A professor of religion offers an “engrossing and excellent” look at how the Good Book has changed—and changed the world—through the ages (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In a lively journey from early Christianity to the present, this book explores how a box of handwritten scrolls became the Bible, and how the multibillion-dollar business that has brought us Biblezines and Manga Bibles is selling down the Book’s sacred capital. Showing us how a single official text was created from the proliferation of different scripts, Timothy Beal traces its path as it became embraced as the word of God and the Book of books. Christianity thrived for centuries without any Bible—there was no official canon of scriptures, much less a book big enough to hold them all. Congregations used various collections of scrolls and codices. As the author reveals, there is no “original” Bible, no single source text behind the thousands of different editions on the market today. The farther we go back in the holy text’s history, the more versions we find. In calling for a fresh understanding of the ways scriptures were used in the past, the author of Biblical Literacy offers the chance to rediscover a Bible, and a faith, that is truer to its own history—not a book of answers, but a library of questions.

Biblical archaeology flourished in the 1970s as an attempt to ground the historical witness of the Bible in demonstrable historical reality. Today this research paradigm has been largely abandoned. Thomas Davis charts the rise and fall of a methodology.

Look forward to King Jesus' perfect rule and kingdom as you look back at the rise of King Solomon--and his fall.

An examination of the role played by the Bible in the emergence of natural science.

This book is the culmination of a lifelong scholarly inquiry into Christian history, religion as a social institution, and the role of myth in the history of religions. Mack shows that religions are essentially mythological and that Christianity in particular has been an ever-changing mythological engine of social formation, from Roman times to its distinct American expression in our time. The author traces the cultural influence of the Christian myth that has persisted for sixteen hundred years but now should be much less consequential in our social and cultural life, since it runs counter to our democratic ideals. We stand at a critical impasse: badly splintered by conflicting groups pursuing their own social interests, a binding common myth needs to be established by renewing a truly cohesive national and international story rooted in our democratic and egalitarian origins, committed to freedom, equality, and vital human values.

This twelve-volume John MacArthur Old Testament Study Guide series provides intriguing examinations of the Old Testament. Each guide looks at a portion of Scripture from three perspectives---historical studies, character studies, and thematic studies---incorporating extensive commentary, detailed observations on themes, and probing questions.

A ministry is what you can do with the help of others. A movement is what God can do when you let go of control and multiply disciples and churches. Drawing on the life and ministry of Jesus, and with reflections on past and present movements, Steve Addison provides a roadmap for leaders who want to multiply disciples and churches to the ends of the earth. Whether pioneering on the edge, riding a wave of expansion, or stuck in suffocating decline, The Rise and Fall of Movements addresses each phase in the movement lifecycle, helping leaders identify their stage and align themselves with God's purposes.

For those struggling with the balance between nit-picky rules and permissiveness, its an indispensable resource of biblical reason. In gracious, conversational style, the reality of Christianitys cultural adaptation is illustrated, along with a practical understanding of relevant scriptural principles and their legitimate application to the polarizing issue of personal standards. This is a makeover for the church from the inside out!

Since the late 1970s complementarian theologians have been arguing that the divine three persons in the Trinity are ordered hierarchically, and that this is the ground for the hierarchical ordering of the sexes. Suddenly and unexpectedly in June 2016 a number of complementarian theologians of confessional Reformed convictions came out and said that to so construe the Trinity is "heresy"; it is a denial of what the creeds and confessions of the church rule is the teaching of Scripture. A civil war among complementarians followed and in a very short time those arguing for hierarchical ordering in the Trinity capitulated. This book tells the story.

Selected as a book of the year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times What is it about Adam and Eve’s story that fascinates us? What does it tell us about how our species lives, dies, works or has sex? The mythic tale of Adam and Eve has shaped conceptions of human origins and destiny for centuries. Stemming from a few verses in an ancient book, it became not just the foundation of three major world faiths, but has evolved through art, philosophy and science to serve as the mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole, long history of our fears and desires. In a quest that begins at the dawn of time, Stephen Greenblatt takes us from ancient Babylonia to the forests of east Africa. We meet evolutionary biologists and fossilised ancestors; we grapple with morality and marriage in Milton’s Paradise Lost; and we decide if the Fall is the unvarnished truth or fictional allegory.