"A masterpiece of contemporary Bible translation and commentary."—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Best Books of 1999 Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays.

This commentary on 1 and 2 Kings demonstrates the continuing intellectual and practical viability of theological interpretation of the Bible for today's church.

This volume in the popular Ignatius Catholic Study Bible series leads readers through a penetrating study of the First and Second Books of Kings using the biblical text itself and the Church's own guidelines for understanding the Bible. Ample notes accompany each page, providing fresh insights by renowned Bible teachers Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch as well as time-tested interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. These helpful study notes provide rich historical, cultural, geographical, and theological information pertinent to the Old Testament book—information that bridges the distance between the biblical world and our own. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible also includes Topical Essays, Word Studies, and Charts. The Topical Essays explore the major themes of 1 & 2 Kings, often relating them to the teachings of the Church. The Word Studies explain the background of important biblical terms, while the Charts summarize crucial biblical information "at a glance".

"An emerging field of study that explores the Hispanic minority in the United States, Latino Studies is enriched by an interdisciplinary perspective. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, demographers, linguists, as well as religion, ethnicity, and culture scholars, among others, bring a varied, multifaceted approach to the understanding of a people whose roots are all over the Americas and whose permanent home is north of the Rio Grande. Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies offers an authoritative, trustworthy, and up-to-date intellectual map to this ever-changing discipline."--Editorial page.

By the waters of Babylon, in the sixth century B.C., the Jewish people felt like permanent refugees in a foreign land. Israel had undergone captivity once before, in Egypt. This time the people were in exile because of disobedience. The books of 1 and 2 Kings were meant as an antidote for the sorrow of heart that afflicted their souls. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. guides you through the maze of kings and empires, prophets and priests, that are the subjects of those two Old Testament historical books. In those books, Hubbard says, are "peaks of unbelievable glory and valleys of unforgettable despair." His study of 1 and 2 Kings and of the chaotic time chronicled in those books is written in a comfortable style but with scholarly care. Hubbard applies to our lives today the lessons learned through years of pain. Scholar and layman alike will appreciate the combination of readability and scholarly investigation that marks this book.

The Book of Kings narrates the vivid and turbulent history of Israel and its monarchs. In I Kings: Torn in Two, master educator Alex Israel uncovers the messages hidden between the lines of the biblical text and draws rich and indelible portraits of its great personalities. Revealing a narrative of political upheaval, empire building, religious and cultural struggle, national fracture, war and peace, I Kings: Torn in Two depicts the titanic clashes between king and prophet and the underlying conflicts that can split apart a society. Using traditional commentaries and modern literary techniques, the author offers a dynamic dialogue between the biblical text and its interpretations. The result is a compelling work of contemporary biblical scholarship that addresses the central themes of the Book of Kings in a wider historical, political and religious perspective.

Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

For years d’Artagnan shared his adventures with his three comrades—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—but now, in Between Two Kings, the First Musketeer returns to the forefront. This is truly d’Artagnan’s novel, bringing to a dramatic climax the story that began when he first arrived in Paris thirty years earlier in The Three Musketeers. This brand-new translation of Between Two Kings immediately picks up the story and themes of Blood Royal, where d’Artagnan tries to thwart destiny by saving England’s Charles I; now, he will be instrumental in the restoration of his son, Charles II, the first of the two kings of the title. Disappointed in the irresolution of young Louis XIV, d’Artagnan takes a leave of absence from the King’s Musketeers and ventures to England with a bold plan to hoist Charles II onto his throne, a swashbuckling escapade in which he is unwittingly assisted by his old comrade Athos. D’Artagnan returns triumphant to France, where he is recalled to service by the second king, Louis XIV, who is now finally ready to take full advantage of the extraordinary talents of his officer of musketeers. This newly translated volume by Lawrence Ellsworth is the first volume of Alexandre Dumas’s mega-novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, the epic finale to the Musketeers Cycle, which will end with the justly-famous The Man in the Iron Mask. This marks the first significant new English translation of this series of novels in over a century.

Every volume of Science Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and many more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty-year-old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you! In Trees: Kings of the Forest we follow an acorn as it learns about its future as Earth's largest, longest-living plant. Starting with the seed's germination, we learn about each stage until the tree's maturation, different types of trees, and the roles trees take on in our ecosystem.

From the eighth to second centuries BCE, ancient Israel and Judah were threatened and dominated by a series of foreign empires. This traumatic history prompted serious theological reflection and recalibration, specifically to address the relationship between God and foreign kings. This relationship provided a crucial locus for thinking theologically about empire, for if the rival sovereignty possessed and expressed by kings such as Sennacherib of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Cyrus of Persia, and Antiochus IV Epiphanes was to be rendered meaningful, it somehow had to be assimilated into a Yahwistic theological framework. In King of Kings, Justin Pannkuk tells the stories of how the biblical texts modeled the relationship between God and foreign kings at critical junctures in the history of Judah and the development of this discourse across nearly six centuries. Pannkuk finds that the biblical authors consistently assimilated the power and activities of the foreign kings into exclusively Yahwistic interpretive frameworks by constructing hierarchies of agency and sovereignty that reaffirmed YHWH's position of ultimate supremacy over the kings. These acts of assimilation performed powerful symbolic work on the problems presented by empire by framing them as expressions of YHWH's own power and activity. This strategy had the capacity to render imperial domination theologically meaningful, but it also came with theological consequences: with each imperial encounter, the ideologies of rule and political aggression to which the biblical texts responded actually shaped the biblical discourse about YHWH. With its broad historical sweep, engagement with important theological themes, and accessible prose, King of Kings provides a rich resource for students and scholars working in biblical studies, theology, and ancient history. It is an important resource for understanding how the vagaries of history inform our ongoing negotiations with concepts of the divine.