B. G. Holcomb was the countrys leading radio and television evangelist until a TV expose of a phony healing brought the ministry to its knees. Having lost his wife, his daughter and most of the people he thought were his friends, B. G. spends the next twenty years in self-imposed obscurity until his lifeless body is discovered in a cheap motel room, alone and forgotten. Max Needleman, a freelance writer who cannot forget his own childhood encounter with the former evangelist, happens across a notice about B. G.s death in the newspaper and is drawn to find out more. A cryptic message scribbled in the margin of a Bible found next to the body makes the detective in charge of the investigation suspect murder in spite of the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that B. G. died of anything other than natural causes. Max manages to find Forrest Taylor, B. G.s last remaining friend, but while the alcoholic Taylor acts as though he wants to help, its obvious that he knows things he doesnt want to talk about. Its only after B. G.s ex-wife shows up that Max and the police find out about Tony Pellerman, the son of B. G.s ex-partner, who not only has a possible motive but was staying in B. G.s motel the night of the murder. While the police are rapidly losing interest in the case because of the absence of any hard evidence, Max finds himself more deeply absorbed in spite of his wifes objections and his editors demands. He not only wants to understand B. G. but Tony, as well, the man B. G. had come to love like a son but who had come to hate B. G. with unrestrained intensity. In the end, B. G.s death manages to match his life, a mlange of miracles and ambiguities, uniquely satisfying to some, empty and preposterous to others.

In the second installment of the Syras Scribbles series, Syra makes her New Years resolution to be thankful in all circumstances, little knowing how difficult it will be to keep. She immediately gets caught up in the daily drama of taking care of three small children and her ailing mother and suddenly finds her family moving across the country. These intimate letters chronicle everything from perfect days of complete contentedness to months of sickness, sorrow, and an unanswered prayer. Syra shares her struggles and triumphs with an honesty and humor that inspires.

(The Scribal Anointing was updated in 2016. This is the updated version.) For far too long, the prophetic writing ministry of God's creative scribes have gone untapped in the body. Some of those carrying the scribal ministry within them have yet to birth it and those who have are yet to understand why our Father in Heaven has placed this ministry in their hearts. Drawing on the wisdom of Jesus Christ and the revelation hidden in the Old Testament, The Scribal Anointing walks the present day scribe into the depths of God's heart concerning the ministry of the prophetic scribe and prophetic writing.

Embedded in modern print culture, biblical scholars have been projecting the assumptions and concepts of print culture onto the texts they interpret. In the ancient world from which those texts originate, however, literacy was confined to only a small number of educated scribes. And, as recent research has shown, even the literate scribes learned texts by repeated recitation, while the nonliterate ordinary people had little if any direct contact with written scrolls. The texts that had taken distinctive form, moreover, were embedded in a broader and deeper cultural repertoire cultivated orally in village communities as well as in scribal circles. Only recently have some scholars struggled to appreciate texts that later became "biblical" in their own historical context of oral communication. Exploration of texts in oral performance--whether as scribal teachers' instruction to their proteges or as prophetic speeches of Jesus of Nazareth or as the performance of a whole Gospel story in a community of Jesus-loyalists--requires interpreters to relinquish their print-cultural assumptions. Widening exploration of texts in oral performance in other fields offers exciting new possibilities for allowing those texts to come alive again in their community contexts as they resonated with the cultural tradition in which they were embedded.

Daniel is a book of exile and expectation. In a foreign land, God's people face confusion, uncertainty, and even death. Where is God? What is his plan? What is the future for us? The book's familiar stories and unsettling visions answer these questions with a simple but stunning truth: the God of Israel is sovereign king of a world-encompassing eternal kingdom. He is king of all kings, and although his rule may not always be obvious, he alone rules a kingdom that will endure. One day, his king will reign with his people over an indestructible kingdom forever Until that day, God's people live and often suffer in exile among the kingdoms of the world but they can endure with courage and confidence as they await the coming fullness of God's eternal kingdom, The Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament series shows readers that how a biblical author says something is just as important as what they say. Designed for the pastor and Bible teacher the series carefully analyzes the discourse of each Old Testament book and shows how the main thrust of each passage contributes to the development of the whole composition in the original Hebrew. For each passage, it consistently provides the main idea of the passage, its literary context, the author's original translation and exegetical outline with Hebrew layout, its structure and literary form, an explanation of the text, and its canonical and practical significance. While primarily designed for those with a basic knowledge of biblical Hebrew, Hebrew words are always explained so that anyone who desires to understand the Old Testament and communicate its message will find the volumes in this series beneficial.

This volume brings together groundbreaking essays that laid the foundations of several of Horsley’s later works. The initial aims of these essays were, first, to ferret out evidence from our sources, primarily from the histories of Josephus, evidence for the lives of ordinary people living in Judean and Galilean villages. A second purpose was to explore as precisely as possible the fundamental conflictual division between the Roman, Herodian, and high priestly rulers in Palestine and the Judean and Galilean villagers they ruled. A third purpose was to explore more particularly how the popular and scribal opposition to the rulers was manifested in a remarkable diversity of movements and their leaders. And the fourth purpose, entailed in the first two, was to wriggle out from under some of the controlling constructs of New Testament/biblical studies that had been hiding the considerable complexity of the historical context. This was necessary even to begin to discern more precisely the fundamental political—economic—religious conflict between the rulers and the villagers manifested in a diversity of social movements attested in the sources.

"If earlier scholarship on apocalyptic literature was once described as "clueless about apocalypticism, " it was due in part to a focus on questions of definition, literary genre, and theological eccentricity. Richard A. Horsley takes a different approach, letting the language of the apocalypses themselves reveal their chief concern: the expanding domination by foreign empires and the form that popular defiance should take. Most telling are the traces where Judean scribes wrote themselves into their texts - and thus into God's purposes in history."--Jaquette du livre.

The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing is an important story of intellectual discovery and a tale of code breaking comparable to the interpreting of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the decoding of cuneiform. This book provides a history of the interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs. Introductory essays offer the historical context and describe the personalities and theories of the many authors who contributed to the understanding of these ancient glyphs.

The Updated American Standard Version (UASV) is a literal translation. Translating from the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek is a task unlike any other and should never be taken lightly. It carries with it the heaviest responsibility: the translator renders God’s thoughts into a modern language. What does that mean? It means that our primary purpose is to give the Bible readers what God said by way of his human authors, not what a translator thinks God meant in its place. In other words, our primary goal is to be accurate and faithful to the original text. The meaning of a word is the responsibility of the interpreter (i.e., reader), not the translator. The translator remains faithful to this literal translation philosophy unless it has been determined that the rendering will be misunderstood or misinterpreted. The translator is not tasked with making the text easy to read, but rather to make it as accurately faithful to the original as possible. UASV PURPOSE Our primary purpose is to give the Bible readers what God said by way of his human authors, not what a translator thinks God meant in its place.—Truth Matters! UASV GOAL Our primary goal is to be accurate and faithful to the original text. The meaning of a word is the responsibility of the interpreter (i.e., reader), not the translator.—Translating Truth! OUR RESOURCES The Updated American Standard Version will be one of the most faithful and accurate translations to date by Christian Publishing House. It will remain faithful to the original and what the authors penned. We will not go beyond the translator’s responsibility into the field of the interpreter. Removing the Outdated Passages with the Old English “thee’s” and “thou’s” etc. have been replaced with modern English. Many words and phrases that were extremely ambiguous or easily misunderstood since the 1901 ASV have been updated according to the best lexicons. Verses with difficult word order or vocabulary have been translated into correct English grammar and syntax, for easier reading. However, if the word order of the original conveyed meaning, it was kept. More Accurate The last 110+ years have seen the discovering of far more manuscripts, especially the papyri, with many manuscripts dating within 100 years of the originals. While making more accurate translation choices, we have stayed true to the literal translation philosophy of the ASV, while other literal translations abandon the philosophy far too often. The translator seeks to render the Scriptures accurately, without losing what the Bible author penned by changing what the author wrote, by distorting or embellishing through imposing what the translator believes the author meant into the original text. Accuracy in Bible translation is being faithful to what the original author wrote (the words that he used), as opposed to going beyond into the meaning, trying to determine what the author meant by his words. The latter is the reader’s job. The translator uses the most reliable, accurate critical texts (e.g., WH, NA, UBS, BHS, as well as the original language texts, versions, and other sources that will help him to determine the original reading. Why the Need for Updated Translations? New manuscript discoveries Changes in the language A better understanding of the original languages Improved insight into Bible translation