Socho's Death of Sogi and Kikaku's Death of Master Basho provide information about iconic figures of premodern Japanese literature and their disciples, while themselves manifesting stylistic accomplishment. This book contains translations of both death accounts and introductions to the poets' lives, times, and works

This book explores how two early modern and two modern Japanese writers – Yosa Buson (1716–83), Ema Saikō (1787–1861), Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), and Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) – experimented with the poetic artifice afforded by the East Asian literati (bunjin) tradition, a repertoire of Chinese and Japanese poetry and painting. Their experiments generated a poetics of irony that transformed the lineaments of lyric expression in literati culture and advanced the emergence of modern prose poetry in Japanese literature. Through rigorous close readings, this study changes our understanding of the relationship between lyric form and the representation of self, sense, and feeling in Japanese poetic writing from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth century. The book aims to reach a broad audience, including specialists in East Asian Studies, Anglophone literary studies, and Comparative Literature.

"Socho's Death of Sogi and Kikaku's Death of Master Basho provide information about iconic figures of premodern Japanese literature and their disciples, while themselves manifesting stylistic accomplishment. This book contains translations of both death accounts and introductions to the poets' lives, times, and works"--

"If discipleship is a journey, this book belongs in the rucksack. . . Like the scriptures on which it is based, it deserves repeated reading." Stephen Cherry, Dean of Kings College, Cambridge This fresh and inspiring look at the meaning of discipleship covers the essentials of the christian life, including: faith, hope and love; forgiveness; holiness; social action; life in the Spirit. Written for the general reader by one of our greatest living theologians, this book will help you to see more clearly, love more dearly and follow more nearly the way of Jesus Christ.

What will be the final destiny of the human race at God's eschatological judgment? Will all be saved, or only a few? How does Christian eschatology impact Christian political action in the here and now? And what is the destiny of each individual facing the prospect of earthly death? In these essays, Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) brings the resources of Scripture and tradition to bear on these vital questions, arguing for the magnificent final restoration of all creatures to union with God in a universal salvation worthy of the infinite scope of Christ's redemption. Bulgakov also provides insight into how Christians can strive to bring God's kingdom to earth in anticipation of the peace and justice of the heavenly Jerusalem. The reader will also find in these pages profound theological reflections on the nature of human death and Christ's accompaniment of all humans in their dying, based on Bulgakov's own near-death experience. Together, these essays shed new light on eschatology in all its facets: personal, political, and universal.

The Latina/o culture and identity have long been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo. Robert Chao Romero explores the "Brown Church" and how this movement appeals to the vision for redemption that includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of our lives and the world.

An expert on early Christianity reveals how the early church invented stories of Christian martyrs—and how this persecution myth persists today. According to church tradition and popular belief, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. But as Candida Moss reveals in The Myth of Persecution, the “Age of Martyrs” is a fiction. There was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still invoked by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. By shedding light on the historical record, Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get them.

Bauckham shows that Jesus was devoted to the God of Israel, with a special focus on God's fatherly love and compassion, and like every Jewish teacher he expounded the Torah, but did so in his own distinctive way.

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