is their fascinating, sometimes repugnant, always enthralling story.

Many people today think of Satan as a little red demon with a pointy tail and a pitchfork—but this vision of the devil developed over many centuries and would be foreign to the writers of the Old Testament, where this figure makes his first appearances. The earliest texts that mention the Satan—it is always “the Satan” in the Old Testament—portray him as an agent of Yahweh, serving as an executioner of evildoers. But over the course of time, the Satan came to be regarded more as God’s enemy than God’s agent and was blamed for a host of problems. Biblical scholar Ryan E. Stokes explains the development of the Satan tradition in the Hebrew scriptures and the writings of early Judaism, describing the interpretive and creative processes that transformed an agent of Yahweh into the archenemy of good. He explores how the idea of a heavenly Satan figure factored into the problem of evil and received the blame for all that is wrong in the world.

""The Bible Home Instructor"" is a classic Bible study guide, originally published in 1920. It is a compilation of Bible testimony on a multitude of Christian subjects. Each of the many biblical topics encapsulates one or more doctrinal truths, as understood and explained by the original author, Andrew N. Dugger. In 1995, I assisted ministerial author, Richard C. Nickels, in creating an updated edition of this popular Bible study guide. For all of us who participated in this project, it was a work of love. That printed version is still being sold, and oftentimes at exorbitant prices. Therefore, I have decided to publish this updated edition and sell it for the cost of printing. I also offer a free, text-only PDF through my online bookstore at http: //www.lulu.com/spotlight/KerryBarger . The PDF can be copied and shared freely among any number of people. This book can shed the precious light of God's truth into your life and the lives of all who take its teachings to heart.

You love God. You long to know Him more intimately, to see Him face to face. Now is the time to dig deeper into the Scriptures, to see the Bible come alive for you: chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence, word by word. Written by forty-eight leading Bible scholars, this powerful handbook walks you through the entire text of the Old and New Testaments (primarily in the KJV). From the majestic Genesis account of all the Creator brought into being to Christ's words at the end of Revelation ('Yea, I come quickly...'), you'll find insights to help you wrap your heart and mind around God's Word in the pages of The Wycliffe Bible Commentary. INCLUDES BONUS MATERIAL: Commentary on Romans from The Moody Bible Commentary. Michael Vanlaningham, professor of New Testament at Moody Bible Institute, introduces Romans and then takes you through it verse-by-verse. Known as Paul's most thorough treatment on Christian doctrine, Romans explores sin, faith, and God's redemptive purposes for the world in Jesus. Familiarity with this famous letter is indispensable for growth and maturity in your Christian faith.

The death penalty in classical Judaism has been a highly politicized subject in modern scholarship. Enlightenment attacks on the Talmud's legitimacy led scholars to use the Talmud's criminal law as evidence for its elevated morals. But even more pressing was the need to prove Jews' innocence of the charge of killing Christ. The reconstruction of a just Jewish death penalty was a defense against the accusation that a corrupt Jewish court was responsible for the death of Christ. In Execution and Invention, Beth A. Berkowitz tells the story of modern scholarship on the ancient rabbinic death penalty and offers a fresh perspective using the approaches of ritual studies, cultural criticism, and talmudic source criticism. Against the scholarly consensus, Berkowitz argues that the early Rabbis used the rabbinic laws of the death penalty to establish their power in the wake of the destruction of the Temple. Following recent currents in historiography, Berkowitz sees the Rabbis as an embattled, almost invisible sect within second-century Judaism. The function of their death penalty laws, Berkowitz contends, was to create a complex ritual of execution under rabbinic control, thus bolstering rabbinic claims to authority in the context of Roman political and cultural domination. Understanding rabbinic literature to be in dialogue with the Bible, with the variety of ancient Jews, and with Roman imperialism, Berkowitz shows how the Rabbis tried to create an appealing alternative to the Roman, paganized culture of Palestine's Jews. In their death penalty, the Rabbis substituted Rome's power with their own. Early Christians, on the other hand, used death penalty discourse to critique judicial power. But Berkowitz argues that the Christian critique of execution produced new claims to authority as much as the rabbinic embrace. By comparing rabbinic conversations about the death penalty with Christian ones, Berkowitz reveals death penalty discourse as a significant means of creating authority in second-century western religious cultures. Advancing the death penalty discourse as a discourse of power, Berkowitz sheds light on the central relationship between religious and political authority and the severest form of punishment.

Judicial hanging is regarded by many as being the quintessentially British execution. However, many other methods of capital punishment have been used in this country; ranging from burning, beheading and shooting to crushing and boiling to death. This book explores these types of execution in detail. Readers may be surprised to learn that a means of mechanical decapitation, the Halifax Gibbet, was being used in England five hundred years before the guillotine was invented. Boiling to death was a prescribed means of execution in this country during the Tudor period. From the public death by starvation of those gibbeted alive, to the burning of women for petit treason, this book examines some of the most gruesome passages of British history.

This edited collection offers multi-disciplinary reflections and analysis on a variety of themes centred on nineteenth century executions in the UK, many specifically related to the fundamental change in capital punishment culture as the execution moved from the public arena to behind the prison wall. By examining a period of dramatic change in punishment practice, this collection of essays provides a fresh historical perspective on nineteenth century execution culture, with a focus on Scotland, Wales and the regions of England. From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual has two parts. Part 1 addresses the criminal body and the witnessing of executions in the nineteenth century, including studies of the execution crowd and executioners’ memoirs, as well as reflections on the experience of narratives around capital punishment in museums in the present day. Part 2 explores the treatment of the execution experience in the print media, from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The collection draws together contributions from the fields of Heritage and Museum Studies, History, Law, Legal History and Literary Studies, to shed new light on execution culture in nineteenth century Britain. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of criminology, heritage and museum studies, history, law, legal history, medical humanities and socio-legal studies.

Sixty-Six Books. One Story. All About One Name. Encounter the living Jesus in all of Scripture. From the Passion movement, The Jesus Bible, NIV Edition, lifts Jesus up as the lead story of the Bible and encourages you to faithfully follow him as you participate in his story. Profound yet accessible study features help you meet Jesus throughout Scripture. See him in every book so that you may know him more intimately, love him more passionately, and walk with him more faithfully. Features: Complete text of the accurate, readable, and clear New International Version (NIV) Introduction by Louie Giglio 66 book introductions highlight the story of Jesus in every book 6 compelling essays on the grand narrative of Scripture Over 300 full-page articles and nearly 700 sidebar articles reveal Jesus throughout all of Scripture NIV dictionary-concordance